Real problems are birth, death, and disease—solved only through guru's mercy and Krishna consciousness.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
Prabhupāda: So first of all I must thank you all for bringing me in this new temple, because when I first came, my ambition was to start temple here in New York, and I was seeking the opportunity living in the Seventy-second Street. There was a house, very small house, one thousand feet space—25 feet by 100 feet. So they wanted $100,000. So I wrote one rich friend in India, industrialist—perhaps you know him, that Kanpurwalla, Padampat Singh, Singhania.
So he agreed to pay me, but the government did not allow. The Indian government did not allow to transfer money from India to here. Then I approached the, what is that, Salvation Army, the chief man. I offered him that "You are spending money in India.
So I have got a friend, he'll pay you, you pay me here." So he asked me, "What is the rate you want to pay me?" So I told him, "The present rate is five dollars..., five rupees per dollar." So he remained silent. That means he wanted more. In this way I had no place. What to speak of temple, I had no residential place even.
So in that condition I was thinking of returning back to India. So the shipping company I was, practically every week, I was going. So it is a long history that I came here with determination to start a temple in New York first, but at that time, ten years before, in 1965, it was not possible. But by the grace of Kṛṣṇa, by the grace of my Guru Mahārāja, you have got this place. So I must thank you very much for organizing this temple.
Actually, in this line of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, two things are very important. Caitanya Mahāprabhu said in His teaching to Rūpa Gosvāmī, ei rūpe brahmāṇḍa bhramite kona bhāgyavān jīva guru-kṛṣṇa-kṛpāya pāya bhakti-latā-bīja [Cc Madhya 19.151] We are loitering throughout the whole universe. This is conditional stage of our materialistic life, and we are simply suffering. People are kept into ignorance without knowing the aim of life, how we are suffering in this materialistic way of life.
They are so dull-brained that Kṛṣṇa says personally that here the real problem is janma-mṛtyu-jarā-vyādhi duḥkha-doṣānudarśanam [Bg 13.9]. You are simply busy with some petty problems. And they are not problems. Real problem is janma-mṛtyu-jarā-vyādhi.
Why...? We are eternal living entities. Why we should be subjected to birth, death, old age and disease repeatedly? This is real problem. Unfortunately there is no such education all over the world to deal with the real problem.