The Best Philanthropist: The Pure Devotee as the Perfect Yogī

Śrīla Prabhupāda states that the perfect yogī — who he qualifies in this purport as the pure devotee of Kṛṣṇa — is the best philan­thropist in the world.

This is controversial, but it is borne out by the topmost devotees of Kṛṣṇa, the gopīs.

Why Kṛṣṇa-kathā Is the Highest Welfare

The gopīs say that talking to Kṛṣṇa or about Kṛṣṇa — discussions of topics about You, Kṛṣṇa — are just like nectar, which soothe the lives of everyone bur­ning in material existence.

Such discussions are very auspicious. They are approved by great philoso­phers, and whoever distributes topics about You, Kṛṣṇa — kathā — they are the most munificent people.

So, why are devotees the best philan­thropists? Because they know how to benefit people in the best possible way, and they are concerned to do so.

Ordinary Philanthropy and Its Mixed Motives

There are many philanthropists in this world. The Pai family is well known as great philanthropists. They developed the whole of Manipal to benefit the nation of India by providing education. I won't say more about that at this juncture—just giving an example—they are famous as philanthropists.

However, we often see that people do philanthropic work because they want name and fame, or they do it without knowing how to properly benefit others.

Here it is described that the best yogī tries to benefit others because he feels for their suffering. He has personal experience and knows that we have to suffer birth after birth. So he tries to help people get out of that by becoming Kṛṣṇa conscious.

What “Welfare” Usually Means—and Why It Often Falls Short

Philanthropic work is generally concei­ved of as social service: feeding the poor, establishing schools to help people rise, enacting laws such as reser­vation laws so that backward classes can advance.

But they remain backward. They have had reservations for so many years, and they are still backward classes. It didn't help them much.

At the same time, in traditional Indian society, welfare work existed. Social service existed. But it wasn't organized through big institutions and government schemes. Rather, it was understood as the duty of every householder: if you see a poor person, give something to help them if they are genuinely in need. There was a whole social system.

Nowadays, there is much propaganda by an organization called Akshaya Patra for donating to care for old people. But traditionally, that is done within the family. Old people are not abandoned. Or if, by some misfortune, they have no family, they can go to a holy place. Beggars at holy places—everyone gives them a little something, and they get by like that.

The Older Orientation: Spiritual Needs First

Śrīla Prabhupāda once asked why there were no mentions of hospitals in ancient India. And Śrīla Prabhupāda said the reason is that people were not so concerned. They were more interested in spiritual needs; they knew the spiritual needs.

Nowadays, if anyone gets a little fever, they rush to the doctor. Previously, people would just wait for it to pass. Or now they put you on life support systems. Otherwise, people accepted: it is time to die, and they would die. Knowing that we are not the body.

People were much more tolerant of disease. And of course, people knew how to stay healthy. They didn't live such unhealthy lifestyles. So that existed within what we call Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. There was welfare, philanthropy, social service.

When Welfare Becomes the Sādhu’s “Job”

But this idea of organized social service done by sādhu was borrowed from Christianity. The churches organize it, and that came in via the Ramakrishna Mission. Otherwise, sādhu are supposed to live a fully spiritual life and give spiritual knowledge to others. The work of welfare is done by gṛhasthas.

If we talk about welfare work within ISKCON, people may become upset because a lot of money is collected in the name of feeding children. And I don't know about the devotees themselves who are engaged in this. But the public in India, I don't think they have a clear idea of what ISKCON's mission is. Because the main thing promoted is: give donations for feeding the poor or feeding children in schools.

Helping people is good work, but even animals help each other. Not all animals, but you see that within a group of crows, they all help each other. Or in a group of monkeys, they live together and help each other.

So it sounds like I'm saying we shouldn't help suffering people. If it sounds like this—because I'm speaking in a way that seems disparaging—it sounds disparaging of social welfare work. Not exactly disparaging; there should be help, obviously. There are earthquakes; there should be aid. In that case, government should take action. Floods are very common in India.

