Compassion

Srila Prabhupada: The law is cheating, medical science is cheating, and the government is cheating.

Top government officials are charged with taking bribes.

If the governor takes bribes and the constable takes bribes, then where is the good society? People elect the leader who promises them happiness.

But since that happiness is maya [or illusion], he can never deliver it, and society simply becomes filled with cheaters.

Since people are actually after this illusory happiness, however, they continue to elect such unscrupulous leaders time and time again.

The position of a Vaisnava[10] is to take compassion on all these ignorant people.

The great Vaisnava Prahlada Maharaja once prayed to the Lord, "My Lord, as far as I am concerned, I have no problems.

My consciousness is always absorbed in Your very powerful transcendental activities, and therefore I have understood things clearly.

But I am deeply concerned for these rascals who are engaged in activities for illusory happiness." A Vaisnava thinks only about how people can become happy.

He knows that they are vainly searching after something that will never come to be.

For fifty or sixty years people search after illusory happiness, but then they must die without completing the work and without knowing what will happen after death.

Actually, their position is like that of an animal, because an animal also does not know what happens to him after death.

The animal does not know the value of life, nor why he has come here.

By the influence of maya, he simply eats, sleeps, mates, defends and dies.

That's all.

Throughout their lives the ignorant animals--and the animalistic men--greatly endeavor to do these five things only: eat, sleep, mate, defend and die.

Therefore the business of a Vaisnava is to instruct people that God exists, that we are His servants, and that we can enjoy an eternally blissful life serving Him and developing our love for Him.