As long as we lack purity we live in poverty no matter how much money we have Gita 14.12

As long as we are impure, we stay poor, no matter how much money we have.
We often equate poverty with a state of lack of money. And that’s true at one level, that not having money is a serious problem. If we don’t have food to eat, if we don’t have clothes in cold, warm, it’s miserable.
Simultaneously, it’s important to understand that purity is essential actually for satisfaction. No matter how much money we have, if we haven’t cultivated purity, if for example, if we have the impurity of greed or the impurity of lust or the impurity of envy, then no matter how much money we may have, we’ll still look at who all have more money than us and we’ll feel ourselves poor. A millionaire can feel poor by fixating on billionaires.
So poverty is more a state of the heart than the state of the finances. And of course, this is not to say that we don’t work adequately to earn money. But if we think that earning money alone will free us from poverty, we are seriously mistaken.
So in 1412, while describing the characteristics of the mode of passion, Krishna says that there is uncontrollable craving which is described along with lobha, greed. If we put all our heart in earning money and none of it in removing poverty, in cultivating purity, then we will always stay dissatisfied and unhappy. We feel dissatisfied not just because of what we see, but because of with what we see.
That means what we see refers to the various objects that we look at in the outer world and they make us feel dissatisfied. With what we see refers to for the soul, there is an interface between it and the outer world and the subtle body. Within that, our mind is quite often contaminated.
And because it is so contaminated, so if we want to be satisfied, it’s important to recognize what brings satisfaction and that primarily is the state of our mind. If we put in even a fraction of the effort that we put in earning money in cultivating purity, we will be much more satisfied. Krishna says that, a few verses later, he says that a characteristic of the mode of passion is so in the mode of passion, we’ll think as long as we are defining ourselves as material beings and material well-being as our basis of happiness, then we can’t be happy.
But when we purify ourselves and at least come to the mode of goodness, then we get the knowledge to perceive reality. Then we also get the knowledge to understand what is truly worth pursuing, what will give satisfaction to us. And once we start pursuing that, that’s when we become really deeply satisfied.
There are many verses which talk of that we purify ourselves, that’s when we gain satisfaction. So in that sense, economic development is not the key to contentment. Spiritual development is not getting more money, but realizing our spirituality to become to gain purity means to realize our spirituality, to understand that we are part of an all attractive whole and it is in connection with that whole that there is great satisfaction.
Thank you.