How “Helping” Can Backfire Socially

But sometimes, being nice to others has an overall socially harmful effect.

For instance, in Europe and America, it was seen that there were many unwed mothers at some point—we're talking about the 1960s or so. And they had to raise children without a husband. So the government thought: out of taxpayers' money, we'll give them some money to help them. Otherwise, how will they survive?

So it just encouraged more women to have children without getting married. You're paid to have children and not have a husband. And still the laws are like that: if a woman decides she doesn't need her husband anymore, she doesn't need him because the government will give money. So these policies, although supposed to be very good, are destroying the family.

Similarly, there are laws—you know very well in India—all a woman has to do is complain that my husband and my in-laws are mistreating me. And immediately, the husband and in-laws are locked up. And there are increasing numbers of suicides among men who see that they married their wife, and now she just wants to take all the money and squeeze everything out.

So the idea is to help women. But the result is that men, the whole family unit, and thus the children also, suffer because of these policies.

We have here in India state-level elections; electoral sops are given to people. They tell people: vote for us, and we'll give you 500 rupees for doing nothing. And they do.

All over India, it's very difficult to get labor for farming now. Because the government, to get votes, gives money to everyone. You're supposed to do some government work, but mostly—say you get, as you know very well, 300 rupees for government work. They don't give you any work; you give 150 to the person who signs your name, and you keep 150 and drink and do nothing. And in this way, the character of people and agriculture—everything—is getting spoiled. It's in the name of helping the poor people.

In Singapore, there is no unemployment insurance. If you're out of a job, they don't give you money, as they do in Europe. There is universal health care, but only if you can't pay. If you can afford it, you have to pay. But it's a well-managed state. The unemployment rate is only 2%, and 90% are homeowners—the highest in the world.

So there is this idea that if you institutionalize welfare, people come to expect it and think it's their right, and then they may become lazier.

There's the saying: if you give a poor man a meal, he feels satisfied for a few hours. But if you teach him how to grow food, he can feed not only himself but a whole village.

Or if people want money—you give that poor person money—and we see what they generally do. Here in India, where certain governments give money to people for doing nothing, like in Tamil Nadu. Do they do that here? No, and you don't know—you're not in that category, I guess. You don't care too much about politics. But the men get the money and they drink. That's what they do—they spend it on booze. So it doesn't help anyone except the people selling mostly illegal booze.

Big Donors, Big Claims, and Unintended Outcomes

Mr. Bill Gates—you've all heard of Bill Gates. He's so rich; he's spending so much money to bring relief to third-world countries. He's a great welfare worker. But again, how does it actually help people?

Of course, many people say that his medical relief is actually aimed at decreasing the population. In some countries, they gave out these vaccines provided by Bill Gates' institution. And then they found that all the women became sterile. So it was a trick—in Africa—to decrease or stop fertility.

We may also think we're trying to help people, but in many cases their consciousness is so poor that if you try to help them, they just make their situation worse. The same example: if you give money to a drunkard, he just spends it on drink.

And anyway, everyone has to die.

Education: Better Than Relief—but Which Education?

So instead of putting so much stress on philanthropic work—bodily and social work—that should be less of a priority than giving education. Education is important. See the Pai family. But that education is only about how to get a so-called better job. It doesn't give education on how to get free from having to be born again.

Better education is education to give up bad habits. Bad habits like drinking, smoking, taking drugs. But the worst bad habit is the habit of getting born again and again and again. We're doing it again and again.

But most people can't even think of this. Even Hindus are supposed to believe in reincarnation. I don't think they believe in reincarnation. If they actually believed in reincarnation, they wouldn't live their life the way they do. They would think: now I'm doing this action; I'll get a reaction. But they don't think.

No one's teaching them. They kind of vaguely believe in reincarnation. But there's no education.

