The Progress of the Asses

Srila Prabhupada: Everyone is suffering here in the material world, and scientific improvement means that the scientists are creating a situation of further suffering. That’s all.

They are not making improvements. Bhaktivinoda Thakura[6] confirms this by saying, moha janamiya, anitya samsare, jivake karaye gadha: “By so-called scientific improvements, the scientist has become an ass.” Moreover, he is becoming a better and better ass, and nothing more. Suppose that by working very hard like an ass, a person builds a skyscraper. He may engage in a lifelong labor for this, but ultimately he must die. He cannot stay; he will be kicked out of his skyscraper, because material life is impermanent.

Scientists are constantly doing research, and if you ask them what they are doing, they say, “Oh, it is for the next generation, for the future.” But I say, “What about you? What about your skyscraper? If in your next life you are going to be a tree, what will you do with your next generation then?” But he is an ass. He does not know that he is going to stand before his skyscraper for ten thousand years. And what about the next generation? If there is no petrol, what will the next generation do? And how will the next generation help him if he is going to be a cat, a dog or a tree?

The scientists—and everyone else—should endeavor to achieve freedom from the repetition of birth and death. But instead, everyone is becoming more and more entangled in the cycle of birth and death. Bhave ’smin klisyamananam avidya-kama-karmabhih. This is a quotation from Srimad-Bhagavatam (1.8.35). Here in one line the whole material existence is explained. This is literature.

This one line is worth thousands of years of research work. It explains how the living entity is taking birth in this world, where he comes from, where he is going, what his activities should be, and many other essential things. The words bhave ’smin klisyamananam refer to the struggle for existence. Why does this struggle exist? Because of avidya, ignorance. And what is the nature of that ignorance? Kama-karmabhih, being forced to work simply for the senses, or in other words, entanglement in material sense gratification.

Student: So, is it true that modern scientific research increases the demands of the body because the scientist is ultimately working to gratify his senses?

Srila Prabhupada: Yes.

[from Life Comes From Life]