If devotees don’t help the needy because of fear of being bound by good karma, aren’t they sacrificing basic humanity for spirituality?

From Sushant:

Isn’t it unfair?Aren’t we neglecting the basics of humanity for the sake of our spiritual advancement?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Okay. Question from Sushant Prabhu.
Today in my college, a handicapped child came in search of help with his father. He sits in a wheelchair and he said that he needed an amount of 2 lakh rupees to continue his medical treatment which his father could not afford himself alone. He expressed that he wants to go to school, play and do all activities like we do but cannot due to his helpless condition.
So students as well as the staff started contributing some amount of money that they could do to help his child. Help this child. I too wanted to contribute some money but then I was reminded only about your answer podcast that even this good karma will bind me and make me suffer.
So I did not make any contribution. After coming home I was feeling so much guilty. I could have extended my little help to that poor child but I didn’t.
Isn’t it unfair? Aren’t we neglecting the basics of humanity for the sake of our spiritual advancement? Answer. Every philosophical point has to be understood in its context. When we say that good karma also binds us to material existence that doesn’t mean that we have to give up all good karma.
It is best if we can spiritualize all our karma but where the karma cannot be directly spiritualized and if we have to choose between good and bad karma naturally we will choose good karma. Bhakti Siddhant Saraswati Thakur when he would go on pilgrimage to take yatras and his disciples would not give charity to beggars saying that we will use this money for Lord Hari’s service. He in public lectures chastised that mentality.
He said that we think we will give this to Lord Hari and ultimately we use it just for our own stomach. So the emphasis of the point that even good karma is binding is that we should not think that good karma is the best thing that we can do. That good karma can liberate us from material existence and that good karma is equivalent to spiritual karma which is what many apparently spiritual organizations teach by their idea of that is the Narayan Seva or Mano Sevahi Madho Sevahi and we don’t want to make this an institutional focus or a life goal.
ISKCON is doing welfare to humanity but that is primarily spiritual it is not material welfare. Material welfare follows spiritual welfare and that way ISKCON is contributing to material welfare also and as individual devotees within ISKCON we don’t want to make humanitarian welfare, social welfare as the goal of our life. At the same time that doesn’t mean that doing humanitarian activities is banned.
There is nowhere in Shila Prabhupada books or anywhere else will you find that there is a regulative principle against giving charity to the poor. So this is just our own interpretation of the philosophy. The essential point is and this is a true point reality doesn’t compromise and the reality is that good karma cannot liberate us from material existence.
So we will continue on material existence even with good karma and that’s why we shouldn’t exalt good karma on a high pedestal. But that doesn’t mean that we have to suppress all our humanitarian instincts and that we have to become hard-hearted especially if somebody is a grahastha then yajna, dana, tapa, karma, pavanani, manishina dana should be given. Now depending on time, place, circumstance devotees may give charity to humanitarian causes.
It is best if those humanitarian causes could be spiritualized like we have in prasad distribution and we contribute to those charities but if we come across situations where we feel inspired to give some charity then it is not that we have to suppress that instinct just because of the karmic bondage consideration. The primary consideration should be how can we best help people. So if humanitarian relief were the best help that we could offer then we would have offered that.
But there is a higher help that we can offer and that is spiritual relief. But just because we are offering spiritual relief doesn’t mean that we are rejecting humanitarian relief. For example, Vakthayanth Hospital is a hospital where devotees offer medical care and spiritual care.
So it would be ideal if we could integrate material care and spiritual care together in a framework where both are balanced and eventually spiritual care is emphasized then that would be the best. But when that is not there, it is up to an individual to decide to what extent one wants to get involved in material charity and to what extent one wants to focus on doing spiritual welfare. But either way, as devotees we should definitely cultivate a mood of compassion and when we see such incidents like this it is a sign of a devotee and a soft heart that a devotee feels distressed.
Now how specifically a devotee will help in such a situation may vary according to individual devotees inclination, individual situation, the social circumstance all these will matter in deciding the specific course of action. But these sort of incidents should make us aware there is so much suffering in the world even at the material level and ultimately all the suffering originates because we are all separated from Krishna. So we should try to do our best to help people and our thrust of helping should be by sharing spiritual care, spiritual wisdom and spiritual practice.
But along with that we are not banned from offering material care. It is just that we should not get carried away by that and we should not place it on a higher pedestal than spiritual care or even on equal pedestal. You know, it is because of our over-reliance on seeing that when we see people who are suffering in this way we feel that this is a great suffering.
But if you could see in the minds of people you know, all of us are mentally handicapped. What are our mental handicaps? Lust, anger, greed, envy, pride, illusion. These are all mental handicaps.
A person who is physically handicapped cannot walk around properly. A person who is mentally handicapped cannot think properly. And generally a person who is physically handicapped cannot do much harm to others because of the physical limitation.
But a person who is mentally handicapped cannot only not think properly but that person thinks wrongly. And a person does so much harm. So, that mental handicap is cured by the process of purification.
That is the essence of Krishna Consciousness at the sadhaka stage. So, in that sense, we also should develop Shastra Chakshu by which we see that everybody is suffering and everybody needs Krishna Consciousness and we should do all that we can to help others, primarily at the spiritual level and wherever it is according to our inspiration and according to situation feasible at a material level also. Thank you.