One doesn't stay in a state of nirvana by hiding from difficulties. You stay in nirvana by lavishing nirvana on everyone you meet, by giving it away as fast as you receive it.
Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe
When tipp'd with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe;...
Yet thy true lovers more admire by far
Thy naked beauties - give me a cigar!
Society, magazines, posters, music videos, investment bankers. A lot of times, in my past anyway, looking within wasn't overly encouraged. Pretty much everybody proclaimed that fame would give me power and fortune.
Things are simply the way they are. They don't give us suffering. Like a thorn: Does a sharp thorn give us suffering? No. It's simply a thorn. It doesn't give suffering to anybody. If
we step on it, we suffer immediately.
Why do we suffer? Because we
stepped on it. So the suffering comes from us.
Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, "Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe," or "Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet." They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They
cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complex picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can
only represent what is unusual.
It gives me great pleasure to converse with the aged. They have been over the road that all of us must travel, and know where it is rough and difficult and where it is level and easy.
If you're extremely rich, and you have got children, my theory was, you give them enough so they can do anything, but not enough so they can do nothing.
Newspapers. . . give us the bald, sordid, disgusting facts of life. They chronicle, with degrading avidity, the sins of the second-rate, and with the conscientiousness of the illiterate give us accurate and prosaic details. . .