Honolulu, 20 May, 1976
My dear Dr. Wolf,
Please accept my greetings. I beg to inform you that I am in due receipt of your letter dated May 16, 1976, and I have noted the contents with care. Why should our temples support or denounce Hitler. If somebody says something in this connection it must simply be some sentiment. We have nothing to do with politics. It is after all sentiment, you say something and I say something.
In this material world, to say this is good and this is bad has no value. To us, everything material is bad as it is lacking Krsna Consciousness.
Just like wet stool and dry stool. Stool is stool, but somebody is saying that wet stool is better than dry stool. What is this
good and bad? The top side of some stool is dry and the bottom side is wet, but anyway that you take it, the material world is stool, and it must be given up. Therefore, we are trying to get out of the material world and go back to Home, Back to Godhead.
But, of course, everyone has got some sentiment. If you want that my sentiment be decried, what is the wrong if I say that your sentiment should be decried. In this world of duality, this is good and this is bad has no meaning, it is called manodharma, mental concoction. However, the real truth is that Krsna says that: duhkhalayam asasvatam [Bg. 8.15], the world is a place of misery wherein repeated birth and death take place. Now this is good misery or bad misery?
Misery is misery; and you have to die, good die or bad die? So to us everything material, without connection to Krsna, is to be rejected as stool, otherwise we will waste valuable time needed to solve the real problems of life, namely, birth, death, disease, and old-age.
I hope that this meets you in good health.
Your ever well-wisher,
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami