The importance of reading: By Antaryami das
The purpose of this paper is to both establish the importance of the seva of reading Srila Prabhupada%u2019s books as well as understanding the essence of the message in Prabhupada%u2019s books which is the performance of devotional service, regardless of one%u2019s role or place in society.
Firstly I would like to present my own personal reading resume: I have read the Srila Prabhupada Lilamrta five times, the five-volume set of the unedited letters of Srila Prabhupada three times, the Bhagavad-Gita As It Is 45 times, all 12 cantos of the Srimad Bhagavatam 40 times, Sri Caitanya-caritamrita 40 times, Nectar of Devotion 30 times, the Ramayana three times, the Mahabharata three times, the Nectar of Instruction 25 times, Sri Isopanisad ten times, as well as a few other books by some of our recent writers in ISKCON.
Some time back one GBC and some VIPs said to me: %u201CAntaryami, why read the books so much? All you need is a computer and the Prabhupada Vedabase; %u201D My argument then and now is: the founder-acharya states in all of his books, conversations and letters that books are the basis and that we should read the books. I have personally found that computers are not reliable for searching data from the Prabhupada Vedabase. While computers do have a place in society, because they are designed by persons having the four defects, defective computers are the result.
