Why are you wasting this valuable human existence like a blind man stumbling against obstructions here and there, why suffer from restlessness day and night persecuted by your sorrow? All the eight watches of the day and night you sigh for happiness, whether asleep or awake, all the while you go on fluttering in your error, but you have discovered happiness anywhere? Taking to be the source of happiness, whatever you seek to clasp to your bosom scorches you with the heat of sorrow. Wherever you may imagine happiness to lie, you strike against the rock of sorrow and get yourself bruised and your bones broken. In honour, fame, prosperity, authority over men, wife or husband and children- have you discovered happiness anywhere? In none of these you have found it. Everywhere you experience nothing but sorrow and suffering, nothing but fear and worry. Will happiness be found, then, if you retire altogether from association with these?

But where will you retire? Wherever you go, you will meet with the same experience. Therefore, it is not necessary to retire. What is necessary is to realize the truth that supreme happiness lies only in God, and that God is everywhere, every moment and in every respect complete by Himself. When you realize this truth, you will begin to see God in every place, in every moment of time and in all circumstances, whether favourable or unfavourable.