Material life means when you desire to gratify your senses- From the Book PQPA

Continued from the book Perfect questions and perfect answers...


Śyāmasundara: He can come and stay with you in Bombay.


Śrīla Prabhupāda: Yes, you can stay with us in Bombay. But he wants friends with marijuana. That is the difficulty.


Bob: Let me ask you about something else; then maybe I'll come back to this. I find that I think of myself too much, and this way I can't think of God so much. I think of myself in too many places. How can I forget about myself so I can concentrate on other, more important things?


Śrīla Prabhupāda: As they [the devotees] have done.


Bob: [Laughs.] You are saying to me that my path—I think what you're saying is that my path to purity is to become a devotee.


Śrīla Prabhupāda: Do you hesitate?


Bob: Well, I...


Śrīla Prabhupāda: Is it very difficult to become a devotee?


Bob: For myself—it is. I—I don't feel so much the desire. First the devotees tell me that they have given up material life. These four regulative principles, they have explained to me, mean giving up material life, and that I see. And in place of this they have...


Śrīla Prabhupāda: What do you mean by material life? [Bob is silent] I am sitting on this bed. Is it material or spiritual?


Bob: Material.


Śrīla Prabhupāda: Then how have we given up material life?


Bob: I think how I interpreted it was "a desire for our material gains..."


Śrīla Prabhupāda: What is material?


Bob: Working towards material gains and not giving up all materials.


Śrīla Prabhupāda: Material life means—when you desire to gratify your senses, that is material life. And when you desire to serve God, that is spiritual life. That is the difference between material life and spiritual life. Now we are trying to serve our senses. But instead of serving the senses, when we serve God, that is spiritual life. What is the difference between our activities and others, activities? We are using everything—table, chair, bed, tape recorder, typewriter—so what is the difference? The difference is that we are using everything for Kṛṣṇa.



To be continued....