Gruesome facts of material life

Berlin homeless

Refugees, Berlin, 1945

Dear Praghosa,

I miss your company.

I am reading Gruesome Harvest. I now understand why I am so peculiar. I was severely traumatized as a child refugee, seeing my mother raped repeatedly by Russian soldiers, starving and having my brother die of typhoid fever due to having to eat garbage. Still, I accept it enthusiastically and gratefully as the mercy of Krishna to help me give up all hope of happiness or love, friendship and society in this horrible, weird world. Bhaktivinode Thakur has sung:

“Thy universe, O Supreme Lord, is a most weird abode
By the reactions of my actions I’m compelled to have rode
Thru the wildes of this universe I have beheld
Many mad and strange things I have felt…”

Reading this book, I thought everyone on this planet is a condemned homeless refugee on a long death march beginning with birth, ending with death in one way or another — constantly being whipped and kicked by lust, anger and greed, and harassed by adhyatmik, adhidaivik, adhibhautik miseries, embarrassed by having to fight for eating, sleeping, defending and sex in the hopeless and futile cycle of birth, growth, staying for some time, producing some by-products, dwindling and dying. Perpetually bewildered in the states of lust, anger and greed, lamentation, illusion and madness.

But only the devotee of Prabhupada can see and know this thoroughly. No one else can perceive these facts.

Please send some more gruesome facts of material life. Janma mrityu jara vyadi... always seeing the miseries of birth, death, old age and disease.

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