"We are simply requesting people that 'You don't waste your valuable time.' Our time is so valuable. It has been calculated by Cāṇakya Paṇḍita. Cāṇakya Paṇḍita was a great politician, prime minister, in India, about three thousand years ago, when Candragupta was the emperor. It was about contemporary to Alexander the Great in the Greek history. So Cāṇakya Paṇḍita was there. He was a great diplomat. He has calculated the value of our life. He says... It is very practical. Anyone can calculate.
āyuṣaḥ kṣaṇa eko 'pi
na labhya svarṇa-koṭibhiḥ
na cet nirarthakaṁ (nītiḥ)
kā ca hānis tato 'dhikā
He says, āyuṣaḥ kṣaṇa. Even one moment of your life cannot be returned even you spend millions of dollars. One of our friends in India, he was at that time fifty-four years old, but he was dying. So he was requesting the doctor, 'Doctor, kindly give some medicine so that I may live for another four years. I have got so many things to do.' Just see, the crazy fellow. You see. This is called ignorance. He does not know that 'What to call..., what to say of four years, the doctor cannot give me four minutes prolongation of life.' When the life is ended, it is ended. Nobody can... Any medicine, any physical, physiological treatment will not help. That is not possible. You have got a duration of life, say, fifty years, sixty years, seventy years—a hundred years, utmost. You cannot increase it by paying money. What to speak of four years; you cannot increase four seconds. So just try to understand how much our life is valuable. A second of our life we cannot purchase by paying millions of dollars. And if that second is wasted without any utilization, then how much money we are losing. This is the calculation.
So our, this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is only to remind people that 'Please do not waste your time, valuable time, life. Utilize it. This is the opportunity to make a solution of all the problems of life.' "
(Srila Prabhupada Lecture, New York, July 26, 1971)
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