After lunch, Srila Prabhupada met with two young men from the Mormon Church. They were respectful and seemed to appreciate the disciplined life of Krsna consciousness.
"What do you feel is the greatest order of God?" asked one.
"To surrender to Him," replied Srila Prabhupada.
The conversation was long and amicable, although Prabhupada did not compromise his stance, particularly on meat-eating. "Christ says: ‘Thou shall not kill'," he said. "They are maintaining thousands of killing houses, and still they are passing as Christians."
Guest: Well, they're wrong.
Prabhupada: That is the point.
Guest: I agree with you.
Prabhupada: So you should tell them.
Guest: Well, we are. That's what we're here for.
Prabhupada concurred. "Yes. Tell them: ‘You are not Christian. Don't call yourself as Christian. You are persistently disobeying.' Christ said: ‘Thou shall not kill' and the Christians began by killing Christ, crucifying Christ. And that is going on still, in large scale, and they are still Christian. The Pope is eating meat and ... I do not wish to say so many things. These things are going on, and still, they are Christians. What can I say?"
One of the elders asked Srila Prabhupada, "Would the cutting down of a plant be equated with killing an animal?" Prabhupada explained: "Our philosophy is that we cannot stop killing, but there is no unnecessary killing."
Tusta Krsna Swami added that he had read something in the Mormon scriptures where God had spoken, requesting his followers not to eat meat except in times of famine and starvation. The Mormons agreed, but Tusta Krsna stuck to his point. "But slaughterhouses don't do that. They [Mormons] still eat meat."
"The point," Prabhupada explained, "is that every living being has to eat another living being. Jivo jivasya jivanam. That we admit. But ‘discrimination is the best part of valour'. You have to eat something, but if you have got grains, vegetables, milk -- very nice preparations -- why should you kill cow?"
"Well," said one of the Mormons, "we believe that the Lord ordained that food for man, and that He even said in the scripture to the prophet..."
Prabhupada: So he said? He ordained cow for your food?
Mormon: He ordained meat. Yes.
Tusta Krsna: But only in times of starvation and famine. That is the word of wisdom in the Mormon scripture.
Mormon: Well I don't want to get in contentions about it, but the scripture also says that ‘who abstains from meat is not ordained of God'. So you can take it whatever way you want.
Prabhupada returned to his original point. "The commandment, it is clearly said: ‘Thou shall not kill'. So what does it mean? That unless there is absolute necessity, we shall not kill."
The Mormon was trying hard to keep the conversation cordial. "I think that's right, and I feel that way."
Prabhupada explained some of the practical benefits of cow protection. "So when in any civilised country there is ample food for human beings, why they should kill? You can utilise cows in a different way. Just like we are maintaining a farm -- not one, many. We are maintaining cows and we are getting enough milk. And from milk we can produce varieties of palatable, nutritious food. And that is very, very enjoyable. So let the animal live and take the milk. None of us take meat, but we are not dying. We are having so many nice preparations from milk, from grains, from fruit."
Prabhupada explained the higher principles of spiritual vegetarianism: "Besides that, our other principle is that we offer to God. So God says ‘give me vegetables, milk,' like that. Patram puspam phalam toyam yo me bhaktya prayacchati. So we offer these things, and we take the leftover. That is our principle. We are not after killing or not killing. We are simply after obeying the orders of Krsna."
"Krsna says, ‘Give Me food from the vegetables'. So we offer Him very nice, palatable dishes and eat. This is our principle. So even while eating, we remember God: ‘Krsna has so nicely eaten this. Let me take the remnants.' So if God said that ‘You remember Me always', we can do it."
Remembering Krsna, Prabhupada detailed, was both practical and easy: "He has explained how to remember Him. He said, raso 'ham apsu kaunteya: ‘I am the taste of the water'. Who is not drinking water? At least three times, four times we drink water, everyone. So when you drink, and the water quenches your thirst, and you feel some nice taste, Krsna says, God says, ‘I am that taste'. So where is my difficulty to remember God? If you simply remember this formula, that ‘The taste of the water is Krsna', immediately you will remember Krsna.
"Prabhasmi sasi-suryayoh. ‘I am the shining of the sun, shining of the moon'. So who does not see the shining of the sun and the moon? At night you see the shining of the moon, and by day you see the sun. So where is the chance of forgetting God? There is no chance at all. As soon as you see the sunshine even, ‘Oh, here is Krsna'. As soon as you see the moonshine, ‘Oh, here is Krsna'. So in this way there is a list that you cannot avoid the chance for remembering Krsna. Every moment, every time, you can remember Him. Krsna says, ‘You always think of Me'. So where is my difficulty to think of Him. Unless I purposefully do not do it. It is not that when I go to the church and temple I can remember. I can remember Him twenty-four hours. That is Krsna consciousness."
The Mormon was in agreement. "I think that's right, and I think that many people I know personally are, what you say, Krsna conscious. They think of God and Christ twenty-four hours a day, too."
"Yes," Srila Prabhupada said. "That is wanted. We obey the orders of Christ -- we think of always -- then we are perfect. Either Christ, the son of God, or God, Krsna, the same thing. God and son of God, they are not different."
The discussion and atmosphere remained pleasant. At the conclusion of the session, the two young men gave Srila Prabhupada their Book of Mormon, and he sold them each a signed copy of the Sri Isopanisad.
Biographies and Glorifications of Srila Prabhupada-‘The Great Transcendental Adventure-‘‘The Southernmost Part of this Globe', Part I --Melbourne, 1976–Kurma das
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