Who is Poor? Radhanath Swami and Mother Teresa

"Poor doesn’t mean without money, without food, without clothes, poor means a person who does not have Krishna consciousness, they are spiritually poor. I remember years ago I met with Mother Theresa and there was a newspaper reporter that just came in for few minutes and asked her a question while we were discussing various matters. The person was glorifying her for so nicely serving the poor, she said you don’t know who the poor are, she said the people in the western countries living in their big big mansions and expensive homes, driving their nice cars, eating all kind of foods, they are poor because although they have so much wealth materially but their hearts are lonely, their hearts are starving and when I look in their eyes, I see poverty of the heart. She said these people dying in the streets of Calcutta with nothing when I look in their eyes, I often times see they have faith, faith in God, they have abundance within their hearts. So who is poor? A rich man fearful, suspicious, lonely, never getting enough, taking sleeping pills to go to sleep at night, taking alcohol and drugs to somehow or another cope with the anxiety of the day, going here there to Europe, Alaska, Singapore on all kinds of vacations to somehow or another just finds some variedgatedness in life to just escape from the loneliness within, sometimes they even engage in cruel egoistic acts to others just to get some excitement out of life. They are poor."

Radhanath Swami