Arjuna’s “Philanthropy” and Kṛṣṇa’s First Lesson

That was the first education that Kṛṣṇa gave to Arjuna, who was thinking in terms of philanthropy, welfare work—how we can better benefit society by not fighting. For thirteen years they'd been preparing to fight. Then suddenly, when it's time to fight, Arjuna had a philanthropic brainwave.

And Kṛṣṇa had to teach him the ABCs.

“You're not the body.

aśocyān anvaśocas tvaṁ prajñā-vādāṁś ca bhāṣase

gatāsūn agatāsūṁś ca nānuśocanti paṇḍitāḥ

You're lamenting for the body. Come on, you should know. You think you're talking like a big paṇḍit, but you don't even know the ABCs of spiritual life—that you're not the body. The body comes and goes, but you are an eternal living being.”

So to talk about reincarnation is very difficult for people convinced that I am this body. You're taught to believe you are this body. And that everything we do is meant for this body or maybe the bodies of others—that means ahaṁ mama: “I” means this body, and “mine” means my family, community, or country.

“Life After Death” Belief Without Clear Knowledge

Most people do believe there is life after death. They believe in it vaguely, without clear information. Not just Hindus—Muslims, Christians. They believe in life after death. That it's not just what we live now, but there's all of eternity in front of us.

So then the greatest welfare work would be to teach people how to live now so that for eternity they are benefited.

Christians and Muslims purport to do that, but they don't have proper understanding. They say you have to believe in Jesus or believe the Koran. It's a puzzle.

I was puzzled when I was a child. I was brought up being told that not only do you have to be a Christian, you have to be a Roman Catholic—otherwise you go to hell. And the Protestants said you have to be Protestant. I thought, oh dear, I'm born a Catholic. What if I'm in the wrong family? Then I'm in trouble.

Then I realized the whole thing is nonsense.

But they don't realize. They're still going on. They still believe all this.

The Real Problem: Birth and Death Repeated

The Bhagavad-gītā teaches us. Of course, that's not Bhagavad-gītā. That's Śaṅkarācārya paraphrasing the teachings of the Gītā and all the Upaniṣads. The Gītā is the essence of all the Upaniṣads.

So teaching people how to get free from birth and death—birth, death, old age, and disease. So Śaṅkara gave the right idea: this material existence is very horrible—birth and death repeated. So we have to get the mercy of Murāri, Kṛṣṇa, to get free from that.

Śaṅkara was also doing that. He was teaching how to get free from birth and death. Of course, we don't agree with his kevalādvaita philosophy.

But as Śrīla Prabhupāda pointed out, all the great spiritual teachers never teach us how to make a perfect situation in this world. Śrīla Prabhupāda quoted: neither Kṛṣṇa, nor Buddha, nor Mohammed, nor Śaṅkara—none of them teach it. They all teach that the real world is beyond this.

“A Better World” and the Golden Stick

This idea—make this world a better world—it's never going to be a better world. You can say, well, things are better now than they used to be. Yeah, in some ways. But is it really better to be beaten with a golden stick rather than an iron stick? That's what it amounts to.

We still have to suffer birth, death, old age, and disease.

It's always going to be a world of—what is that? Govinda dāsa says: serving miserly people for a little tiny sense gratification is always going to involve birth, death, old age, disease. The same real problems, birth after birth, generation after generation.

If we go back 100 years from now, in India people may be saying the main problem is the British—we have to kick the British out. If we go back maybe 30 years ago, so many people were saying the main problem is Congress—we have to kick out the Congress party. Now some people are saying we have to kick out...

It's always this side. We always think the problem is something temporary.

But you get rid of the British—you don't get rid of birth, death, old age, and disease. Get rid of Congress—you don't get rid of birth, death, old age, and disease.

We may think we're going to make a better world, get the world free of poverty—but it's just a dream.

The Pattern: One Problem “Solved,” Another Appears

Since this world was created, there have been problems, and especially with the onset of Kali-yuga, we can expect more widespread hunger, poverty, disease, violence.

