THE PRABHUPADA CONNECTION
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We Are Not Idle Creatures
(Click to enlarge photo of Srila Prabhupada)

Journalist: A question: You are now the leader and the spiritual master. Who will take your place?

Prabhupāda: That Kṛṣṇa will dictate who will take my place.

Journalist: Kṛṣṇa will tell you that?

Devotee: You want that verse, Śrīla Prabhupāda?

Prabhupāda: Yes, yes.

Devotee: This is the translation of what the Sanskrit...

Prabhupāda: No, you can read the Sanskrit also.

Devotee:

    ananyāś cintayanto māṁ
    ye janāḥ paryupāsate
    teṣāṁ nityābhiyuktānāṁ
    yoga-kṣemaṁ vahāmy aham
    (BG 9.22)

"But those who worship Me with devotion, meditating on My transcendental form, to them I carry what they lack and preserve what they have."

Journalist: They still have to go out and ask occasionally?

Devotee (2): It's not that we sit back and wait for Kṛṣṇa to send it to us.

Devotee (3): No, we're very industrious.

Prabhupāda: We don't sit down idly.

Devotee (2): God helps those who help themselves.

Prabhupāda: We are not idle preachers; we are working. All, very hard, more than the karmīs.

Devotee (3): These men, they go out to engage people in taking our books maybe twelve hours a day sometimes, ten hours a day, without any salary.

Prabhupāda: I am now eighty years old. I am working twenty-four hours. I think I work more than my young disciples. (laughter)

Devotee (2): Oh, yes, definitely.

Prabhupāda: I work at night.

Devotee (2): It is hard to keep up with Śrīla Prabhupāda.

Devotee: Very difficult.

Prabhupāda: We are not idle creatures.

Devotee (3): We are publishing his books, and sometimes he is ahead of us by seventeen volumes.

Journalist: How do you spend your days? You do an awful lot of traveling, I understand.

Prabhupāda: Traveling is going on throughout the whole world, and wherever I go, I at night I write books.

Devotee (2): Translates.

Prabhupāda: Translate. And daytime I meet devotees.

Devotee (2): Manage.

Prabhupāda: Manage.

Journalist: You arrange the marriages?

Devotee (2): Manage.

Prabhupāda: They have to ask me. Final decision is taken from me. From all over the world, from all over the world letters are coming some problem, some problem, some problem. Although I have got about twenty secretaries, still they have to consult; I have to give them advice.

Devotee: In the evening Śrīla Prabhupāda goes to bed at ten o'clock and gets up at eleven-thirty to begin translating.

Journalist: You just sleep a couple of hours, then?

Prabhupāda: No, one and a half hour.

Journalist: That's it?

Prabhupāda: Yes. Of course, in daytime I take rest two hours. So in this way altogether about three to four hours. Our philosophy is not that you sit idly and God will send everything. No, not like that. We know God will send everything; still we work. Without God's sanction nothing can come. But we must be qualified to receive the favor of God. That is our philosophy.

Journalist: Are you surprised at the way this organization has prospered?

Prabhupāda: What do you mean?

Devotee: Are we surprised at the way the movement has expanded and prospered in just a few short years.

Prabhupāda: No, it is not surprising, it is natural. If you do..., just like if you do business in proper way there will be profit. Similarly, as it is enjoined in this book of knowledge, if you do like that it will expand, it will prosper. Two plus two equal to four. Mathematical calculation. If you make two plus two, it will become four. It will neither become three nor five. So here it is said, you have read the..., that "One who is engaged twenty-four hours in My service, so I," yoga-kṣemaṁ vahāmy aham, "I supply whatever he requires, and I protect whatever he has got." So if you actually serve Kṛṣṇa, then everything you want, it will come.

(Srila Prabhupada Interview with Newsday Newspaper, July 14, 1976, New York)

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