If suffering is not because of karma then what is its cause?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
if someone says some child is suffering because of cancer is it that we should let them we should let them suffer or should we give some charity by which the child can get rid of the suffering certainly we should do what we can to help others and if we have the capacity to give charity, we should give charity, now as far as someone else’s karma being involved that is that philosophical truth but that is not the center for deciding our course of action what is important is that we focus on our doing the right action and quite often in the deep end of this world we see when suffering is at a physical level we can see it immediately because somebody has got a scar on the face, somebody has got a fracture somebody has got some physical injury or somebody is very poor somebody is starving this is the kind of suffering that we see easily and we want to offer relief at that time but just as there are physical sufferings, there are mental sufferings also many times there are people who are suicidal and externally they seem to just live their normal lives and suddenly at one moment they go and climb on top of some building and jump off so there are different levels of suffering and when we come to Krishna we try to share Krishna with people, then it offers the complete relief yes, this is not a substitute for offering physical relief but it offers holistic relief so as devotees we are not against offering material help to people but what we have to be careful is we should not think that the material help alone is not the complete help yes naturally because we can see material suffering in people we feel inspired to offer relief and that is a natural expression of human compassion but with philosophical understanding is that it is not only people who have cancer who is under trouble and is suffering there are people who look ordinarily good but they also have mental suffering so everybody needs Krishna and the best help that we can offer others is when we connect them with Krishna we are like all the lost children of Krishna and the best help that a lost child can be given is not just a cure for some medicine some medicine or some food or something the best help that we offer the child is help the child go back home to the father so that is what we focus on and other forms of help can also be offered the most important help that we offer is connecting people with Krishna