TO BE HAPPY

From childhood on, man is taught responsibilities: responsibilities for his honour, property, friends, and family. So he is burdened with duties and given the impression that he can never be happy unless his health, his honour, his fortune, and everything else are all in good shape. And these duties and responsibilities harass him every moment. 

Obviously, this is an odd way of being happy: yet this is the best way of making him unhappy.

If you remove all of man's cares, then he would see himself and think about who he is, whence he came and wither he is  going. Man cannot be too occupied and distracted if he must find salvation. When freed from his duties and responsibilities, he is filled with diversions and sports to keep himself fully occupied. How hollow and foul is the heart of man! Is this why the saints always did leave all things?

(10-18-02)