You may make medical advances—wipe out polio. Tuberculosis is supposed to be wiped out, but it's not. But then cancer, diabetes. When I first came to India, we never heard of anyone having cancer. Never heard of it—that was 50 years ago. Now it's just normal to get cancer. So you wipe out one disease, and another disease comes.

What about poverty? In 1964, President Johnson of the United States—who you've probably never heard of; he's largely forgotten—declared an unconditional war on poverty.

In 1971—who was alive in this body in 1971? I may be the only one in the room. Anyone else? Aruṇ Caitanya is not here.

There was Indira Gandhi's election slogan: Garibi Hatao, Desh Bachao. So Indira Gandhi got “Hatao.” She was driven out. But the poverty is still there.

One time, Śrīla Prabhupāda was talking with some Christian clergymen in America, and they were talking about how we have to help the poor. And Prabhupāda quoted Jesus to the clergymen and told them that Jesus has said that the poor will always be with us.

You can't get rid of poverty because it's caused by karma, and there are always going to be people making bad karma.

Richard Nixon—you may have heard of him because Śrīla Prabhupāda quoted him a lot on the Watergate fiasco, which wasn't such a big thing anyway. People do things like that.

Anyway, he declared a war on drugs. Then Bill Clinton, when he came in, also war on drugs. And now we have President Trump shooting Venezuelan ships and sinking them—war on drugs. But the drugs keep coming. Illegal drugs. The war on drugs is always a failure.

Can't we do something about it?

Misplaced Compassion and the Bodily Concept of Life

It's the nature of this world to whip us, to give us misery, and we can't change the nature of this world by giving charity or opening hospitals.

Individually, we have karma. Collectively, we have a background of karma that brings us a certain amount of happiness and a certain amount of distress, and this cannot be changed by any material means.

If we're destined to be poor, we're going to be poor. There's nothing you can do about it. If we're destined to be diseased, you'll get a disease. You save a man from one disease, and he'll get another disease. The nature of this world will not change.

And in every generation there are people saying big things like Garibi Hatao, war on drugs, uplift the nation by building hospitals and schools. In every generation there are philanthropists, and the problems remain. Or you may superficially change one problem and increase another one.

Now, the education level in India is much higher than it was previously. And there's a whole new set of problems—such as now children don't listen to their parents. When you sign a contract for your daughter to go to college, you sign that if she gets pregnant or has an abortion, we don't hold the school liable—we won't make a court case. That means you know the schools are full of drugs, but still you send them. You know the schools are going to ruin their character, but still you send them.

So the problem with this mundane welfare work is that it's misplaced compassion. It actually does more harm than good because it promotes the bodily concept of life.

It makes us think that we can live happily in this world and that living happily in this world is the actual meaning of life.

But it's something like: the plane is going to crash, and the captain says, make sure you have your seatbelt tied. If you have a seatbelt, you're going to crash and you're all going to die—but you have your seatbelts nicely buckled. Sit comfortably and enjoy the crash.

We're all heading for a crash. The body is destined for death.

What Sādhu Should Actually Do

But nowadays there's this idea that sādhu are supposed to do social welfare work. But sādhu are meant for telling us that this life is temporary. Others can do it, but sādhu are meant for preaching the message of Bhagavad-gītā. Sādhu are not meant for bodily welfare service.

Now, things like distributing prasādam at Kumbh Mela—great. That's the kind of social welfare work that sādhu should do because it's giving prasādam and it's directly connected to the Kumbh Mela—it's a religious function.

But the idea that sādhu' duty is to feed all the schoolchildren in the nation so they can get a good start in life and go ahead and develop the nation—that's not the job of sādhu.

Śrīla Prabhupāda said we can distribute food to the public, but there should be kīrtan and distribution of spiritual knowledge also. Śrīla Prabhupāda always stressed that the best welfare work is spreading Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

So sādhu can organize food distribution, but it's advertised as food distribution. They don't say it's prasādam.

And sādhu' business—their concentration—should be to help the public by giving them spiritual knowledge, not reinforcing their bodily consciousness.

Hare Kṛṣṇa.