Presentation of Krishna Consciousness at the Festival of India
Śrī Śrī Lakṣmī–Nṛsiṁha Tour, open program in Darłowo

This is my first time in Darłowo, but I think some of you have already been to a Hare Krishna festival here. Could those who have already been to the festival raise their hands?
We’re happy to see you again. And we especially welcome those who are here for the first time at a Hare Krishna festival. Who is here for the first time?

For a few minutes I’d like to explain what this culture of Krishna consciousness is about.

When we speak about culture, we mean cultivating something, just as one cultivates a plant. Everything you’ve seen here: theater, dance, music – all of it is part of the process of watering, “cultivating” the culture of Krishna consciousness.

There are features that are quite different from Western culture, but there are also elements that are related to it – universal values. I’d like to mention a few of those.

From a historical point of view, Krishna consciousness is several thousand years old and has its roots in India. As for its more recent history, in 1965 the founder-ācārya of our movement, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, came to America, to the Western world. His desire was to give all of us in the West the original culture of ancient India—Krishna consciousness—without any change or alteration.

And we are very happy to be here with you this evening to help fulfill his desire. Before Śrīla Prabhupāda left this world in 1977, he expressed one request to us. He said:
“Please give everyone the opportunity to hear about Krishna.”

Krishna – what does the name Krishna mean? You’ve heard what we call the Hare Krishna mantra many times already. Why do we chant this mantra again and again? We chant the names of God. So what does the name “Krishna” mean? “Krishna” means the all-attractive Supreme Person.

We all have our names: I have mine, you have yours. We are all persons, and Krishna, God, is the Supreme Person. So it is obvious that He also has His name. In fact, God has many names. In the Bible it is said: “Hallowed be Thy name.” The name of God is holy. Why is it holy? Because the name of God, when chanted or remembered, brings the presence of God Himself.

And this chanting of God’s names is found in many religions around the world. Why is that?

We find some interesting information in what we call the Vedic literature. One of the most essential and important books in this literature is called the Bhagavad-gītā. The Bhagavad-gītā was spoken by Krishna Himself. Krishna spoke it in very unusual circumstances—on a battlefield. He spoke it to a special person named Arjuna.

He discussed with him very deep philosophical topics. Arjuna had very serious questions. In fact, all of us have similar questions at some point in our lives. Of course, the details can differ from person to person, but everyone has many questions.

As children we ask our parents: “What is this? What is that? Why is it like this?” And as we grow up, our questions become more serious.

I remember when I was in fourth grade, living in Illinois in America, I had a friend who had leukemia. He hadn’t been at school for many weeks.

One day the teacher came to class and announced:
“I am sorry to tell you that our friend Jerry has died of leukemia.”

We were all very surprised. Although we had read about death, we’d never had personal experience of someone close to us dying. We had heard about death and seen so much shooting on television—but in those shows the “good guys,” even if they were killed, would stand up again after a while, and only the “bad guys” stayed down.

So this was very shocking for us:
“That was my friend, and he died?! And he will never come back?!”

I remember, maybe not exactly the words, but I started to ask myself:
“Why did he die and not me? Why did my friend Jerry die of leukemia and I didn’t?”

And later I asked myself:
“Doesn’t this mean that I will also die someday? Why is that? I don’t want to die!”

I didn’t know how to express these doubts to anyone, but I thought about it for quite a long time.

I think that most of you had similar questions at some stage of your youth. But over time we stop thinking about it; we become absorbed in other problems, and those matters seem less important.

In a way we are all like Yāmunācārya, whom you saw this evening in the drama. Maybe we’re not exactly kings, but we are all very busy with our daily duties, our families, and this distracts us from something that is actually very important. We tend to forget those fundamental questions, and yet remembering them is vital for us as human beings.

There’s a story in the Vedic literature about a king named Yudhiṣṭhira. Yudhiṣṭhira found himself in a very strange situation. A mysterious voice was asking him many puzzling questions. If his answers pleased that invisible person, he would live; if not, he would die.

