Welcome to the Purely Prabhupada channel. This video series is called “Reality distinguished from illusion for the welfare of all.” My name is Kamra devi dasi, and I am a disciple of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada.
This is the twenty-first video of the series. It is called, “What is Success?”
In 1970, Srila Prabhupada went to Tokyo to speak with the officials of Dai Nippon printing company regarding the printing of his books. A junior executive met Srila Prabhupada and the two disciples who were with him and brought them into the meeting room. There were six top Dai Nippon executives present, and they each introduced themselves and gave Srila Prabhupada their business cards before they discussed the business at hand.
In Srila Prabhupada Lilamrta volume 1 chapter 31, the author writes-
“When Prabhupāda was again alone in the room with his disciples and the junior executive who had escorted him, he asked the young Japanese, “So what is your goal in life?” By way of answer, the man gathered up all the business cards that lay scattered before Prabhupāda on the table and stacked them, with the president’s on top, then the first vice-president’s, and so on, putting his own card in its place on the bottom. He then dramatically removed his card from the bottom of the stack and slapped it on top – a graphic answer to Prabhupāda’s question.
Prabhupāda smiled. To become president of the company, he said, was temporary. All material life was temporary. He explained on the basis of Bhagavad-gītā that the body was temporary and that the self was eternal. All the identities and positions people hankered after were based on the bodily conception of life and would one day be frustrated. The purpose of life, therefore, was not to become the temporary president of a temporary corporation within the temporary material world, but to realize the eternal soul’s relationship with the Supreme Personality of Godhead and gain eternal life….”
What can we take with us at the time of death? Not a diploma, not a PhD, not a gold watch, not a house or an estate. Yet, people work so hard to achieve what is temporary.
What is success? We observe our peers and the idols of our youth aging and passing away, so many names, so many memories of the past, so many experiences, so many things we have achieved or hoped to achieve in this material realm…. What have we really accomplished? Of all our efforts, what has permanency, what lasts beyond the lifespan of this body?
Only our endeavors to please the Supreme Personality of Godhead, even if they appear to happen by chance or unknowingly, have progressive benefit that carries on beyond this current body. We can perform devotional service to Krishna by conscious effort, by our willful choice, and sometimes there is what is called “ajñāta-sukṛti,” or pious or devotional activity performed unknowingly, that gives equal benefit. An example of ajñāta-sukṛti would be chanting the name of Lord Rama unknowingly if that holy name is imbedded in the name of a business or other enterprise. For example, the word panorama… My godbrother Sadaputa Prabhu was internally aware that his spiritual life had begun when he was inspired to pick up a Krishna poster from the floor in a Cornell University bookstore and replace it on its display easel. There is also the very famous example of the intoxicated man who walked into the early New York temple and put a roll of toilet paper into the bathroom. Srila Prabhupada remarked that “his spiritual life had begun.”
His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada writes in his Bhagavad-Gita As It Is, Chapter 2, text 40, regarding devotional service to God-
“In this endeavor there is no loss or diminution, and a little advancement on this path can protect one from the most dangerous type of fear.”
In the purport to this verse, Srila Prabhupada explains-
“Activity in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, or acting for the benefit of Kṛṣṇa without expectation of sense gratification, is the highest transcendental quality of work. Even a small beginning of such activity finds no impediment, nor can that small beginning be lost at any stage. Any work begun on the material plane has to be completed, otherwise the whole attempt becomes a failure. But any work begun in Kṛṣṇa consciousness has a permanent effect, even though not finished. The performer of such work is therefore not at a loss even if his work in Kṛṣṇa consciousness is incomplete. One percent done in Kṛṣṇa consciousness bears permanent results, so that the next beginning is from the point of two percent, whereas in material activity without a hundred percent success there is no profit…… There is a nice verse in this connection in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (1.5.17):
‘If someone gives up his occupational duties and works in Kṛṣṇa consciousness and then falls down on account of not completing his work, what loss is there on his part? And what can one gain if one performs his material activities perfectly?’ Or, as the Christians say, ‘What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world yet suffer the loss of his eternal soul?’
Material activities and their results end with the body. But work in Kṛṣṇa consciousness carries a person again to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, even after the loss of the body. At least one is sure to have a chance in the next life of being born again as a human being, either in the family of a great cultured brāhmaṇa or in a rich aristocratic family that will give one a further chance for elevation. That is the unique quality of work done in Kṛṣṇa consciousness.”
