Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: The last few days, as guests have been coming to greet you, practically everyone who you've had a conversation with has brought up this question, What is good and what is bad, what is sinful activity?
Prabhupāda: Hm? What?
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: It seems that people have great difficulty discriminating today between good and bad.
Prabhupāda: So what is your answer?
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: You've answered very nicely that whatever the authority says is good is good, and whatever the supreme authority says is bad is bad. Independently of what our own way of thinking is, we have to ultimately answer to the supreme authority. Even that lady, she gave the example that in society certain things are good, but they've bent the law, that things which were once bad, they are now accepted as good. So you explained that whatever the authority says is good is good. So the only difference I can see is that the goodness and the badness that Kṛṣṇa has defined are eternal.
Prabhupāda: Bad is this material world, and good is spiritual world. In the material world the discrimination of good and bad is mental concoction.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Mano-dharma.
Prabhupāda: Dvaite bhadrābhadra sakalī samāna.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: So pious activity is that activity which brings us to the spiritual world, and impious activity, activity which roots us here? Or are even the pious activities of the material world considered bad?
Prabhupāda: Pious activities or impious activities in this material world, they are the same.
Yadubara: Does one have a better chance of reaching to the spiritual platform if he is performing pious activities?
Prabhupāda: Yes. Chance, not sure. Just like charity is pious activities, but if the charity by chance it is given to a Vaiṣṇava, then it becomes a lift for spiritual. And charity given for opening hospital, it is the same, impious activity. People are inclined to do something pious just like opening a school, opening hospital, and if you go to such person, that "We want to open a temple," they will not give. "Ah, there are many temples." As if there is no school. There are many schools; still, they will open a school and hospital. But if you go for some charity for opening a temple, "Oh, there are so many temples."