THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

fulfillment of their desires. There is desire in the world but its pair, the fulfillment of desire, does not exist here. Every man and woman born in this world is faced with this question. Everyone wants to find the answer to this question but, before finding a satisfactory answer, he leaves the world in despair without his desires being fulfilled. American missionary Billy Graham writes that once he received an urgent message from an aged American billionaire. Billy Graham cancelled all his programmes and immediately left to meet him. When he reached his house, he was ushered into the room where he had to meet him. The billionaire said to Billy Graham without any introduction. “You see I am an old man. Life has lost all meaning. I am going to take a fateful leap into the unknown. Young man, can you give me a ray of hope?” Billy Graham had no satisfactory answer to his question. The American billionaire left the world with this feeling of deprivation. Billy Graham himself, according to recent information, met with a severe accident, is confined to bed and is now waiting to go to his final destination. The same is the case with every man and woman in this world. Everyone wants to know the purpose of his life. Everyone is in search of a life full of happiness. Everyone wants to find a life of total fulfillment, but his life ends in failure. Events tell us that all men and women come to regard material things as having real existence. And everyone has tried to find a life of fulfillment by accumulating such material things. But no one, without exception, has been able to achieve this desired fulfillment. In such a situation the actual problem is that we keep repeating this same unsuccessful experience. But now, we have to make a reassessment of this matter. The first thing we have to do is to concede in all seriousness that the material things of the world do not provide fulfillment. This being so, where is this source of fulfillment to be found? When human desire continues to exist, then we shall have to believe that it is something real, and when it is something real, then certainly its source of fulfillment should also be available in the universe. This issue can be understood by the example of a journey. When anyone travels by train or by air, there are two stages to his journey. One is when he is in the course of his journey and the other is the reaching of his destination. For a journey to be successful, the traveler must understand the difference between the two situations. The traveler who fails to do so will unnecessarily fall a prey to mental tension and will finally lose his balance. The wise traveler is one who takes the journey as a journey and does not regard it as his destination. It is natural that during the journey all the facilities are not available which can be expected at his destination. But every traveler tolerates this, because he is certain that the state of the journey is a temporary one. Finally his journey will come to an end, and he will reach his desired destination; and after reaching his destination, he will find all that he wanted, which he had not found during the journey. Our present life covers a very short span of our existence. Its being short itself is a proof that it is a state of journey. It is a period before arriving at the destination. That is why it is not