Goal of human life

HARI AUM

Humble salutations to all.

Every activity in the life is propelled by desire to achieve something. There cannot be any actions and activities if there is no desire or nothing to be achieved. It is this "thing to be achieved" which is termed as goal in modern terms. Modern researchers on the human resource management would still split it into long-term goals and short-term goals. Vedanta on the other hand doesn't accept any long-term and short-term goal instead Vedanta propounds that there is only goal in life. Unlike the HR opinion of goals being different for every person, Vedanta says that there is only one supreme goal towards which we all as human beings are progressing.

Let us try to find out the supreme goal of our life. It can be questioned as to what is the use of finding out the supreme goal of life?? If we know what we desire to achieve in life, then we can then try to move towards achieving or attaining that goal. Unless we know the goal of our life, we will be wandering in the entire world throughout our lives trying to seek petty things in the world always remaining unsatisfied and sad with those petty things.

Each person has different desires or goals to achieve in life. Some will want to become great doctors, others software engineers, yet others music - thus the goal that we work towards differs from person to person. But this differing is only when we dont go deep into what is our real goal.

What does a person want to gain through becoming a successful businnesman??? Money -- of course each person works in the world for the sake of money.

What does a person gain or want to gain from money???
Satisfaction, happiness, peace of mind.

Everyone in the world irrespective of the profession or environment is striving to get ever-lasting bliss. We all want to be happy always - it is this desire which is the supreme goal of each person's life. Until a person gets eternal happiness, he will still be seeking something or the other. In adulthood and middle age, trying to do the work that one likes is easy - but once a person grows old that like vanishes & attention goes to something else. Thus what we think as our goal (in the external world) keeps on changing. As the great 20th century saint Raama Teertha says, a kid seeks his mother - a bit aged kid seeks toys, an adult seeks a lover, a middle aged man seeks a partner, after this he seeks a kid, when he grows old he seeks something else. Thus throughout our lives, we seek different things considering that it is the supreme goal that we want to achieve. But in fact, we forget that what we are seeking throughout our lives is ETERNAL BLISS. It is due to this reason that the great seers of Vedas after achieving ETERNAL BLISS through realization of the supreme being called as Brahman or Lord were ever happy, not seeking anything else in life.

Thus unknowingly we all are seeking eternal bliss alone. Thus the SUPREME GOAL or ULTIMATE GOAL of human life is ETERNAL BLISS. Until eternal bliss is achieved, there will desires to achieve it (through achieving perfection and non-seeking anything is achieved) and this seeking continues again and again. Thus as Adi Sankara puts it in Bhaja Govindam, births and deaths have been spent seeking eternal bliss - thus taking births as different species, different people & in different places -- yet eternal bliss is not achieved. As long as eternal bliss is not achieved, human will be immersed in the ocean of samsaara characterized by sorrows and sufferings. Thus any person who hasn't got eternal bliss suffers in life in one way or the other - he may seem to be happy but yet he doesn't realize that the happiness that he seems to be having is temporary and not eternal - thus when something goes wrong in life, he becomes sad & grieves for the same.

The first to perfection or spiritual realization is knowing that I HAVE TO GET THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF LIFE WHICH IS ETERNAL BLISS.

Once a person knows his goal, then he has to proceed towards the goal. We will see in the next posting as to why people who know this goal and are striving towards it but still not achieving it. We will also see as to how to achieve eternal bliss.

Humble salutations to all.

HARI AUM