Remembering Srila Prabhupada – Stubborn attitude

Prabhupada pointed to his disciples as living proof and explained that they had easily given up all sinful habits by taking to Krsna consciousness and had even forgotten their bodily designations as Americans, Englishmen, or Germans-black or white-and now identified themselves only as spirit souls, eternally part and parcel of the Supreme Lord. Then Prabhupada launched into an analysis of the soul and made the point that even animals and plants are souls, who deserve protection, contrary to the communist idea of caring only for humans. "So this is not an organized society. An organized society means that there are first-class men, brahmanas, who give advice to the second-class men, the administrators. And the administrative class will see that everyone is following the religious principles. And the third-class men, or the mercantile class of men, they should produce food."

Having come back to the original topic of the divisions of society, Srila Prabhupada next explained what it means to be a brahmana and stressed the need for an educational department to create first-class men.

After Srila Prabhupada concluded his talk, a lively question-and-answer session ensued, with one student in particular taking the initiative. Annoyed by the idea of a society based on what seemed to him to be the detestable caste system, he challenged Prabhupada: "Why do you have these distinctions?"

"Distinction …" Prabhupada paused for a second thoughtfully, "exists only as long as you are not a devotee. You must have these distinctions. There is already the distinction."

But the student hadn’t grasped the distinctions which Prabhupada had explained. He insisted: "But why?"

"Why?" Prabhupada asked with surprise. "Because there are third-class men, fourth-class men, first-class men-there are. How you can say, ‘Why?’"

His opponent avoided answering and began another argument, but Prabhupada interrupted him to correct his stubborn attitude: "Do you think everybody is a first-class man? Do you think?" When the student admitted that he did not, Prabhupada concluded, "Therefore, a first-class man should be like this, a second-class man should be like this. There is already first-class, second-class, third-class, fourth-class."

Seeing that he was about to lose the debate, the student changed his tactic by focusing the attention on Prabhupada: "So you are saying that you are a first-class man, yes?" But he was wrong if he thought he had embarrassed or cornered Prabhupada.

As a humble Vaisnava, Srila Prabhupada didn’t have to juggle words to deflect the attack; he simply had to speak from personal realization: "I am a fifth-class man," he said matter-of-factly. "I don’t claim anything, because I am the servant of everyone. I am a servant of the fourth-class man also."

"But you are a brahmana; you are a first-class man," his opponent continued to challenge.

Prabhupada remained unfazed: "Now you may say first-class man, but I think I am a fifth-class man." Still dissatisfied, the student became unintelligible, and Prabhupada had to interrupt him: "What is your point? I cannot understand."

Now Hamsaduta entered the discussion. Well aware that a pure devotee considers himself lower than the straw in the street and never defends himself against personal attacks, he regarded it as his duty to come to Srila Prabhupada’s defense. Why should his spiritual master have to deal with an unreasonable troublemaker? "What is your point?" he pressed the challenger. "You have to come to the point. Organize your question." When the student criticized Prabhupada for sitting on an elevated seat decorated with flowers, Hamsaduta turned the challenge around: "So you want to sit there?" "No," came the answer. "O.K. Don’t be envious. If you can sit there and give some knowledge …"

"I don’t want to sit there," the student grumped.

"Then what is your objection?" Hamsaduta asked.

"What about all those flowers that you have killed, so that he could be decorated?" the boy demanded to know. A round of applause from the students indicated that he had touched on a common gripe.

Srila Prabhupada turned to Hamsaduta: "What is that?"

"His point is that the flowers have been killed to decorate the vyasasana," Hamsaduta explained. And he said to the student, "So you compare this to animal killing? Is this the same thing?" The boy was caught off guard. Hamsaduta was quick to drive home his point: "Do you think that plucking a flower is the same as killing a cow in a slaughterhouse?"

"Of course not," the student agreed, and then quickly added, "but who said so?"

Undiverted, Hamsaduta pursued his own line of reasoning: "So you are not eating any meat, fish or eggs?"

"I do," the boy admitted, not seeing any connection between the two issues.

But Hamsaduta made the contradiction clear: "O.K., you yourself are not practicing what you are saying."

But the student turned the tables: "But he preaches that you cannot do this, and he does not practice it."

The time had come for some scriptural evidence, and Hamsaduta quoted Bhagavad-gita: "About offering flowers, Krsna says, ‘You offer Me with love a little fruit, a flower and water, and I will accept it.’ That’s the difference between killing an animal and a flower-Krsna accepts fruits, flowers, a little water, but He doesn’t accept any cow or slaughterhouse killing."

From the "Srila Prabhupada and His Disciples in Germany" by HG Vedavyasa dasa

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