Prabhupada 0776 - 'What is the wrong if I become a dog?' This Is The Result of Education



Lecture on SB 6.1.12 -- Los Angeles, June 25, 1975

So it is recommended that adhayo vyādhayaḥ. There are three kinds of miserable condition—everyone, not for a particular person—adhyātmika, adhibhautika, adhidaivika. And as soon as you get this material body, you will have to suffer. So if you want to stop this suffering, then you must live regulative life. Regulative life is recommended in the next verse:

tapasā brahmacaryeṇa
śamena ca damena ca
tyāgena satya-śaucābhyaṁ
yamena niyamena vā
(SB 6.1.13)

These are prescribed duties of human being. What are the prescribed duties? The first prescribed duty is tapasā: they must execute austerities. This is human life. That is everywhere recommended. Ṛṣabhadeva also recommended, tapo divyaṁ putrakā yena śuddhyed sattva: "My dear boys, don't live like cats and dogs and hogs," He advised. Nāyaṁ deho deha-bhājāṁ nṛloke kaṣṭān kāmān arhate viḍ-bhujāṁ ye (SB 5.5.1). "If I don't work hard, how shall I satisfy my senses? At night I must have this intoxication, this woman, this club, this... If I don't work hard, how shall I get this enjoyment?"

So Ṛṣabhadeva says, "This kind of enjoyment is available to the hogs. It is not very good type of enjoyment, sense gratification." Nāyaṁ deho deha-bhājāṁ nṛloke kaṣṭān kāmān arhate viḍ-bhujāṁ ye. Viḍ-bhujām means the stool-eater. So they are also enjoying by eating stool and having sex without any discrimination, don't care for mother, sister. So this kind of sense gratifications civilization is there amongst the dogs and hogs, but human life is not meant for that. Human life is meant for tapasya, austerity, so that human life you can stop your repetition of birth and death and come to your eternal life, and enjoy blissful eternal life of knowledge. That is the aim of life. Not that "Never mind." The education is that a university student, and if he is said, if he is informed, that "If you live irresponsibly, then you may become dog next life," so they say, "What is the wrong if I become a dog?" (laughter) This is the result of education. He doesn't care. He is thinking, "If I get the life of a dog, I will have no restriction of my sex life on the street." That's it. He is thinking that is advancement. "If now there is restriction, now unrestrictedly if I get sex life on the street..." And they are coming gradually, that advancement.

So this is the position. So they do not believe in the next life, and what to speak of cats' and dogs' life. "Never mind." Everything is very dark. Therefore, unless we take to Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, the human civilization is doomed. It is not human civilization. Human civilization is responsible life. Actually, we are being educated, we go to school, to college, to become responsible man. So this responsibility should be, "How to stop this repetition of birth." In many places this is advised. And that is the only aim of human life. Punar-janma-jayāya.