Life is beau­ti­ful. It is a light bur­den, not only a delight­ful play but a magic­al exper­i­en­cing too. It brings good things and unpleas­ant ones, and it must be taken ser­i­ously, and then again not. It does not pay to con­fuse the two situ­ations, tak­ing too ser­i­ously what could just as well be taken lightly, and shrug­ging off what in fact ought to be taken very ser­i­ously. And yet life, in its full­ness, is beau­ti­ful.

When suf­fer­ing and lim­it­a­tion fall to your lot, it is not only beau­ti­ful but dra­mat­ic too, a sub­lime play. But life is also simple. The sky is blue, the grass is green, the blood of man is blood-red – this binds us togeth­er. If you repeat this, it does not thereby become trite. It becomes trite only when you say, without deep insight, that life is beau­ti­ful and simple. You do under­stand it, and at times you exper­i­ence it too, but to real­ise it – that is already mas­tery. Real­ised insight brings serene wis­dom, but a sour-faced saint is no saint at all.

Love is the most sub­lime art. In the long whirl of life such a reward­ing role is only rarely gran­ted: to bring joy to anoth­er, or more pre­cisely still, to serve the spir­itu­al growth of oth­ers. For who­ever reaches the goal will be happy as well. But if you seem to be happy, it is by no means cer­tain that you have reached the goal. As long as hap­pi­ness is only a feel­ing and not a state of con­scious­ness, it eas­ily slips away. Worldly joys too have their lovely blos­som, but no sweet fruit.

‘This world is a world like the hazel-tree blos­som,

Much it prom­ises, little it gives, and all that it gives is ill…’

We must seek out which are the highest ideals in life. Money, women, suc­cess? No ques­tion, they are present in life, but these are cheap pleas­ures. Influ­ence, power? Not bad, but dan­ger­ous. Per­son­al ambi­tions, con­tent­ment? That is high­er already, but still selfish, return­ing only to your­self. The story begins with you and is about you – and it seems it ends with you too. Know­ledge, vir­tue, good­will? You are nearly at the sum­mit. Wis­dom, self­less­ness? No fur­ther…

The highest ideal attain­able in every­day life, we may say, is the ser­vice of our fel­low men. If you place oth­ers before your­self, you will find that every­one wants to line up behind you. All right, not every­one, there will be many who quite con­ten­tedly step in front of you, but do not take that ser­i­ously. As for who­ever is will­ing to stand behind you, attend to him with all your heart. The doer of good is never over­come by evil…

To be a good man is not a rel­at­ive notion, though it can be put into prac­tice in many ways. The mark of the good man is that it is simply good to be in his com­pany. If you serve the good of your fel­low men, their spir­itu­al bliss, or indeed raise your son to be a fine man and your daugh­ter to be not a woman schol­ar but a schol­arly woman, then in this very act you ful­fil the highest call­ing of life. And so you also serve your own spir­itu­al bliss in the best pos­sible way. To live for oth­ers is a delight. And do not say that it is wear­i­some, that it does not pay, that it earns little thanks. Nor is that why it is to be prac­tised. In one great cycle everything falls into its place. What an excep­tion­al bless­ing it is that you can serve oth­ers, and that it is not you who must rely on the ser­vice of oth­ers?! That in itself is a bless­ing.

Bey­ond the ser­vice of our fel­low men there exists only one fur­ther step: divine ser­vice. In this ideal all the earli­er lofty thoughts, noble deeds, fair words and inspir­ing achieve­ments, real­ity, wis­dom and beauty are con­tained, not par­tially and in frag­ments, but wholly and in their full­ness.

Utterly pure devo­tion to God, com­pas­sion­ate good­will towards our fel­low men, and the har­mon­ising of every pos­sib­il­ity of mater­i­al exist­ence with the ser­vice of the Lord – this is the very cream of reli­gious prin­ciples for the spir­itu­al man who seeks the essence. (Bhakt­ivinoda Thak­ur: Tat­tva Sut­ras 50.)