REACHING FOR HAPPINESS, WOULD YOU HEAR ME?

Hear my voice; it may sound like gong;
How often you sit weeping;
Listen, you may call it a song.
Are you satisfied with the life you're living?
Open your eyes and look within.
Has not the hour arrived for turning back?
You wonder as if in search of something missing;
So hurt and your days have become so dark.

You lie in cold obstruction and left to rot;
In loneliness, frustration, and oppressive guilt - you bathe in fiery floods.
You’re imprisoned in the viewless winds;
And blown with restless violence round about.
You live with intoxicants as tending to cloud the mind-
Will you be made a man out of your vice?
Threatened by anonymous forces difficult to comprehend or restrict,
You see your life being set in concrete.

Perhaps pain has become your portion;
Physic has become your food;
Groans have become your devotion;
Drugs will do you no good.
Living in distress, you die in pain;
Looking for anything to complete the good of mind and body;
Slogging in endless misery, yet little or no gain,
Enmeshed in indignity, feeling so sorry.

Trail of tears force down your cheek
As you brood over goals you did not achieve.
The sudden metamorphosis of your livelihood
Leaves you in immeasurable grief – you’re in all likelihood,
Molested and worn-out in turmoil of mind,
You have encountered darkness as a bride.
Engrossed in inebriation, you dare.
All in the quest to be free from pain and fear.

Hear my voice that I may reach you;
The shortest way is commonly the foulest.
Take my words that they may heal you;
The way to happiness is certainly cloudless.
The satisfaction I would require is likewise your own benefit;
The path I do crave for will fetch you a lot of credit.
Nature has placed under your governance – to censure and treasure
Life’s two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.

With these words I recommend you thus;
In reaching for happiness as your primary goal in life,
You must be on the polite and amiable side.
For politeness and amiability will breed you wealth.
In the quest for success, forbid those things you do by stealth;
Where through virtue it can be attainable.
Hold to the things which are reliable
I throw it down for your freedom

The brain is the seat of all joys and happiness,
And the receptacle for the development of pain and sadness;
The habit of acting according to wisdom is the advantage
As therein are seated wisdom, understanding, and the knowledge
Of the difference between good and evil
‘Tis the core of regulations, where in the storm of darkness - a light to kindle,
The core of organizations – there is the truth about one’s underlying character
All the desires - Anger nurtures and water them when they ought to wither

Therefore, look to simplicity; embrace purity;
Lessen the self; diminish entreaty.
Refrain from voluptuous misconduct
Do good; seek peace, and pursue it.
And if you hold this firm you shall have begun.
If you enlarge it, you can become great;
But if you regard it lightly, you shall wither.
The potentiality of its flourishing rests with you and no other.