Srila Prabhupada had quite a revolutionary vision: grow your own food, make your own cloth. That's the point: If you grow your own food and produce your own cloth – these are the basic necessities – then you don't even need money.
Lecture on “Simple Life on Farm Communities” (Pula Farm, Croatia, 20 October 2000)
Everyone is controlled by the economic system, because you have to work and get money, and then you buy some food imported from South Africa, so many thousands of miles away. But you can become independent of the modern economic system; you grow your own food and produce your own cloth. Even the house, you can make from local ingredients.
Lecture on “Simple Life on Farm Communities” (Pula Farm, Croatia, 20 October 2000)
Actually you can live very simply. You don’t need so many things. Modern society, they have given the idea that you need so many things: unless you have twenty pairs of shoes you can’t survive. It’s not true. You don’t need so many things. You don’t need so many different clothes and you certainly don’t need TV.
Lecture on “Simple Life on Farm Communities” (Pula Farm, Croatia, 20 October 2000)
I often visit people’s homes and tell them, “Hey, you want to have a better family life? Then get rid of that thing in the corner [the TV].” And some people do it, and they say, “Actually, our family life is much better. Now we talk to each other. We never used to talk to each other, because we just used to watch TV.”
Lecture on “Simple Life on Farm Communities” (Pula Farm, Croatia, 20 October 2000)