Radhanath Swami on Hunger of the Heart

Charity is to help needy people. People need food, they need clothing, they need hospitalization and they need emotional encouragement. But they also need spiritual enlivenment, spiritual education. People’s hearts are starving, and the starvation of the heart causes much more problems than the starvation of the belly. Starvation of the belly can be satisfied with food but it is very difficult to satisfy the hunger of the heart. It creates massive problems and disturbances within the world where we live. Unless we solve the hunger of the heart, people will be selfish, crooked and duplicitous. A saintly person weeps and cries in sorrow to see the poor man loitering in the street without food to eat, but weeps and cries perhaps even more to see the big executives in their offices who are spiritually starving in their hearts. Giving transcendental knowledge and spreading the congregational chanting of the holy names of God is actually the highest quality and more inclusive form of welfare. It satisfies the hunger of the heart. If you change the hearts of the people, if you make greedy, selfish people into compassionate instruments of God’s love, then everyone will be happy and internally satisfied. People will transcend their egoistic materialistic lives and will harmonize their concerns with the goal of spiritual enlightenment.