What is the root cause of sorrow?

A young man says that life is full of happiness, but a wise man, who is aware of the reality of life, says that life is full of sorrow. Where does this sorrow results from? Various philosophies around the world preach about “sins of the past” as the root cause of all the sorrow and hardships of life. Most of these philosophies become quiet when you ask about the root cause of sins? How to get out of the vicious cycle of experiencing the result of sins of the past and the occurrence of more sins in present? How to free ourselves of all the past Karma and establish ourselves in eternal peace and blissfulness?

The Saints of Sanatan Dharma have very logical answers. These Self realized ones advocate ignorance being the root cause of all the sorrows, of all the sins and of all the vicious cycle of Karma. Ignorance, meaning ignorance of our own true Self, ignorance of the right path as per Dharma and ignorance of the Truth. Even in our day to day life, while conducting in the outer world, ignorance causes all the hardships of life. A child attempts to touch the fire because of ignorance. Similarly, because of the spiritual ignorance of life, one goes on performing the sins under the influence of enjoyment-seeking mind.

Once the seeker gains wisdom of the Self, once the seeker realize the wonderful Self, once the ignorance ends, all the past Karmas are burnt. After that nothing in this world, no person or no event can upset such a blissful seeker. Such a seeker becomes free of all the results of Karmas because all the actions of such a seeker become selfless actions with no motive of gaining anything. Such a seeker rises above the day to day worldly happiness and sorrow, and establishes himself in the ever lasting peace and eternal inner happiness.

Contemporary man has made tremendous progress in gaining the knowledge of the outer world but remained unfulfilled and restless due to the ignorance of the inner world. With the help of all sorts of scientific gadgets, modern man has accumulated all the comforts for this body, but the mind remained restless and unhappy because of the absence of inner wisdom of the Self. This ignorance is so deep that people don’t even want to talk about spirituality or the inner wisdom. They are not even aware of their ignorance of the inner spiritual world.   

While talking about such dogma of modern life, Saint Tulsidas rightly said:

Tulsi purab ke paap se , hari charcha na suhai;

Jaise jwar ke jor se, bhook vida ho jai !

Translation: Tulsi (Saint Tulsidas) says that because of the sins of past, the divine talks doesn’t invoke any interest; just like as a result of fever, the hunger is lost. 

Because of the fever of enjoying modern luxuries, fever of running after momentary sensual pleasures, the hunger for knowing our own true Self of knowing the inner world or knowing the God is lost. In the absence of such a hunger, how can the modern man attain a long lasting inner peace and ever-lasting happiness?

Acceptance of such ignorance is the first step for a true seeker on the path of seeking inner happiness. Writer Stephen Hawking wrote, “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” 

Wake up and spend some time on gaining the wisdom about your own Self, about your own inner world rather than spending all your time and effort for gaining the knowledge of earning money or knowledge of the ever changing external world. Mark Twain once said, “I would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have got so much more of it.”

On the side note, this quote from Mark Twain makes me laugh every time I read it: “when I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”