Are poor people responsible for their poverty?
Answer Podcast
.Are poor people themselves responsible for their poverty? I won’t make that general statement it is possible we can say from the karmic point of view everybody is responsible for the situation that they are in but we are not meant to judge people based on their past karma you know if say if a thief comes and robs someone and then that person goes to a king and says I have been robbed the king says it was your past karma well it may be but the important thing is what is the king’s dharma the king’s dharma is to protect the citizens so similarly we are not meant to judge people by their past karma we are meant to act based on what is our present dharma that way if you start taking past karma if a baby is crying should the mother think she is crying because of her past karma you know we will become heartless.
It is not like that so the point is that sometimes you know people people may be in difficult situations because of the circumstances which are beyond their control. Sometimes people are in difficulties because of the bad choices they made in this life as I said some people may be because of some people may be may have bad habits because of which they are in poverty so there are two extremes one is sentimentality and the other is heartlessness sentimentality means that we think oh somebody is starving just let me give let me give them some money let me give them some things sometimes we may make things worse you know an alcoholic who is starving we give them money they may take alcohol instead of food and they may go home and do further domestic abuse isn’t it so sentimentality is not good but heartlessness they are suffering because of their own karma they are only responsible for it that is also not good. No we want to help but we want to help in a way that is actually helpful so yeah so we if the attitude that everybody is responsible for their own situation if that makes us heartless then that is unhealthy but if that makes us think that ok let me try to help in a sustainable way in a way that actually helps that person then that is very good