All that lives is striving for happiness; yet a thousand and one pains and fears attend upon every pleasure which man seeks through the ignorance of exclusiveness.
Interpretation
The pursuit of happiness is universal, but it is often accompanied by challenges and fears stemming from a narrow perspective.
In this quote, Meher Baba emphasizes that the desire for happiness is a fundamental aspect of life for all living beings. However, he points out that this quest is frequently marred by various pains and fears, which arise due to a limited understanding of life that fosters exclusiveness. Essentially, he is reminding us that while we all seek joy, it is essential to recognize the complexities and struggles that often come with it, urging a broader and more inclusive perspective in our pursuit of happiness.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech about the challenges of pursuing happiness.
The experiences are so innumerable and varied, that the journey appears to be interminable and the Destination is ever out of sight. But the wonder of it is, when at last you reach your Destination you find that you had never travelled at all! It was a journey from here to Here.
Love has to spring spontaneously from within And it is no way amenable to any form of inner or outer force. Love and coercion can never go together; But though love cannot be forced on anyone, It can be awakened in him through love itself. Love is essentially self communicative; Those who do not have it catch it from those who have it. True love is unconquerable and irresistible, And it goes on gathering power and spreading itself, Until eventually it transforms everyone whom it touches.
Suffering is essential for the elimination of the ego, just as it was necessary for you to scrub and scrub in order to wash the stain from my coat.
There is no greater romance in life than this adventure in realization.
What I want from my lovers is real, unadulterated love, and from my genuine workers I expect real work done.
Happiest is he who expects no happiness from others. Love delights and glorifies in giving, not receiving. So learn to love and give, and not to expect anything from others.
I think you can be depressed and flourish, I think you can have cancer and flourish, I think you can be divorced and flourish. When we believed that happiness was only smiling and good mood, that wasn't very good for people like me, people in the lower half of positive affectivity.
What would you be like if you were the only person in the world? If you want to be truly happy you must be that person.
I ate apple pie and ice cream—it was getting better as I got deeper into Iowa, the pie bigger, the ice cream richer. There were the most beautiful bevies of girls everywhere I looked in Des Moines that afternoon—they were coming home from high school—but I had no time for thoughts like that…So I rushed past the pretty girls, and the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines.
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.
Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud. We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, all melodies the echoes of that voice, all colours a suffusion from that light.
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