Is it really possible to be happy while we see so much suffering in our life and around us?

Is it really possible to be happy while we see so much suffering in our life and around us?

Answer:

If a devotee were experiencing higher happiness and become oblivious, then they would have nothing to do with the material world. They would cut out from the material World and live for their purification alone.

Certainly, obliviousness to the misery of others is not a sign of an advanced spiritualist. Devotees experience distress when they see others suffering and they strive to reduce that suffering.

A person drowning can’t save other people from drowning. An ill who doesn’t know the cure can’t cure others, and a shackled person can’t free others.

These examples illustrate how we need to become spiritually advanced and need to experience some level of spiritual happiness by our spiritual practices if we are to be of authentic help of others.

Certainly, the desire to help others is good, but without the knowledge and ability to help others, our efforts may backfire on those whom we are helping and us!

Suffering in the world are largely self-induced, which is evident in addiction and other sensual indulgence which can be correlated as well. Beyond that the sufferings are also self-induced in the sense that they are a result of one’s own karmas of this or previous life.

ŚB 1.5.35

यदत्र क्रियते कर्म भगवत्परितोषणम् ।
ज्ञानं यत्तदधीनं हि भक्तियोगसमन्वितम् ॥ ३५ ॥

Whatever work is done here in this life for the satisfaction of the mission of the Lord is called bhakti-yoga, or transcendental loving service to the Lord, and what is called knowledge becomes a concomitant factor.

Avidya, we don’t know where happiness actually is. Which leads to kaam, desires for happiness outside. And hence we do karma which has karmic reaction; hence we suffer in material existence.

So, the entire process of devotion and spirituality we do both in parallel. We do our own purification, and experience a higher taste ourselves and we then serve the people with sharing that knowledge with others. Unless we have experienced a higher happiness and experienced the cure for our disease, we can’t share that experience with others with conviction. We may even misleading others. We may not have experienced the supreme happiness, but there are moments of ecstasy. They are the glimpses of what lies when we become completely pure.

The devotees have got a hand which is pulling us out of the Ocean and saving us from drowning, we might as well stretch our hand out to help others.

There is no question of being oblivious to others trouble, and there is no point in ignorantly and frantically bothering oneself about the suffering without enquiring what is the cure, and how that cure is to be implemented.