Focus on the universality of suffering, not its variety

Hare Krishna focus on the commonality of suffering not its diversity when we live life our mind often compares our situation with other situations and then we tend to become envious or dissatisfied oh this person has so much money this person has such a big house this person has such a good job their child gets more marks in exam in school than my child like that by comparison we create dissatisfaction now if we had glimpses into the hearts and minds of people if we came to know about their private stories we would know that no one is free from suffering no one is happy in this world at least no one can stay happy for long so by focusing on the diversity of situations in life oh this person is wealthy, I am not so wealthy this person is so beautiful, I am not so beautiful we increase our misery and further we think that if I only came in that situation if I became more wealthy then I will become more happy if I was just more good looking then people will notice me more and then my life would be happier but material improvement actually doesn't lead to happiness because if we acquire more wealth often more wealth means more financial threats and more insecurity and different kind of anxiety comes over there similarly with any material improvement actually there is no guarantee of happiness there is often greater complications that come because of that and those complications are not visible to us from the outside when we are just looking at people and seeing how wealthy they are, how happy they look but people may have smiling faces but they will have crying hearts inside so actually how do we know this if we can think that everybody has a body and this body whether a person is wealthy or poor body is going to grow old, get diseased and die and it's going to happen to everyone these miseries are unavoidable further if we look at basic definition of misery we feel miserable when we don't get what we want and when we get what we don't want and this is going to happen to everyone in fact the more wealthy or powerful a person is, more are the wants of those people and that's why more is their misery and so in that sense just if we focus on the diversity of people's situations then we will crave for material improvement and we will not be able to get any lasting happiness at all in contrast if we focus on the commonality of suffering that means yes I may be poorer than that person I may be I may be not as intelligent as that person have as much memory power as that person or whatever but ultimately everyone is suffering and the solution is not to change the material not to try to remove the material diversity but to rise to the spiritual level of consciousness to make spiritual progress to learn to love Krishna it is only when we remember Krishna that we will rise beyond this misery and ultimately we will attain the spiritual world which is free from all misery so when we focus on the commonality of suffering then we understand that this world is like a hospital and yes some people may be in a less sick stage and others may be in a more sick stage but actually the hospital is not a happy place for anyone and the purpose of the hospital is not that we compare how much that person is suffering or how much I am suffering the purpose is that we take the treatment by which we can go to the hospital and return to our home similarly by focusing on the commonality of suffering that whoever, however materially prosperous that person is is ultimately going to be miserable so I need to get out of this world I need to attain Krishna's abode where there will be everlasting happiness and by that we can determinately focus on the practice of bhakti and that is what Krishna focuses on in the Bhagavad Gita 9.33 when he says Anityama so he says this world is temporary and asukham, it is without happiness so now that you are here worship me and in the next verse he says if you worship me he says if you do this you will come to me you will attain me so by focusing on the diversity of different people's situation we will not only get distracted from spiritual advancement to material improvement but we will also sentence ourselves to greater material dissatisfaction by focusing on the commonality of suffering we will get greater impetus to focus on practicing bhakti and thereby transcend.