– Why is it, mas­ter, that beneath the sur­face, how­ever smil­ing, bit­ter­ness is always there? You need only scratch the life of the hap­pi­est man, and at once there is deep wretched­ness, sor­row, meas­ure­less and bit­ter suf­fer­ing… Why?

– My son, you are ask­ing the wrong way. In inquir­ing into spir­itu­al facts, why is not a prop­er ques­tion. To the impossible and unanswer­able ques­tion why? only one pos­sible answer exists: just because. Cause and effect tangle togeth­er like an end­less braid, and if you tug at one thread of fate, you jerk the whole weave with it.

– I under­stand that, but even so: why suf­fer­ing?

– ‘As joy, sor­row and illu­sion, this uni­verse is food.’ Where you see one pole, you will soon find the other as well. Without light there is no shad­ow, without joy there is no sor­row. Today you laugh, the day after tomor­row you weep – that is, the world exists as suf­fer­ing, even if we try to cloak this rot­ten-to-the-core trait of it.

– Then should we leave appear­ances alone, and not tear open the wounds?

– You have spoken wisely. What one tries to cloak is best left in shad­ow. Every­one has wounds, and every­one has secrets. It is said that the saint too has a past, and the sin­ner too has a future. Some­how we live too long… If we per­ished in the bloom of youth, per­haps we would still pass pure through the Sun-gate of light. But a long life some­how cor­rupts man, and much light lengthens his shad­ow. If you live long, you become sul­lied. An infant smells of milk, and bey­ond that the scent of ori­gin­al pur­ity still hangs about it. Man, in his cor­rup­ted life, reeks of his many faults. Moral wrong­do­ing first dis­torts his subtler being, then is embod­ied in bod­ily ills. The saints are flower-fra­grant, those who are not saints per­haps have a neut­ral smell, but the wicked stink abom­in­ably. Sor­row, too, is an ulcer­ous wound. Some­times, per­haps, a thin scab cov­ers it – that is the smil­ing mask, but it breaks open eas­ily, and then it festers, reek­ing, and the pain seeps out of it. So leave other people's wounds alone, espe­cially if you do not carry the rem­edy for all ills.

– Why, does such a thing exist? Is there a mir­acle cure that eases every pain?

– Here in this world, I think, there is none. At the cre­ation of the world the first word, the first coun­sel, was pen­ance. What do you expect, then? Hap­pi­ness, per­haps, an easy life, noth­ing but suc­cess? Rather, look upon joy and sor­row alike as things that will pass away in any case. Joy evap­or­ates, sor­row slowly seeps away, and sadly, in many people, bit­ter­ness remains – but you, do not give in, do not let doubt over­come you!

– Does a sin­cere smile exist, mas­ter? Is there a hap­pi­ness that has no suf­fer­ing hid­den behind it?

– Per­haps it exists, for the wise tell such legends of ages long past. Yes, I hope it exists, even if one learns to smile mostly by being tempered in suf­fer­ing. If you believe it too, and help it along, then it does exist…

– Let us not leave the laws of nature unex­plained! I would like to find this mir­acle cure!

– For that, my son, enlight­en­ment is needed, so that you may roll up the uni­verse like a cast-off snake­skin, togeth­er with all its misery… Remem­ber, and in the greatest joy notice the one drop of worm­wood, but in the bit­ter cup, too, dis­cov­er the tiny drop of nec­tar. This one tiny drop, let it pro­claim tran­si­ence: everything passes away one day. For it is the mark of every sor­row that it car­ries with­in itself the seed of passing and of for­get­ting.

– And hap­pi­ness, set against bit­ter­ness? That too simply passes away…

– No doubt, but serenity remains. Hap­pi­ness is not a goal but a con­sequence. Seek that whose con­sequence is hap­pi­ness. Be con­tent with what you have attained, with what you have under­stood, with what has been gran­ted you. This never passes away…