Consider the materialistic life. Its a state of complete
agitation and conflict. You can never fix things to be the way you
want. You cant just wake up in the morning and decide exactly how
you want your day to unfold. Forget about weeks, months, or years;
you cant even predetermine one day. If I were to ask you right now
if you can get up in the morning and set exactly how your day was
going to go, how you were going to feel each moment, what would you say?
Theres no way you can do that, is there?
No matter how much you make yourself materially
comfortable, no matter how you arrange your houseyou have this,
you have that; you put one thing here, you put another thereyou
can never manipulate your mind in the same way. You can never
determine the way youre going to feel all day.
How can you fix your mind like that? How can you
say, "Today Im going to be like this"? I
can tell you with absolute certainty, as long as your mind is
uncontrolled, agitated and dualistic, theres no way; its
impossible. When I say this, Im not putting you down; Im just
talking about the way the mind works. What all this goes to show is
that no matter how you make yourself materially comfortable, no
matter how much you tell yourself, "Oh, this makes me
happy, today Im going to be happy all day long,"
its impossible to predetermine your life like that. Automatically,
your feelings keep changing, changing, changing.
This shows that the materialistic life doesnt work. However, I
dont mean that you should renounce the worldly life and become
ascetics. Thats not what Im saying. My point is that if you
understand spiritual principles correctly and act accordingly, you
will find much greater satisfaction and meaning in your life than
you will by relying on the sense world alone. The sense
world alone cannot satisfy the human mind.
