Should we help materially those who make a business out of asking for charity?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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so if someone comes to us mother, father, child they come to us for help but they are not really interested in spiritual things no not spiritual sometimes they are professional people asking for things is just a profession for them so should we help at that see there is a difference between being soft hearted and being simple headed this is a simple term simple term is a person who is gullible so we want to help but we want to help in a way which is tangible if say a water pot is empty and I decide to put water in the water pot so that somebody can drink water from it that is good but if I find that the water pot has got a hole below then whatever water I am going to put there it is going to leak out and if at that time I tell them that no I won’t pour water here because it is going to leak out that is not hard heartedness that is intelligence so there are some causes which are lost causes some causes are lost causes that means helping some people they are just not in a position to be helped so if we try to help them before I was introduced to Krishna Consciousness I was a part of a social welfare organization so I used to go and educate school children so I was doing that and at that time I found that the school children I was teaching them, they were learning but their parents were alcoholics their father was alcoholic and his father was just breaking their hope and one particular time it happened that politicians came so we as a part of that organization we worked to try to tell the father also to give up alcohol and some fathers gave it up but then some elections came up and then the politicians they offered a whole truck full of alcohol and not only the father but also the children had taken alcohol then I realized that ok I am optimistic but am I really helping them at that time I was a part of Bhagavad Gita, Krishna Consciousness then I started spending time with my life teaching this so it’s not that we don’t want to help people but we also have to help in a way in which people are helping our goal is not to pour water into a nuclear bucket so we have to use our God-given intelligence to see certain people and some people are lost causes as you said they are just people who are whose profession is to ask for help and they are not really trying to improve themselves if he is saying that offering some food is ok offering some food but then we don’t have to give them money or things like that we can politely but firmly decide to invest our time, our energy, our Lakshmi in more worthwhile causes so we have to make these decisions ourselves sometimes we can take some guidance from others but we have to use our intelligence it’s not hard-heartedness that way if you say a doctor may have to amputate somebody’s hand to get hard-hearted that’s what is required sometimes some causes which don’t need to be deconstructed Prabhupada if you see was teaching in India it’s directly a spiritual purpose spiritual cause but then the league of devotees didn’t work out just left it so rather than calling this as hard-heartedness we can say this is more like fusing our battles we cannot fight too many battles at the same time so if we have to fight in a way that gives you some tangible victory choose which battles you want to fight so then saying no to certain battles that is not irresponsible that is not hard-heartedness that is just intelligence by which we can do