Pleasure is not the Goal

Pleasure is not the Goal. Of man, but knowledge, Pleasure and happiness come to an end. It is mistake to suppose that pleasure is the goal. The cause of all the miseries we have in the world is that man foolishly think pleasure to be the ideal to strive for. After a time man finds that it is not happiness, but Knowledge, towards which he is going, and the both pleasure and pain are great teachers, and that he learns as much from evil as from good.

Good and evil have an equal share in moulding character, and in some instances misery is a greater teacher than happiness In studying the great characters the world has produced, I dare say, in the vast majority of case, it would be found that it was misery that taught more than happiness, it was poverty that taught more than wealth, it was blows that brought out their inner fire more than praise.

Sense- happiness is not the goal of humanity. Wisdom is the goal of all life. We find that man enjoys his intellect more than an animal enjoys its senses; and we see that man enjoys his spiritual nature even more than this rational nature. So the highest wisdom must be this spiritual Knowledge. With this knowledge will come bliss. All these things of this world are the shadows, the manifestations in the third or fourth degree of the real knowledge and Bliss.

Only the fools rush after sense-enjoyments. It is easy to live in the sense. It is easier to run in the old groove, eating and drinking; but what these modern philosophers want to tell you is to take these comfortable ideas and put the stamp of religion on them. Such a doctrine is dangerous. Death lines in the senses.

Life on the plane of the sprit is the only life, life on any other plane is mere death; the whole of this life can be only described as a gymnasium. We must go beyond it to enjoy real life.

Source:- "Personality Development" written by Swami Vivekanad Ji.