Real problem is repeated birth and death; solution is redirecting attachment from matter to Krishna.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
Lecture — February 24, 1972, Calcutta 720224LE-CALCUTTA [28:10 Minutes] Lecture_720224LE-CALCUTTA Prabhupāda: ...identified with this material body. This is material life. Actually, I am spirit soul. I am not matter.
Everyone can understand it, because the theory that living condition is developed under certain material condition. Just like we see sometimes that one germ is coming out the stool. So people who are less intelligent, they say that the matter is producing a living being. There is another instance, vṛścika-taṇḍula-nyāya [nyāya-śāstra]. Sometimes we see the scorpion is coming out from a heap of rice.
So we are thinking that the rice is giving, generating, a life, and that is not fact. The fact is that the scorpions, they lay down eggs within the rice, and by the fermentation of the rice it..., a small scorpion come out. So matter is not the cause of generating life. That's not a fact. Actually the living entity develops his body.
Just like when there is sex intercourse, man and woman, the secretion mixes together; it becomes emulsified within the womb, and if the circumstances is favorable, then a living entity takes shelter of the secretion and the body develops. This is science. Not that the secretion itself in..., generating the body, generating the life. No. karmaṇā daiva-netreṇa jantur dehopapattaye [SB 3.31.1] According to our karma, we are observed about our karmas, or activities, by superior intelligence.
So we act sinfully or piously, and according to that, our action, the resultant body is offered by the material nature. prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā kartāham iti manyate [Bg. 3.27] We are under the grip of the laws of material nature, and according to our karma we are getting different types of body and transmigrating from one body to another. And then once we take birth, we live for some time, we grow the body, then we produce some by-products, then it, the body, dwindles, and at last it vanishes. It vanishes means you accept another body. Again the body is growing, the body is staying, body is producing by-product, again dwindling and again vanishing.
This is going on. Bhūtvā bhūtvā pralīyate [Bg. 8.19]. So this is our problem. But our brain is so dull that we do not touch the real problem. We are very much busy with the temporary problem.
Just like when there is disease, it is a problem. But we do not try to understand that as soon as I get a body, disease must be there. I have already accepted all these problems, janma-mṛtyu-jarā-vyādhi, as soon as I have agreed to accept a material body. That is my real problem.