Hari Kirtana Dāsa: I have another question. Devotees often argue that, "na me bhakta pranaśyati", that my devotees never perish and that devotees are generally practicing devotional services like Sravanam, kirtanam, smaranam, well in the city. So what is the need, really, to build villages and shift there? People's lifespan as it is, is very short. How to defeat this argument?
Bhakti Raghava Swami: Well, śravanam, kirtanam, yes... but who is hearing Srila Prabhupãda's instructions to return to the villages?
This is the answer. *We are engaging in chanting, we are engaging in hearing, but, what is the quality. of our chanting? What is the quality of our hearing?* When the Founder Acarya of our society makes a statement that fifty percent of his work is not done, *what are we doing sitting around, doing so-called hearing and chanting?*
We should be hearing not only selected instructions from Srila Prabhupada. It is a fact, of course, that one can become realized simply by any of these activities of devotional service. *But hearing is the most important, and if we do not hear those important instructions by Srila Prabhupada we are going to miss out. This is, I would say, a very crucial instruction, especially in the present context, with the modern world falling apart, with the suffering of people and animals-especially of cows. Atrocities, that we are not aware of, are being committed every single day... And we are not aware! It means that we are not hearing. We are not attentive, and we can say that in this way we are disobeying the orders of guru and committing năma-aparadha, the third offense, disobeying the orders of the spiritual master.*
So this opens a whole different matter: why do we have so many problems in our society, individually, collectively, among ourselves in relationships? Well, we have to come back to these basic things. Until we do that, in all likelihood our problems will not be resolved. There are people who are not even devotees who understand some of these things better than we do!