He was a very intelligent king and answered quickly, one question after another. And they were surprising questions. One of them was:

“What is the most astonishing thing in the world?”

Yudhiṣṭhira answered immediately:
“Although everyone in this world must die, everyone forgets it.”

Although we see that our great-grandfather died, our grandfather will die soon, and the same will happen with our father, we never think: “I too will have to die.” This is what is so astonishing; such a surprising fact.

All religious teachings try to remind us that we are in a very dangerous situation. In fact, the Bhagavad-gītā, the Bible, and the Qur’an remind us that we don’t truly belong to this world. We belong to a place beyond this world, which we call the spiritual world, the kingdom of God.

So the Bhagavad-gītā and the whole Vedic literature remind us that this world is a place full of problems. We all have problems. If we asked each of you to list your problems, some of you could write an entire book. There are so many problems in this world.

The Vedas say that there are four fundamental problems we need to solve. Which ones?

Old age. When we look in the mirror and see wrinkles, that means we’re getting old. Those of you who, like me, are in your forties—are you happy about wrinkles appearing? I don’t think so.

Of course when we’re young, we’re happy to be getting older. But when we reach middle age, we look in the mirror and say: “I’ll never be young again.”

Another problem: disease. There are so many diseases. I recently visited a medical reading room and saw an encyclopedia of diseases. It had forty volumes describing different diseases. Do we like being sick? Of course not. Do we go to the pharmacy to buy pills that will cause pain? Of course not.

What is the next problem? We’ve already mentioned it. Death. No one wants it, but everyone will face it.

Basically all of us try to go through life forgetting about it. And when we do remember, we imagine an ideal scenario: all our relatives surrounding our bed, leaning over us with sad faces:
“Goodbye, Daddy.”
“It will be so hard without you…”

We imagine we will simply fall asleep and that will be death.

In reality most people don’t die surrounded by family. Usually they die alone. Or in a hospital, with many tubes sticking out of the body. A horrible situation. We don’t look forward to it. And so, mostly, we try to forget it.

Some twenty-plus years ago, in 1972, I met my spiritual master, Śrīla Prabhupāda, for the first time. And when I first saw him, he was giving a lecture in a situation similar to this one today. I remember one sentence he said that I will never forget:

“You are not your body.”

“I’m not this body? But I think I am this body!”

Then he began to explain what he meant. What is this body? It consists of so many bones. Does anyone know how many bones are in the human body? There are about 300 bones. There are many muscles, about 700, and about 28,000 kilometers of blood vessels.

And you think that’s you? No—that is the package you are placed in. He repeatedly said that he was giving us the same knowledge that Krishna speaks in the Bhagavad-gītā. After hearing this I started to read the Bhagavad-gītā myself. As he explained, Bhagavad-gītā means “The Song of God.” Krishna spoke it in a wonderful language—Sanskrit.

And in one important verse in the second chapter He explains reincarnation. In the drama, the boy who led Yāmunācārya back to Krishna recited that verse. Krishna explains reincarnation using a very simple example. He says that just as in this life the soul passes from childhood to youth to old age, so at death it passes on to another body.

I’d like to ask you to recall your earliest memory from this life. For the young ones this is easy. Older people can also recall some event, just as I remember that at age three I learned to tie my shoes.

So, has everyone recalled something from early childhood? Yes?
Were you a different person then than you are now? Will you say: “No, no, that was a completely different person, I think totally differently now”?

No, of course not. We are the same person, whether 10, 20, or 30 years have passed. Yet everything in this body has changed. All the cells in the body have been replaced. Our thoughts have changed; even the quality of our thinking is different. But there is something that has not changed. What is it?

The Bhagavad-gītā calls that something ātma—the soul. Krishna explains that the soul has no beginning and no end. That means it is completely different from the body, because we know that the body has a beginning and an end.

Krishna gives another example to help us understand the relationship of soul and body. He says that dying and being reborn is like changing clothes. When a shirt is old or worn out or out of fashion, we throw it away and put on a new one. But we don’t think: “Now I’m a different person because I changed my shirt from red to green.” No—just as we change clothes, we change bodies.

As I mentioned, for some in the West this may sound strange—especially when we consider what happens to the ātma after death, where it goes. According to the Vedas, this is an important question we should be asking as human beings. These are questions humans can ask, not animals. You will never see your dog or cat sitting in the corner, deeply thinking: “Where did I come from? Where will I go after death?”

According to the Bhagavad-gītā, we change bodies and take another body after death. And which body we receive next depends on what we do in this life. This is called the law of karma. Karma is another Sanskrit word; it means action and reaction.

The Bible also has this concept. It says: “As you sow, so shall you reap.” In other words, the result you get depends on what you do. The ultimate result is that we are directed into the womb of a certain mother of a certain species of living beings.

This is another question I used to ask myself as a child. I would wonder why this particular woman is my mother and that particular man is my father. Why wasn’t I born in another family? I always wondered about that. And only when I read in the Bhagavad-gītā about the law of karma did it begin to make sense.

Krishna explains other things that are perhaps even more surprising. He says that it is not obvious at all that you will receive a human body next time. Depending on degraded activities in this life, you may receive an animal body in the next life. According to the Bhagavad-gītā and other Vedic literature, there are millions of species of life. We may know a few kinds of animals and a few kinds of trees, but the Vedas say there are 8,400,000 species of life in the universe.

And we, as the soul—the ātma—move from one species to another, again and again experiencing disease, old age, and death, and then birth again.

Sometimes people ask us: “Do you believe in reincarnation?” because they have heard that Hare Krishnas believe in reincarnation. And sometimes I try to surprise them by saying: “No, we do not believe in reincarnation.”

“What, you don’t?! I heard you follow the Bhagavad-gītā, and the Bhagavad-gītā explains reincarnation, doesn’t it?”

Yes. We don’t “believe” in reincarnation in the sense that we don’t want to reincarnate anymore—because reincarnation means problems, serious problems. We want to end this cycle of repeated birth and death once and for all.

Krishna gives us a process by which we can end these repeated births and deaths. This process in Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, is called yoga. What does the word yoga mean? It means union, connection—connection with God.

It does not primarily mean what many Westerners think—just some kind of gymnastics or relaxation technique. Yoga means practicing a specific process, preparing oneself, and then connecting with God. This process helps us understand that this is our primary business as human beings.

Krishna gives us extensive and systematic instructions on how each of us can advance on this path of ending repeated birth and death. The person to whom Krishna gives these instructions, His friend Arjuna, at one point says:

“Wait a minute—what if after some time practicing this process of self-realization I give it up?”

Krishna answers:
“It doesn’t matter. Whatever progress you make in this life, you carry it to the next one and continue from that point. And ultimately you will reach perfection.”

And what is that perfection? You go back to the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is a wonderful place—it is a place where we exist eternally, in full knowledge and full happiness.

This happiness is not like what we experience in this world. It is called ānandāmbudhi-vardhanam—an ever-expanding ocean of bliss. Just as you see this sea here, imagine an ocean of happiness that constantly grows. And we can taste this ever-expanding ocean of happiness by following the process of bhakti-yoga.

And guess what the essence of this process is? It is the chanting of the names of God, such as this mahā-mantra Hare Krishna.

Why is chanting so important? It is said that self-realization begins with the tongue. The human tongue is a very interesting instrument. The tongues of cats and dogs are not made to speak languages or chant God’s names. But the human tongue is.

The human ear is also very fortunate, because it can receive what we call spiritual sound. The tongue has two functions, and the ear has two functions. The tongue speaks and tastes. We all like to eat tasty things, and in a little while we will invite you to taste wonderful food called Krishna-prasāda—vegetarian food offered to Krishna.

The ear’s function is hearing, but also maintaining balance. And by hearing spiritual sound, we can regain our spiritual balance, learning to act in ways that will make us truly happy.

In modern times many people try to achieve happiness through things that don’t actually bring it. You have seen the Hare Krishna devotees here chanting Hare Krishna, and they are always happy. Why are they so happy? What are they doing—or not doing—that they are always joyful?

The devotees of Krishna follow certain strict principles. They are strict vegetarians: we don’t eat meat, fish, or eggs. Another principle is that we don’t take any intoxicants or drugs. We don’t even drink tea or coffee.

“How is that possible? Why?”
Because we have a higher, spiritual taste and don’t need those things.

We also avoid gambling—Lotto, Toto, Totolotek. What is it? It’s trying to get something for nothing. The result is that we drift away from the path of truth. Nowadays people are generally not very truthful.

And the fourth principle we follow is refraining from sex before marriage and outside marriage. Most people consider sex the greatest pleasure in this world. But that is because they don’t know the higher pleasure of Krishna consciousness.

Let’s go back to the first principle—not eating meat. What is the value, what is the purpose? Krishna explains that we are the ātma, the soul, which means a person. Usually we have no problem accepting other humans as persons, but in some strange way, here in the West, it is often assumed that animals have no soul.

But animals move. Many of you have a dog, cat, or guinea pig at home. Your animal moves, makes many sounds, expresses emotions such as happiness or fear. And don’t you sometimes talk to your dog?

“Spot, nice to see you! Spot, stop it!”

You speak to the dog. Why? Because the dog is a person.

Suppose a wife says to her husband:
“You know, I’m tired, I’m not going shopping. What shall we eat for dinner tonight? There’s nothing in the fridge.”
“All right, let’s use our Spot. We’ll take a knife, kill him, cut him up and fry him.”

Would you do that? Of course not. So if we don’t want to do that to our pet, why allow it to be done to any other animal?

No—we understand, based on the revealed scriptures of the world, that all creatures are children of God. We cannot create life; so how can we take life? Taking life is considered a crime, and where there is crime there must be punishment.

I mentioned earlier the law of karma—action and reaction. If we, just to satisfy the tongue, kill or cause others to kill, we must suffer for it. If you kill a cow, in your next life you may become a cow, and the cow you killed may be born as a human and kill you. And not just once, but life after life.

We may or may not believe it, but if we carefully analyze what Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gītā, we see that it makes sense. We avoid killing animals; therefore we are vegetarians. In this way, by following these principles, we free ourselves from the burden of sin and naturally become happy.

Krishna encourages us to chant the names Hare Krishna. And that’s why we are here: we want to invite you to chant as well.

Many of you have already chanted with us when we were on the beach. Now we’d like to ask you to chant again together with us and experience a bit of that higher, spiritual pleasure.

Yesterday evening we had a festival in Ustka and people chanted with us for a long time. It was already eleven at night and the rock band was supposed to finish, but everyone said:
“No, don’t stop! Let’s keep chanting! This is wonderful, we like this Hare Krishna chanting—we don’t know why, but it’s something special.”

And we would like you to experience that as well.

You might not fully understand why this chanting brings so much happiness. If you want to learn more, we encourage you to look into the books we have here. On our book table you’ll find the Bhagavad-gītā. You can take a look and see that it contains 700 verses—and today we spoke about just one of them. Seven hundred verses filled with profound wisdom that you can practically apply in your life.

We also have other books written by our spiritual master, Śrīla Prabhupāda, who very carefully translated them from Sanskrit into English, and then they were translated into Polish. I would like you to look at these books, then chant with us, and finally join us for the vegetarian feast.

And while you’re tasting these vegetarian dishes, we invite you to ask questions about anything we’ve said or done tonight. You can ask at the book table or speak with the devotees among the audience.

Would you like to chant? (Audience: Yes.)
I think most of you already know the Hare Krishna mahā-mantra, so you’ll have no difficulty repeating it. Please repeat after me:

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare.

Quite good, but I think we can do it with a little more enthusiasm. Is that possible? (Audience: Yes.)
Let’s try again:

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna…

Very good.