What is Worth Pursuing?

We pursue so many things in life — money, entertainment, health, job, house, car, companion, children, pets, education, skills, knowledge, etc.

- N GOKULMUTHU

We pursue all these with the hope that they will make us happy. We somehow seem to have an idea that happiness is the goal of life and these are all the means. With this wrong assumption, seeing poverty, disease, failure, quarrels, war and suffering in the world, we ask the question, “Why is there so much sorrow in the world?” We even declare that if there is a God, He/She must be a very cruel person.

Vedanta declares that happiness is not the goal of life. Wisdom is the goal of life. Swami Vivekananda says, “Sense-happiness is not the goal of humanity. Wisdom (Jnana) is the goal of all life. We find that man enjoys his intellect more than an animal enjoys its senses; and we see that man enjoys his spiritual nature even more than his rational nature. So, the highest wisdom must be this spiritual knowledge. With this knowledge will come bliss. All these things of this world are but the shadows, the manifestations in the third or fourth degree of the real Knowledge and Bliss.”1 If we understand this, then everything in the world and our own life starts making sense. The dualities like success-failure, fame-disgrace, wealth-poverty, health-disease, and pleasure-pain, keep alternating. This whole scheme, when understood correctly, makes us wiser. Through this wisdom, we go beyond the dualities. The dualities no longer affect us. We are ever peaceful and blissful. This is the goal.

However, the maturity to learn the lessons in life to become wiser does not come in the beginning. So there are two other pursuits which form the steps. The first thing worth pursuing is ‘good action’. Vedanta declares that good action produces good karma phala, called