“I Have to Execute My Duty”

Prabhupada is discussing the real meaning of going to a sacred place in India. 

One should go to a sacred place in order to find some intelligent scholar in spiritual knowledge living there and make association with him.  Just like I … My residence is at Vrindavana.  So, at Vrindavana, there are many big scholars and saintly persons living.  So one should go to such holy places, not simply to take bath in the water.  One must be intelligent enough to find some spiritually advanced man living there and take instruction from him and be benefited by that.  If a man has no attraction for hearing from learned people there, he is considered to be an ass.  (He laughs.)  So, the whole civilization is moving like a civilization of cows and asses.  Everyone is identifying with the body … Yes, you want to speak?

Woman:  In the places known as secret places –

Prabhupada:  Sacred.  Yes. 

Woman:  Is it “sacred” places?

Prabhupada:  Yes.

Woman:  Isn’t it also a fact that there is more magnetism because of the meeting of saints and more advanced people?

Prabhupada:  Oh yes.  Certainly.  Certainly.  Therefore the place itself has got some magnetism.

Woman:  Yes, and when –

Prabhupada:  Just like at Vrindavana – that is practical.  Here I am now sitting in New York, the world’s greatest city, such a magnificent city, but my heart is always hankering after that Vrindavana.

Woman:  Yes.  (Laughs.) 

Prabhupada:  Yes, I am not happy here.

Woman:  Yes, I know. 

Prabhupada:  I shall be very happy to return to my Vrindavana, that sacred place, but then, ‘Why are you here?’  Because it is my duty.  I have brought some message for you people.  Because I have been ordered by my superior, my spiritual master:  “Whatever you have learned, you should go to the Western countries and you must distribute this knowledge.”  So, in spite of all my difficulties, all my inconveniences, I am here because I am obligated by duty.  If I go and sit down in Vrindavana, that would be good for my personal conveniences – I shall be very comfortable there and will have no anxiety, nothing of the sort, but I have taken all this risk in this old age because I am duty-bound.  I am duty-bound, so I have to execute my duty despite all my inconveniences.