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<\/center><\/p>\nBy Ravindra Svarupa dasa<\/strong><\/p>\n Any student of Srila Prabhupada<\/a> will at once recognize the phrase \u201cplain living and high thinking.\u201d It occurred frequently and memorably in his discourse. It functioned as kind of motto or slogan to epitomize Prabhupada\u2019s vision of a natural spiritual culture, an alternative to our modern, \u201csoul-killing\u201d industrial civilization.<\/p>\n Prabhupada had made use of the phrase even before he journeyed to America in 1965. In an essay (published much later by the BBT as the second chapter of the booklet Message of Godhead<\/em>), Prabhupada had written that people nowadays are interested only in<\/p>\n behavior like eating, sleeping, defending, and gratifying the senses. The material scientists\u2014the modern quasi priests who invoke such material activities\u2014invent many objects to gratify the material senses such as the eye, ear, nose, and tongue and ultimately the mind, and there results a field of unnecessary competition for enhancement of such material happiness, which leads the whole world into the whirlpool of uncalled-for clashes. The net result is scarcity all over the world, so much so that even the bare necessities of life, namely food and clothing, become objects of contention and control. And so arise all sorts of obstacles to the traditional, God-given life of plain living and high thinking.<\/p>\n After arriving in America, Prabhupada quickly made known his desire to established self-sufficient rural communities to demonstrate this \u201cGod-given\u201d style of life in practice. For example, he wrote in a letter to his disciple Hayagriva dasa in June, 1968:<\/p>\n So, if you seriously want to convert this new spot [in West Virginia] as New Vrindaban, I shall advise you not to make it very much modernized. But as you are American boys, you must make it just suitable to your minimum needs. Not to make it too much luxurious as generally Europeans and Americans are accustomed. Better to live there without modern amenities. But to live a natural healthy life for executing Krishna Consciousness. It may be an ideal village where the residents will have plain living and high thinking. For plain living we must have sufficient land for raising crops and pasturing grounds for the cows. If there is sufficient grains and production of milk, then the whole economic problem is solved. You do not require any machines, cinema, hotels, slaughterhouses, brothels, nightclubs\u2014all these modern amenities.<\/p>\n Hayagriva himself, a one-time college English instructor, recognized the phrase \u201cplain living and high thinking,\u201d and wrote in an April, 1967, issue of Back to Godhead<\/em>, \u201cThoreau made Emerson<\/a>\u2019s injunction of \u2018plain living and high thinking\u2019 famous when he set out to live outside Boston on an isolated tract of Emerson\u2019s land surrounding Walden Pond.\u201d<\/p>\n It is true that the expression\u2014and its use to signify a return to a simpler, more innocent way of life\u2014had its origin in English letters. However, Emerson himself had appropriated his \u201cinjunction\u201d from an earlier source, a sonnet by William Wordsworth. The eminent English poet<\/a> had composed the poem the year before Emerson\u2019s birth, as its very title shows: \u201cWritten in London, September, 1802.\u201d<\/p>\n It is likely that Prabhupada knew Wordsworth\u2019s poem at first hand. Prabhupada had, on his own telling<\/a>, received a thorough education in English literature at Scottish Churches College<\/a> in Calcutta. His professor, J.C. Scrimgeour, has been remembered<\/a> as one who did much to spread appreciation for Shakespeare in Bengal.<\/p>\n Prabhupada had learned well: I heard a devotee recall how Prabhupada had once recited the entire plot<\/a> of Merchant of Venice<\/em> to his astonished young American disciples. Prabhupada had made an allusion to the play, and he was taken aback when no one seemed familiar with it. Hence, his Shakespeare lesson. We can see that Prabhupada had been a good student with a good teacher. So it seems likely he had read Wordsworth\u2019s poem in college, and its theme, as well as its memorable phrase, would have stayed with him.<\/p>\n Here is the poem in question (an Italian sonnet<\/a>):<\/p>\n Written in London, September, 1802<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n O Friend! I know not which way I must look It will be good to read it a few times. (Here the word \u201cexpense\u201d means \u201cwasteful expenditure, extravagance,\u201d and the word \u201chomely,\u201d \u201cunsophisticated, simple.\u201d)<\/p>\n As we see, the poem is a lament: \u201cPlain living and high thinking are no more.\u201d Wordsworth was writing near the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and as this and others of his poems show, he was horrified by the emerging civilization of money and machinery. Here he morns the way the ferocious dynamo of industrial civilization is uprooting England\u2019s traditional agrarian way of life, and along with it \u201cour peace, our fearful innocence,\/ And pure religion breathing household laws.\u201d The phrase \u201cfearful innocence\u201d nicely suggests how respect for divine law (\u201cfearful\u201d) comes from and upholds an unsophisticated purity. The word \u201cbreathing\u201d vividly invokes the ease and naturalness with which religion produces and pervades even the humblest of domestic arrangement.<\/p>\n Now from our vantage of two more centuries, we can see that Wordsworth was truly prophetic. (In fact, the protest against what is known as \u201cadvanced civilization\u201d was an enduring theme of the Romanticism<\/a> of which Wordsworth was an early participant.) It is no wonder, then, that Prabhupada has embraced the poet\u2019s fine phrase.<\/p>\n To be sure, Prabhupada has his own inimitable way of excoriating modern life\u2014for example, in this purport to Shrimad Bhagavatam 1.8.40<\/a><\/p>\n Human prosperity flourishes by natural gifts and not by gigantic industrial enterprises. The gigantic industrial enterprises are products of a godless civilization, and they cause the destruction of the noble aims of human life. The more we go on increasing such troublesome industries to squeeze out the vital energy of the human being, the more there will be unrest and dissatisfaction of the people in general, although a few only can live lavishly by exploitation.<\/p>\n\u201cPlain Living and High Thinking\u201d: An English Lesson with Srila Prabhupada<\/a><\/h2>\n
\nFor comfort, being, as I am, opprest,
\nTo think that now our life is only drest
\nFor show; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook,
\nOr groom!\u2014We must run glittering like a brook
\nIn the open sunshine, or we are unblest:
\nThe wealthiest man among us is the best:
\nNo grandeur now in nature or in book
\nDelights us. Rapine, avarice, expense,
\nThis is idolatry; and these we adore:
\nPlain living and high thinking are no more:
\nThe homely beauty of the good old cause
\nIs gone; our peace, our fearful innocence,
\nAnd pure religion breathing household laws.<\/p>\n
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By Ravindra Svarupa dasa<\/strong><\/p>\n