All goals arise out of suffering

Acharya Prashant
2 min readApr 12, 2020

Why does one set a goal? Sitting over here, do you have a goal right now? In your moments of joy, do you have a goal? Deeply immersed in love, do you have a goal?

So, when do you have a goal? When you are joyless, when you are loveless, when you are suffering, only then you have a goal. Do you want to have goals in life? Invite suffering.

The more deeply you suffer, the more you will be attached to your goals. All goals arise out of suffering and they also perpetuate your suffering.

What does a goal tell you? The goal tells you that I can take care of your suffering. It tells you that if you attain me, if you reach me, then your suffering will be removed. You are suffering right now, the goal is in the future; always. When is the suffering? Right now. What is the goal telling you? That the suffering will be taken care of in the future.

I have a headache right now. I need a treatment right now; not two years later.

You are feeling miserable today, but what are you telling yourself? That two years later I will get a job and then I will not feel miserable anymore. It’s a false medicine. It will not help you. And that’s exactly why we set goals.

Because we don’t feel good about ourselves, we say, ‘There is something wrong with me, once I attain the goal things will be set right.’ Is that not the logic of goals?

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Acharya Prashant