Moments of Happiness and Sorrow

An Explanation by Maharaj Charan Singh

This whole world is full of misery, sorrow, sickness. That is why we can never get everlasting happiness in this world. In fact, this human body – the top of the creation, the temple of the living God – was bestowed on us due to both our bad karmas and our good karmas. If we had only bad karmas, we would have been in hell. If we had only good karmas, we would have been in heaven. It is the combination of good and bad karmas which gives us the opportunity to be in a human body in this world. So the combination of good and bad has brought us here. And while being in the body we have to face the results of both the bad and the good karmas.

Some people are fortunate in having more good karma and less bad karma; so, due to that, they have more happy days and fewer unhappy days. Others have more bad karma and less good karma, so they face more unhappy days and have fewer happy ones. But every human being in this world has moments of happiness and also moments of sorrow. We will not find anyone in this world who has nothing but happiness and has not faced any sorrow; nor will we find anybody who has nothing but sorrow and never got relief or had some happy moments in his life. This world is the field of good and bad karmas, where both good and bad are harvested. Therefore, because we are in this world, we have to pay for our bad karmas, and that is adversity.

I have tried to explain that saints never come into this world to make it a paradise or a heaven. They come only to take us from this place of adversity, to take us away from this place of good and bad, which is full of ups and downs, rich and poor and the like. Their only purpose in coming is to take us back to the Lord. If we try to solve our problems in the world, we can never succeed; but the saints give us certain handles or levers, a way of meditation, through which we can always rise above these problems. If we try to pick up all the splinters of the world, we cannot succeed. But if we have strong shoes on our feet, they do not bother us at all. The saints arm us with that meditation – the strong shoes – so that the ups and downs of the world do not bother us. We rise to that stage, that level, where our worldly situation makes us neither happy nor unhappy. The real happiness we can get only when we merge back into the Lord. As long as we are in this world, we have to face ups and downs; sometimes we are rich, sometimes we are poor, sometimes we are happy, sometimes we are unhappy. But we should not lose our balance. We should always try to keep our thoughts in meditation. That is why saints advise us to remain in his will.

What is his will? To face these karmas gracefully and boldly, by keeping our attention in meditation – that is living in his will. Why is it essential to remain in his will? If, due to our good karmas, we give ourselves to sensual pleasures and worldly achievements, we forget the Lord. If, due to our adversities, our bad karmas, we worry, we weep, we cry and are full of self-pity, our thoughts again get scattered in the world, so we can never meditate. Since good and bad will always be here as long as we are in this body, when are we going to meditate? So the saints advise us that whether we are reaping the fruits of good karmas or of bad karmas, we should always keep our attention in the Lord. We have to remain in his will. We have to be resigned unconditionally to his will.

Whatever our store of karma is, good or bad, we have to go through it. But I can assure you that by meditation our will becomes so strong that these good and bad karmas do not affect us at all. We rise above the effects of good and bad karmas, and we easily and happily account for all these karmic debts with the help of meditation. And sometimes the Lord, out of his love and with his grace, helps to reduce this load of karmas, or rather to clear our karmas without taking full account of those karmas. So we should not lose our balance when we have to face some adversities, when we have to face the effects of some bad karmas. Rather, that is the occasion when we should give more time to meditation. We should give more time to devotion, our spiritual practice, so that the effect of that karma passes off and we are again on our feet.
_{Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III}