The external world, so fascinating, so infinite in its variety, has us firmly in hand and thoroughly mesmerized. Lasting happiness is almost ours – over there, just ahead of us, right around the next corner. When we round that corner and find it has eluded us, something in us says, “Keep running! It’s just around the next corner.” Finally, our life becomes a continual pilgrimage around corners. Such is human credulity that even after rounding a thousand corners, we still say, “The thousand and first, that is the corner.”

If we believe that happiness arises only when some external condition is fulfilled, we consign ourselves to a perpetual state of discontent. For even when our expectations are fulfilled, sooner or later the little voice inside starts again, “More! More!” It is this habit, this almost mechanical fixation of the mind, that keeps us forever chasing rainbows, until at last we begin to suspect that the kingdom of heaven is within.

Source:The Thought for the Day is today’s entry from Eknath Easwaran’s Words to Live By.
(Copyright 1999 and 2005 by The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation.)