Last night in the television, that gentleman was talking with me. He said that "We have got good brain and we are utilizing it. So that is better for our advancement of happiness. Why Hare Krsna?" His idea was, he plainly told me, that "If Hare Krisna is so powerful, then why India is so poverty-stricken and they are suffering?" So I replied that "Do you think that your problems are solved because you have got a dozens or a hundreds dozens of skyscrapers? That problem is here also. It is not that because America is materially advanced, 'Oh, they are free from all sufferings.' Why there are so many hospitals? Why there are so many lunatic asylums? Why this confusion of the hippies? Why young boys are always disturbed for the draft board? So how can you say the Americans are free from all sufferings?" This is ignorance. The sufferings are there, here or India or hell or heaven - anywhere within this material world - there is suffering. But people are so foolish that simply having a nice motorcar or a skyscraper building, he thinks that "My all problems are solved." He does not know that this life is a flash only. I am eternal.
Lecture on Srimad-Bhagavatam 6.1.7, San Francisco, March 1, 1967