How can the Gita’s knowledge help poor people?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Okay, how can the Bhagavad Gita’s knowledge help poor people? See, there is treating a disease at its symptoms and treating a disease at its cause.
So somebody is having fever, they are feeling very hot, they put some cold water sheets or something like that on their head. It helps to some level. It’s good but we have to say what is the germ, what are the diseases in the body and we have to cure that.
So when we see people are poor, yes, we may actually feel inclined. Let me give them some food. They need some food.
And that is treating the problem at one level. But that is treating the problem only at the level of the symptoms. The problem in this world is not simply shortage of food.
It is twofold. At one level it is greed among the haves and it is also bad habits among the have-nots. Many times when we as devotees we travel, we always keep some prasad with us and when some beggars come along, we give food.
Many beggars refuse to take food. They want money. Because with that money they want to smoke, they want to drink.
In many countries which are welfare states, there actually the government maintains people who are unemployed. And these unemployed people, they take the dole from the government and they use it for drugs. They use it for drinks.
And then they stay malnourished. They ruin their health. So there are many people for whom who are just not capable of receiving help.
That means offering them help at a material level is like pouring water in a leaking bucket. I may very diligently pour water in it, but it will simply leak out. So unfortunately that many people who are starving, not all people, many people who are starving, they are there because, not they are so desperately short of money, but it is because they are just squandering the money that they have.
So helping them by simply providing food does not really solve their problem. They need to be equipped to make healthier choices in their lives. And Sri Prabhupada, he also said in Krishna Conscious Movement also, there are programs which provide food to poor people.
There is prasadam that is provided. There are many programs like that. But Prabhupada’s focus was that we need to empower people to make healthier choices by providing them spiritual knowledge, by giving them spiritual practices.
So by such knowledge and practices, people become free from the bad habits that they are having. And thus, whatever resources they have, they can use them better. That’s from the perspective of the have-nots.
From the perspective of the haves, actually, you know, much of the problem in the world is because the haves are holding on to resources. The amount of money that Americans spend on decreasing their weight, that much money can feed all the hungry people in the world. So what does this mean? This means that there are people who eat more and to get rid of the weight that they acquired by eating more, they are spending money.
So first they spend money to eat more, then they spend money to lose that weight. And just that weight, that money is enough to feed the hungry people. So now, in some cases, obesity may be a genetic condition.
Some people, no matter how much they eat, they never gain weight. And some people, they eat little, they gain a lot of weight. That is there.
But in many cases, obesity is because of over-eating, unregulated eating. So eating is just one example of things. You know, there are, because of the uncontrolled mind and senses, there are people who hold on to, hold on to resources.
And because of that, the resources are not used properly. Again, by the practice of Krishna consciousness, by the understanding spiritual knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita, we become, our greed goes down. And when the greed goes down, the wealthy will become more charitable.
When they become more charitable, they will release more of the resources. And thus, people can be benefited. So, the Krishna consciousness, the knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita, may not literally lead to people being fed, hungry people being fed.
But at the level of, not the symptom, but the level of the causes, the cause of starvation or hunger, in terms of the self-destructive habits of the poor, and the self-aggrandizing, self-accumulating habits of the greedy, both of them can be cured. And thus, it can solve the problem of hunger at a more fundamental and a more sustainable level.