Prabhupāda: So if the monarch becomes ideal, it will be very nice.
David Wynne: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: There is still a feeling... In all other countries, everyone thinks, "I can become the leader. I can become president." "I can become prime minister." But in this country, everyone still must think, "I cannot become the king. I cannot become the queen." The king is something higher.
David Wynne: I'm making also the new coins for this country, and they were thinking of leaving off the words "Fin def," which means in Latin "Defender of the faith." And I refused to do it if they left that off the coin. Because it's the most important. It means she's, it acknowledges that she is the, although it's only a tradition, but she's the defender of the faith of the people. And they were going... They said, "Oh, this is just now archaism." But I got them to keep it in. (pause) What I was going to ask was to praise, I feel, and I may be wrong... I was going to ask you. When I make a piece of sculpture of... The other day, I made two dancing figures. They were just a boy and a girl dancing. But I felt that this was praising God because these were as God, I tried to make them, as God had made them, and in joy and simple, but happy. And is this, is this presumptuous, or is this right, to try to praise the creation by making sculpture?
Prabhupāda: Oh yes.
David Wynne: That's all right.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
David Wynne: Because one sometimes feels that one isn't, doesn't know enough about it to do this, you know.
Prabhupāda: Or better than that is to praise the Creator.
Devotee: This sculpting is such a nice art. You're very fortunate to have such a skill.
Prabhupāda: You can... (Prabhupāda is eating) Horrible. ...carve so many pastimes of God, Kṛṣṇa's. In India, the sculptor used to do like that.
Haṁsadūta: Everywhere, all over the world, art's business was to make scenes of..., spiritual scenes.
David Wynne: There's no great art that isn't religious in the world, that isn't to do about God. Because art about man is already debased, isn't it. Yes, must be. But I feel that if one even me, even people like me, the ordinary people making ordinary things, if they're, if it is praising nature... Because nature's an aspect of God, isn't it.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
David Wynne: And a pure one. Not, not spoiled. Anyway, that's what I tell myself. (laughs) What I mean is, if one makes a bird, if it has the feeling that because Kṛṣṇa breathed life into it and made it, and if one can reproduce this and get the spirit of it, that's praising...
Prabhupāda: Yes, that is also indirect praising. But you can praise Him directly.