Should devotees donate organs?

From: Mukund
Should a devotee donate blood, eyes, kidney etc. to a needy person? Also can a devotee allow to donate his complete body after death – “Deh Daan” –  instead of cremating his dead body?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question from Mukunda Prabhu.
Should a devotee donate blood, eyes, kidney, etc. to a needy person? Also, can a devotee donate his complete body after death instead of cremating the dead body? Answer, in the Mahabharata, Lord Krishna tells Arjuna, nahi sarvatra vidhiyate. It is not that there are rules for everything.
There are many issues in which we will have to take individual decisions and no dictates can be handed down on such issues. But the broad principle is that devotees don’t unnecessarily interfere with the course of nature. So, we normally let nature take its course.
So, that’s why devotees would not give their organs in donation, either during while they are living or after they die. Now, one perspective for this, additionally, apart from the point that, that everybody has got a quota and that quota has been given by their own karma. So, you know, a person who has a particular organ which is not working properly, that we could say is a result of past karma.
And because of that karmic implication, if we give that organ to that person, then that person may later on misuse that organ and we may get the karmic consequences for that misuse. Now, such a perspective may seem a bit heartless, that we don’t want to help others. Certainly, it is not that we want other people to suffer.
But at the same time, we also need to recognize what is the best way to help others. So, it’s just like charity. We can give charity to others and charity is considered to be within Vedic scriptures a duty.
But at the same time, if we give charity to unworthy people and when that charity is misused by those people, then we also get a part of the karmic reactions. This does not mean that we be hard-hearted towards others, but we give charity in a way that will not be of harm to us and also not be of harm to others. That means if we give charity of say food in terms of prasad, then that cannot be misused by others.
On the other hand, certain other forms of charity, for example, money can be very easily misused. So, when we talk about even natural or religious forms of charity, religious in the sense that these are ordained within religious scriptures also, yajna, dana, tapa, karma. So, pavanani manishniha, Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that these purify even the pure souls.
But then still Krishna talks about charity within the three modes. So, therefore, if what is normal, normal in the sense of being within the course of nature and being in accord with scripture, if even that charity is to be done cautiously, if charity has to be done that way, keeping in consideration the karmic implications, we want to speak of certain other kinds of charity in which there are karmic implications. Now, we could say that within the scriptures when Maharaja Jayati wanted his youth to continue and then one of his sons gave him that youth, Puru gave him.
So, then that could, we could say that that is one form of not organ donation, but body donation. So, in that sense, it is not entirely rejected. But Jayati Maharaj was a devotee and eventually he did get, although at that time he was infatuated with Sarmishta, but eventually he did become enlightened.
So, therefore, phalena parichayate. If somebody is devotionally inclined and somebody is a devotee especially, then offering any form of service to that devotee is considered a form of devotional service. So, when Shyam Sundar Prabhu needed a organ, a liver, then His Holiness Radhamath Maharaj announced to the devotee community and then several devotees volunteered and I’m not very clear about the details, but it was a little risky operation, but it went off well and the devotee from Radha Gopinath temple actually gave that particular bodily organ in charity.
So, in that sense, it is not completely against devotional principles or even Vedic principles in scriptures in general. So, when it is a form of devotional service, when we are assisting a devotee, at that time certainly it can be and should be done, but at other times we have to think about what are the likely consequences, what is the nature and disposition of the person to whom we are giving that kind of charity and how is that person likely to use or misuse it and in general the interference with the course of nature is not something that the Vedic scriptures recommend as a general standard practice. So, that’s why the organs are as well as the body, devotees would let nature follow its course and let the body be cremated.
So, at one level we could say that giving organs in charity is a form of selflessness and sacrifice and that could be true, but then the basic principle is definitely questionable in the sense that we want to alter what nature has ordained and to some extent everything that we do, we are trying to change what nature has ordained. When we are hungry, we eat food. So, we could say that that is also by nature’s own arrangement, we become hungry and then we eat food.
So, that is changing what nature has ordained, but then even the change is ordained by nature. It is nature that has arranged for food for us and then we take the food. So, there is a line where in trying to change what nature has ordained, we violate beyond the jurisdiction of what human beings are meant to do and start interfering with nature and that line shouldn’t be crossed.
So, if we are doing it for devotional service, that is something which is recommended, but apart from that we have to consider the karmic consequences that are there and then accordingly decide. So, this is something which all of us, whoever wants to do this will have to individually decide. There are no black and white answers, but in general if it is assisting devotional service, then it may be done, but otherwise