This material world is blazing fire. Blazing fire means the forest fire. The forest fire... The example is very typical, because nobody goes to set fire in the forest, neither it is possible to extinguish the fire in the forest by your so many counteractive methods. This is very appropriate example. Similarly, in the material existence nobody wants any trouble, but automatically the trouble comes. Everyone has got experience: everyone is trying for happiness—nobody wants for distress—but distress comes here. You cannot stop it. Therefore those who are advanced in knowledge, they take it for granted that "I do not want distress. So the distress cannot be checked. It comes upon me. Then why shall I try for happiness? It will also come." This is very right conclusion. If without my endeavor distress comes upon me, so there are two things, distress and happiness, two counterparts. So if distress can come upon me without any endeavor, so the happiness also will come without any endeavor because this is another counterpart. So why shall I waste my time for this material distress and happiness?
That is the injunction of the śāstra:
- tasyaiva hetoḥ prayateta kovido
- na labhyate yad bhramatām upary adhaḥ
- tal labhyate duḥkhavad anyataḥ sukhaṁ
- kālena sarvatra gabhīra-raṁhasā
- (SB 1.5.18)
Tal labhyate duḥkhavad anyataḥ sukham. Just like distress comes upon me without endeavor, similarly, according to my destiny... Destiny means to some extent we suffer, and to some extent we enjoy. Actually, there is no enjoyment, but we take it for enjoyment. The struggle for existence, the struggle for mitigating suffering, we take it as happiness. Actually there is no happiness in this material world. So anyway, even there is happiness and distress, two relative terms, the one can come without any endeavor—the other also will come without any endeavor. That is a fact. Everyone is trying to become happy according to his own mental concoction or endeavor, but there cannot be any unalloyed happiness. That is the nature of this material world. The conclusion should be, therefore, "We are destined to suffer a certain extent of so-called happiness and certain extent of so-called distress." The distress is also so-called, and the happiness is also so-called. That is explained in the Bhagavad-gītā, āgamāpāyinaḥ anityāḥ tāṁs titikṣasva bhārata: "The happiness and distress which comes and goes, they are anityaḥ. They will not stay."