How beautiful our life would have been if every day would be filled with joy and just joy! When in life there would not be any fear of calamity, no fear of betrayal, no fear of losing our loved ones. Life with full of hope, full of happiness and no anxiety and no uncertainty.

However, in spite of all our wishful thinking this world does not provide us the luxury of being happy every moment because this world is filled with duality where happiness and sadness walk side by side. None in this world, no matter who he or she is, would say that they haven’t experienced any unpleasant moment in his or her life.

But as a sentient being when we suffer adversity then should we not question as why suffering is inevitable in this world? Why can’t the rising sun daily brings us tons of happiness, why can’t every moment of the day is delightful and why can’t every night is extremely satisfying?

But it never happens and Krishna, too, confirms in the Gita that just like summer and winter accompany each other, similarly happiness and distress will always be parts of our life and he asks us to tolerate it (Bhagavad Gita 2.14). But when a doctor informs his patient that his disease would torment him time to time and he just have to live with it then the patient would immediately beg doctor for a permanent cure to his disease.

Similarly, when we are informed that pleasure and pain have equal right on our life we immediately start seeking solution to purge all our present and future pains.  The solution is given in our Vedic literature. The sacred book does a root cause analysis and gives the reason for our suffering – our precarious condition is because we accepted this mortal body which is prone to suffering and this world where we live is an abode of misery. (Bhagavad Gita 8.15).

Lest we not become morose thinking that our quest for everlasting happiness would never be satisfied we are told that we are eternal souls having eternal relationship with the Supreme Lord, we suffer because here we are encaged in this ephemeral body and world and have forgotten our relationship with the Lord.  As soon as we bring God in our life our entire problem will perish.

When a king walks his ministers and servants walk behind him, similarly when the Lord walks in our life, auspiciousness and good fortune – his two companions – follows him. When we associate with the Supreme Lord we also connect ourselves to the perennialpleasure mine making sure that we never remain deprived of happiness in this life.

And when the time come for us to leave this body and this material world we do not become morose, depressed or broken hearted because death reunites us with our family members of the spiritual world where they eagerly wait for us. In the spiritual world there is joy and just joy which we continuously look for, pray for and desire for. 

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Purushottam Nitai Das is a member of congregation at ISKCON Kolkata. He blogs at http://krishnamagic.blogspot.co.uk/