Why on earth should you be happy that you are miserable?
For two reasons – firstly it is because of suffering that you think of God and try to free yourself of the ego that is causing you to suffer.
The second reason is that life is suffering in any case according to Buddhism so you might as well make the best of it and as happy as you can be under the circumstances.
You can hide from life but you cannot hide from suffering. Suffering will catch you out. And in trying to hide from it you may find that you have missed out on life.
For more on the Buddhist view on suffering please see the link below. It is not a very long article and is well written and thought provoking.
There is one point of view that not only is there no escaping the experience of pain but that pain is the experience. Please go through the quote below:
Just as a stream flows smoothly as long as it encounters no obstruction, so the nature of man and animal is such that we never really notice or become conscious of what is agreeable to our will; if we are to notice something, our will has to have been thwarted, has to have experienced a shock of some kind. On the other hand, all that opposes, frustrates and resists our will, that is to say all that is unpleasant and painful, impresses itself upon us instantly, directly and with great clarity. Just as we are conscious not of the healthiness of our whole body but only the little place where the shoe pinches, so we think not of the totality of our successful activities but of some insignificant trifle or other which continues to vex us.
The point is, not only is there no escaping the experience of pain, but pain is the experience.
These are the words of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.
Ok so possibly I have established to your satisfaction that life is suffering. Now here is the reason some people were happy that this is the case:
Of course not everyone prays for objects of enjoyment. For example in the Mahabharata Queen Kunti prayed to Krishna for dangers and troubles: “O teacher of the world let calamities always overtake us because we would then always have thy sight which prevents rebirth.”
… Tulsidas prayed: “Lord let lightening fall on my happiness and let misery be with me always.” Happiness takes the mind away from God and we think of God more in the time of misery.
Finally there is the purpose of life according to the Sufi sage Rumi. According to a Google search:
Our purpose here on earth: to manifest the very nature of our spirit, which is touched by the spirit of God.
You will notice that here there is no mention of being happy or miserable. If being miserable helps us manifest our purpose then misery should be welcomed.
And this is how important this purpose is:
In the Masnavi, Rumi’s extensive poem of spiritual and ethical teachings, he says that if we perform and remember everything else, yet forget our essential purpose, then we have done nothing whatsoever.
A related earlier article on my blog is below:
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