So why should you waste your time? "No, I see so many people have improved." So the answer is that tal labhyate duḥkhavad anyataḥ sukham. The reason, very nice reason: duḥkhavad anyataḥ sukham. Just like nobody tries for unhappiness, but why unhappiness comes? I do not want something, unhappiness, but it is forced upon me. That means destiny. I must have it. You are very nice man, you are doing nicely, but some distress is enforced upon you by force. That is our experience.
So the reason is—logic is given—that even without trying for distress, if distress is enforced upon me, so similarly, if I am destined to enjoy something, that will be also enforced upon me. So why should I waste my time with so-called happiness? Tasyaiva hetoḥ prayateta kovido na labhyate (SB 1.5.18). This trying for happiness, I have tried many lives. Fortunately I have got this human form of . . . what is our trying? We try for eating, sleeping, mating and defending. So that is available by the laws of nature. Even a bird, beast, he has got arrangement. Birds, when they take birth, there are two birds, one male and female. So sex arrangement is already, ar . . . because they have no marriage, I mean to say, problem. They eat, from tree to tree there is fruit. They sleep also, they have their sex life, and when there is danger they try to defend. Everyone. So if you also try to improve, but that cannot be improved.
So now we have got higher consciousness, developed consciousness, we should try to understand the problems of life. Athāto brahma jijñāsā. (sound of firecrackers) This human form of life is meant for inquiring about this Absolute Truth, the Supreme Soul. Ātma-tattva-jijñāsā. Therefore Bhāgavata says, parābhavas tāvad abodha-jāto yāvan na jijñāsata ātma-tattvam (SB 5.5.5). Parābhavas tāvad abodha-jātaḥ. Everyone is born rascal and fool. Unless one is rascal and fool, one does not take birth in this material body. One who is actually in knowledge, he becomes liberated, jñāna-vairāgya-yuktāya (SB 1.2.12). That is the result of knowledge. If we are not liberated, if we have not stopped our repetition of birth and death, that means we are in ignorance.
Therefore śāstra says, tasyaiva hetoḥ prayateta kovidaḥ. Kovida means very intelligent person. Expert. Bahūnāṁ janmanām ante jñānavān māṁ prapadyate (BG 7.19). These are the signs, symptoms of knowledge, wiseness. And another place Bhāgavata says, parābhavas tāvad abodha-jātaḥ. Everyone is born fools and rascals, and he's acting in foolishness and rascaldom. Therefore whatever he is doing, this is his defeat. This is his defeat. Actually, if we think very cool-headed . . . suppose whole life I have earned so much money, bank balance, skyscraper building, everything, but if my next life I become a cat or dog or rat . . . there is possibility. Because if I am not destined to enjoy . . . because this life I have committed so many sinful activities, I am not going to have very comfortable life. But I have got attraction for my building, which I have constructed with so many efforts. Nature will allow you to live in that building again next life, maybe as a cat, dog or a rat.