Conversations From India (Part II)

A senior member of the Hare Krsna movement describes how materialism has plundered India's valuable jewel of Vedic culture.

Last year, while the ISKCON temple in India's holy city of Vrndavana was still under construction, His Holiness Tamala Krsna Maharaja, a senior member of the Krsna consciousness movement, lived nearby the construction site in a small grass-and-adobe hut, which he used as a headquarters for chanting, reading and performing his various Krsna conscious duties. When I visited Vrndavana on pilgrimage, Tamala Krsna Maharaja spent several mornings with me, answering my questions about Krsna consciousness and India's ancient Vedic culture. A portion of those conversations, which we taped to share with readers of BACK TO GODHEAD, appeared in BTG No. 2. Here is another excerpt from our early-morning conversations.

Jayadvaita dasa: If Krsna consciousness is the background of India, how is it that India has become known all over the world for being an economically backward country? In some parts of India you walk down the streets and see beggars everywhere, people with little or nothing to eat. Is that the fruit of Vedic civilization?

Tamala Krsna Maharaja: First of all we have to ask, "What is a Krsna conscious Vedic civilization?" If we study the life of a typical villager in a Vedic community, we may find him living with his wife and a few children in a thatched hut with mud walls and a dirt floor. He has a couple of cows, a well and four or five acres of land. The river is nearby. He may never have gone beyond two or three villages away, but he's very happy. He lives to a ripe old age, doesn't get many diseases, works honestly in the fields, and has enough milk and grains to eat. With his extra produce, beyond what he needs to maintain his family, he may trade for clothing, jewelry and other items. In other words, he lives a very simple life. And he has sufficient time to cultivate God consciousness or spiritual consciousness. That is the ideal Krsna conscious Vedic culture.

The ideal materialistic culture-do we have to go into it? It's what we find throughout the world today; that is to say, a culture that has no thought of God but is simply based upon accelerating and fulfilling desires for bodily enjoyment. It doesn't have anything to do with fulfilling the needs of the real self, the soul within the body. It simply deals with the body, the gross material body.

According to the Vedas, the individual is a pure spiritual soul, eternal, all-cognizant and full of bliss. In his original state, residing in the kingdom of God, the soul has a spiritual body endowed with spiritual qualities. But now, living in this material world, the soul is covered by a material body, which brings with it temporality, ignorance and great suffering. Vedic culture is concerned with transporting the soul back to the kingdom of God for a life of eternity, knowledge and bliss.

The Vedas tell you to work enough to maintain a healthy body and a healthy life for your family and spend the balance of your time developing love of God, God consciousness. And the work you do is honest work, using the things given by God, like the ground, water and sun. No cheating is involved; it is not a cheating process. You have a just amount, given to you by God, and you use it properly. God supplies everything you need.