Misery

• One idea that I see clear as daylight is that misery is caused by ignorance and nothing else.

• Nobody is really happy here. If a man be wealthy and have plenty to eat, his digestion is out of order, and he cannot eat. If a man's digestion be good, and he have the digestion of a cormorant, he has nothing to put into his mouth. If he be rich, he has no children. If he be hungry and poor, he has a whole regiment of children, and does not know what to do with them. Why is it so? Because happiness and misery are the obverse and reverse of the same coin; he who takes happiness, must take misery also. We all have this foolish idea that we can have happiness without misery, and it has taken such possession of us that we have no control over the senses.

• In some oil mills in India, bullocks are used that go round and round to grind the oilseed. There is a yoke on the bullock's neck. They have a piece of wood protruding from the yoke, and on that is fastened a wisp of straw. The bullock is blindfolded in such a way that it can only look forward, and so it stretches its neck to get at the straw; and in doing so, it pushes the piece of wood out a little further; and it makes another attempt with the same result, and yet another with the same result, and yet another, and so on. It never catches the straw, but goes round and round in the hope of getting it, and in so doing grinds out the oil. In the same way you and I who are born slaves of nature, money and wealth, wives and children, are always chasing a wisp of straw, a mere chimera, and going through an innumerable round of lives without obtaining what we seek. The great dream is love, we are all going to love and be loved, we are all going to be happy and never meet with misery, but the more we go towards happiness, the more it goes away from us.

• Dependence is misery. Independence is happiness.

• After every happiness comes misery; they may be far apart or near. The more advanced the soul, the more quickly does one follow the other.

• Happiness presents itself before man, wearing the crown of sorrow on its head. He who welcomes it must also welcome sorrow.

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