Charity – Religions’ Great Scam
“Poverty is manmade. It is in our hands to destroy poverty. But all the religions – and the most prominent of them is Christianity – have emphasized relief for the poor. Relief for the poor is not charity, it is not love.
“Why in the first place, should poverty exist? It exists because there are a few people who are too greedy. Poverty is a by-product of greed. One part of society goes on accumulating. Naturally the other part of society becomes poor. Man has lived for centuries under this exploitation. This exploitation can be completely destroyed.
“Whatever the society produces belongs to all. The most surprising thing is that the poor are the people who produce, and the rich are the people who do not produce. Those who produce are hungry and starving and dying. Just to give them relief is a very cunning idea: it protects the exploitation, it protects the capitalists, it protects those who are the criminals. It also protects the poor so that they go on producing and go on fulfilling sick ambitions of pathological people.”
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If charity doesn’t help the poor, then who benefits?
“Just to go on giving the poor a little relief keeps them alive at survival level. I would not call it charity. It is really to keep them alive so that they can go on producing for those who are rich and want to be richer.
“I agree totally with Karl Marx on the point that religion has been the opium of the poor. It has drugged them with hopes for a better life in the future after death, if they remain content with their poverty now.
“Naturally the rich people, the priests, the missionaries have made great churches and temples for God because they have seen the point, that if religion prevails over people’s minds there is no possibility of a revolution. What you have been told up to now of charity is simply the suicide of all those who are poor and suffering. Charity has been in the service of the rich; it is not in the service of the poor.”
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What do the rich get out of it? Is charity just a short-cut to heaven?
“Whenever you have money you feel guilty. It is natural, because so many people don’t have money, how can you avoid guilt? Whenever you have money, you know somebody has become poorer because of you. Whenever you have money, you know somewhere somebody will be starving, and your bank balance goes on becoming bigger and bigger. Some child will not get the medicine needed to survive, some woman will not get the medicine; some poor man will die because he will not have food. How can you avoid these things? They will be there. The more you have money, the more these things will be there erupting in your consciousness; you will feel guilty.
“Charity is to unburden you from your guilt, so you say, ‘I am doing something; I am going to open a hospital, going to open a college. I give money to this charity fund, to that trust….’ You feel a little happier. The world has lived in poverty, the world has lived in scarcity; ninety-nine percent of people have lived a poor life, almost starving and dying, and only one percent of people have lived with richness, with money. They have always felt guilty. To help them the religions developed the idea of charity; it is to rid them of their guilt.
“So the first thing I would like to say is: charity is not a virtue, it is just a help to keep your sanity intact; otherwise you will go insane. Charity is not a virtue; it is not a punya. It is not that you have done something good when you do charity, it is only that you repent for all the bad that you have done in accumulating the money. To me charity is not a great quality, it is repentance – you are repenting. One hundred rupees you have earned, ten rupees you give in charity; it is repentance. You feel a little good, you don’t feel that bad; your ego feels a little more protected. You can say to God, ‘Not only was I exploiting, I was also helping poor people.’ But what type of help is this? On one hand you snatch one hundred rupees, and on the other hand you give ten rupees – not even the interest.
“This is a trick that was invented by the so-called religious people, to help not the poor but the rich. Let it be absolutely clear, this is my attitude: it has been a trick to help the rich, not the poor. If the poor were helped, that was just a consequence of it, a by-product, but that was not the goal of it.”
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It seems charity is a conspiracy between the rich and the religions?
“All the richest people of the world have their own trusts and foundations for charity. On the other hand, they go on exploiting people. Otherwise, from where does their super-richness come…?
“Charity is a strange game: first you cripple people and then you help them. First you destroy their environment, their ecology, and then from the same people who have been destroying the ecology of the earth, comes the money for charity…”
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So, what to do?
“’So what to do?’ you ask. My suggestion is: don’t think that you can prevent the Third World War, don’t think you can change poverty. You can change only yourself. Drop your greed, drop your future, drop your mind; become more loving, become more heartful and live from the heart. And if many people start living that way, that is the only way to change the world. The world cannot be changed directly because there is no soul to the world. The soul exists in the individual; only individuals can be changed.
“If you remain a hoarder – greedy, violent, repressed – this society will continue. You can give money to the beggar and he will remain a beggar, because money never changes anything....
“Give whatsoever you can give, share whatsoever you can share, but share only out of love. Don’t think in terms of politics, of changing the world, otherwise you will be frustrated. Forget all about it. Do whatsoever you feel like doing. If you meet a beggar and you have a feeling arising in you, do something, whatsoever you feel like doing. I am not saying don’t do anything; I am simply saying don’t hope that you are changing the world. Nothing is being changed."
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So does the long-term solution depend only on our consciousness?
“If you need a world without poverty, greed has to disappear. Charity is not going to help; it has not helped. Greed has to disappear, hoarding has to disappear. That’s what I am trying to teach you. If you love life, you never become a hoarder. Life is so beautiful, who bothers about tomorrow? That’s why I go on repeating again and again: live in the moment, then there will be no beggars.”
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