What would Kṛṣṇa be more pleased with? The cook who is thinking, “Okay, I could cook it this way or I could do that, that would be nicer for Kṛṣṇa,” or the one who is thinking, “I got to surrender, I hate this cooking, I got to surrender.”

Generally, most places, most authorities do engage people in proper activities, though they as persons may be hard to deal with, so as long as that is there, then it is an opportunity to develop humility, tolerance, forgiveness.

Kṛṣṇa is always saying, ‘Perform your duty,’ because then there is a relationship. But otherwise, [Arjuna] is leaving the battle out of fear of loss. It seems very nice that he is going and giving up, and compassion, and going to the forest, but it is actually fear of loss.

Prabhupāda doesn’t go, ‘Oh, a bunch of dirty hippies, what can we do?’ No, he sees that they have caught this aspect of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, therefore then he cultivates. That is why he could do it and his Godbrothers couldn’t.

Without faith you cannot move forward. But because we are coming from a faithless background, therefore breaking of faith is normal. Dogs bark and mundaners break faith.

There are so many ślokas that prove that Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. So what is so hidden in the Veda?

Unless there is faith in Guru and Vaiṣṇavas, it can’t function. Because fault is easy to find. Anyone can find fault in the moon, but no poet does that. Means, if someone sits around and criticizes the Moon, what cultured person will take that person seriously?

Until you can go beyond justice, you can’t get out of the material world. Because justice means profit and loss, gain and and safety, that’s what justice is for. Justice is to maintain the principle of gain and safety. But it’s not spiritual, unless it is connected to Kṛṣṇa.

Prahlāda knows, ‘He will protect me, no matter what. Even if He doesn’t protect me, what does it matter? I will go back to Him, I will always be with Him.’

The neophyte thinks self-centered, because they feel themselves are important. Therefore the Guru’s importance is there because the Guru is connected to me. So the neophytes tend to fight over the importance of who is serving their Guru. Because I am serving my Guru, the whole world stops and everybody should understand that.

When all five – cows, brāhmanas, women, children and old people – are taken together as important, that is called human. If you just take one of them and make an issue out of that, that is a mundane social-political position, that’s all.

Video lecture series on the Mahābhārata by Bhaktivedānta Academy Courses