Why should we go to a temple when we can serve poor people or open hospitals?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Third question was that, why should we go to temple? We can serve poor people.
We can contribute to hospitals. Yes, definitely. We can serve poor people or contribute to or open hospitals.
But why do we have to put the two in competition? Why should God and devotion to God be seen as a competitor to serving poor people or opening hospitals? If at all we want to see it in competition, well, why not see it in competition with so many other things? When we go to watch a cricket match, when we go to watch a movie, if we are thinking that way, if all the money that is used by people to watch movies was used to feed the poor people, 25 generations of poor people from now to the future will be fed it. 25 generations. There is a revenue of the entertainment industry.
So the point is that we do so many activities in life. Why is it? And we don’t think about it that way. No, I’m not going to this movie.
I’ll go and feed the poor. So whenever people put a choice like this, why do you do this? Why don’t you do this? That choice is often simply an attempt at emotional manipulation. It’s emotional manipulation.
Why emotional manipulation? I mean, we’re putting this in front of this. No, you should not do this. You should do this.
But if the two are not compatible choices, two are not comparable, actually. The devotion is one part of our life. Social service is another part of our life.
The two are two different categorical activities. Both have their place in our life. Just as we don’t compare entertainment with social service, we shouldn’t compare social service with devotional service.
They all have their place in our life and they cannot be put in competition. Now, along with that, and more importantly, I would say that as far as social service is concerned, actually social service can be served the best by doing devotional service. Because why is social service necessary ultimately? Now, why are people poor? The poverty in this world is not because of shortage of resources.
It is because of mismanagement of resources. It is because, according to WHO statistics, there are 800 million people in the world who are undernourished. And there are a thousand, there are a billion people who are actually obese.
That means more number of people who are suffering because of having too little food are the number of people who are suffering because of having too much food. What this means is, not only that, actually, another statistic I read, I don’t remember but it is actually the amount of money that only Americans spend on losing weight. That money is enough to feed all the hungry people of the whole world.
So, the problem here is that the problem is not of shortage. The problem is of the uncontrolled mind and senses. The problem is of greed.
So, when we start practicing bhakti, we purify ourselves of greed. This is from the point of view of people. They become more charitable.
They become more, themselves, more self-controlled. They become more charitable. They will help the needy as long as people are greedy, possessive.
They will just want to enjoy things themselves and will not share things with others. That’s one aspect of it. So, this is from the point of view of viewers.
So, spiritual practices will make people more charitable. More they want them to give. Similarly, spiritual practices will also make people more capable of receiving.
Many times, if we give food to a beggar, they don’t want food. They want money, cars. They want to smoke.
They want to drink. They want drugs. So, before I was introduced to bhakti, I was into social service.
I used to go to, while I was an engineering student, I used to go to nearby slums and I used to teach, offer free tuitions as a part of an organization to the children of the slums. I had a lot of faith in the power of education, in opening new doors for people. And I noticed that many of these children, their parents were alcoholics.
Their fathers especially were alcoholics. And there was domestic violence. And their family life was dysfunctional.
So, at that time, this was a common plight. So, our organization decided to work towards campaigning against alcohol. So, we arranged for some talks for their parents and offered some support systems.
And one village, a small village, which we had adopted, actually became free from alcohol. It was like a big victory for our movement. But then, one of my friends, he used to go to that village.
One day, one evening, he came back and he looked shattered. He told me that, actually, the previous weekend, there had been elections. And the local panchayat candidate, the local political candidate, in order to get elected, had brought three truckloads of free alcohol for all the villagers.
And not only the fathers, but even their children had taken alcohol. So, at that time, it struck me that, you know, what people need is not just more options open for them. They also need the inner power to choose the right options.
So, material education can open more options for them. But, I could see, when I was in the hostel, I was in one of the top engineering colleges. But there also, I could see that, there are so many students who used to get into alcoholism, who would get into drugs.
And they were talented, but their talent was going waste because of that. So, here, through education, so many doors had been opened for them, but they were still, they were not walking through those doors, because they did not have the inner power to make right choices. So, when I started practicing bhakti, I started sharing the principles of bhakti with others, I could see several of my friends, they were getting into bad habits and just gave it all up.
So, actually, if people who are deprived, they become spiritual, then they will be able to better use the resources that they have. They have little money, they’ll be able to use it. They have a lot of money, they’ll be able to use it better.
So, that way, it is not that when we are doing devotional service, we are neglecting social service. Rather, we are doing social service in the most foundational way, by purifying people of impurities. The wealthy become purified of greed, they become more charitable.
The poor become purified of self-destructive habits, by which they can use what they are given in a more positive way. Other, without a spiritual foundation, no, much of social service, unfortunately, becomes like pouring water in a leaking tank. And pouring water, it’s all leaking out.
Sometimes the social service can work out to be counterproductive also. There are countries, there are welfare states, and if people are unemployed, and they go to the government and get the dole from the government, and they use it to go high on drugs. So, the taxpayer’s money is used not to feed the hungry, it gets used to perpetuate the addictions of the addicted.
So, without a spiritual vision for life, material social work can often not only not achieve the positive result, it can actually lead to a more harmful result. So, that’s why when we are practicing bhakti, what we are doing is addressing the problem at the root. One of America’s prominent thinkers, Henry David Thoreau, he said that, one hacking at the root of the tree of evil is superior to a thousand hackings at the shoots of that tree.
Can cut a thousand branches, they will all come again. But if you uproot the tree, it will go away. So, like that, the tree of evil, the problems that are there in life.
Now, if somebody is hungry, we give them food. Somebody is sick, we give them medicine. These are good activities, but these will keep recurring.
They’ll keep recurring. But if we can empower people to bring out their better side, to become more self-controlled, to become more charitable, then that is like hacking at the root of the tree. That is the most sustainable solution.
That is the most transformational solution. So, in that sense, sharing the bhakti wisdom is actually the most transformational form of social service. And when we also start practicing bhakti, then we are also actually doing social service.
Because we are being a part of the positive change in society.