Keeping the Temple Clean

A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada · Vrindavan · 1976

Chapters

Prabhupāda: ...up and down. If we keep the temple clean, then our heart will be cleansed.

Cleansing the heart through service

This is the process. [break] ...should be engaged in flower business, in dress business, light and interesting to them.

Engaging women in temple activities

They should not be given any heavy work. Cooking, helping cooking, cutting the vegetables. [break] ...women should be engaged in something. That is wanted. [break] And to paint these panels also.

Haṁsadūta: Yes, outside.

Painting and decorating temple panels

So it will be painted. These decorations. Oh, the panels here?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Haṁsadūta: You mean the panels. Yes, inside and outside.

Prabhupāda: There are so many pictures.

Artist recruitment for temple projects

And what is that boy? Hari-śauri: Viṣṇu dāsa. He can do every panel in three days.

Haṁsadūta: I've written him that Prabhupāda suggested he might come and do it.

Prabhupāda: He knows the art, how to do it. [break] ...unique, American. What is this American? I could not reach.[?] [break] ...conditioner, to keep the air conditioner. There was [indistinct].

Critique of air conditioning installation

Haṁsadūta: In some temples which are built like this with a courtyard, they put a screen over the top so that the birds don't come in.

Managing birds and monkeys in courtyards

Can we do that, or is that because...

Prabhupāda: No, monkeys.

Haṁsadūta: Oh, for monkeys. It keeps the birds out, too. We have so many birds that come in. They always sleep in the tree, and they pass stool all over the place. Hari-śauri: Pigeons too. Yes, pigeons and small birds.

In the lamps they are, in the fans they are.

Prabhupāda: Pigeons will come. [laughs] They'll enter within.

Devotee: In the grills.

Haṁsadūta: Yes, but even here a screen can be put.

Maintenance of protective screens

Devotee: Every year we'll have to change the screen.

Haṁsadūta: It is too much endeavor.

Prabhupāda: "Much ado about nothing." [break] [indistinct] ...or not?

Akṣayānanda: Now I don't know. Previously they were... [end]