Happiness and Desire

As a barren tree in winter without leaf or flower to give scent to the morning air, so is a man without love. Those who would attain to Truth, must cultivate, as the gardener cultivates his garden, this flower of affection, which is to give delight, which is to be a source of comfort in disappointment and sorrow. Love - however envious, jealous, tyrannical, selfish it may be at first - is a bud that will grow into great glory and give the scent of its perfection to every passer-by. Without love man is as a desert of dry sand, as the river in the summer time, without water to nourish its banks. Those who would attain the perfection of happiness, the beauty that is hidden from the human eye, must cultivate this quality of love. You must love all and yet be detached from all, for love is necessary to the unfoldment of life. To cultivate it you must learn to observe, you must gather experience - vicariously, or through your own treading of the sorrowful paths of experience. It is through experience that you know sympathy, that you are able to give affection to those who desire it, for if you have never experienced sorrow, then your heart it incapable of sympathy and understanding.

This does not mean that you should taste of everything. There are many ways of acquiring experience - one is by living in the life of everyone, looking through the eyes of every passer-by and experiencing in imagination his sorrow, his transient pleasures. When you see a drunken man in the street, it should be sufficient to give you the experience of drunkenness; if you see a man in tears, that should give you the experience of grief; if you see a man in joy and in ecstasy, that should give you the experience of joy. We need not all follow one road of knowledge. We give and take from each other. We can gather knowledge from the experience of the whole world and that is sufficient for progress, for culture and refinement. If you would attain to the fulfillment of life, you must have this accumulation of experience, for without experience you cannot arrive at the goal, you cannot unite the beginning and the end. While there is separation, there is pain , and it is only in the union with the goal that there is happiness, that you establish lasting Truth within yourself. To do that, you must from the very beginning gather experience as a man gathers the grain of the field.

If you have no sympathy, no affection, you can never achieve, you can never identify yourself with the goal. A mind that is contented and satisfied will never acquire sympathy or affection or give understanding to others. I have watched people who have greatly desired to help others but they do not know how to help. They are incapable of putting themselves into the place of another and so envisaging his point of view.

Those who would understand the life around them, who would see the goal and thereby establish the Beloved in their hearts, must develop great love and yet be detached from the bondage of that love. They must have great sympathy and yet not be bound by that sympathy. They must have great desires and yet not be slaves of those desires.