Prabhupada: We are sometimes charged “escaping.” What is the charge?

Pradyumna: We are escaping from reality.

Prabhupada: There is the question. [devotees laugh] But their reality is dog’s race, and our reality is to advance in self-realization, Krsna consciousness. There is difference. Therefore karmis have been described as mudha, asses. Asses. And asses, why the example is given to the asses? Because the ass works very hard. It loads on the back tons of cloth of the washerman, and the washerman in return gives him little morsel of grass, and he stands at the door of the washerman, eats the grass, again loading. But he has no sense that “If I go out of these clutches of washerman I can get grass anywhere. Why I am loading so much?” The karmis are like that. They’re busy in the office, very busy. If you want to see him, “I am very busy now.” [laughter] So what is your result of busy? “Now, I take two pieces of toast and one cup of tea. That’s all.” [laughter] And for this purpose you are so busy? He does not know why he’s busy. Because in the books he’s finding, “Now, the balance was one thousand million dollars, now it has become two thousand,” that his satisfaction. But he will eat two pieces of bread and one cup of tea when it was one million dollars, when it was two million dollars. But still he’ll work hard. This is called karmi. Asses. Work like asses, without any aim of life. This is the asses. Mudha.

(June 29, 1976, New Vrindavan)