THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

Human birth is rare; we have to make the best use of it by not engaging in sinful activities. The sinful activities are being greedy, lusty, angry, and violence against other living beings (animals and humans).

This body is just one drop in the ocean of bodies that we are going through. A sword is hanging over your head. It will fall at any moment. All your properties, cars, and big bank balance won't help you at the time of death. It is your spiritual life only which will count at death.

Purpose of life is not sense gratification but self-realization.

The material world is an illusory energy to deviate the living entities from the path of self-realization. Anyone who is in this material world is extremely anxious to get more and more things for sense gratification. Actually, however, the purpose of life is not sense gratification but self-realization. Therefore, those who are too addicted to sense gratification are advised to practice the mystic yoga system, or astanga-yoga system, consisting of yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara and so on. In this way, one can control the senses. The purpose of controlling the senses is to stop one's implication in the cycle of birth and death.

As stated by Rsabhadeva:

nunam pramattah kurute vikarma
yad indriya-pritaya aprnoti
na sadhu manye yata atmano 'yam
asann api klesada asa dehah

"When a person considers sense gratification the aim of life, he certainly becomes mad after materialistic living and engages in all kinds of sinful activity. He does not know that due to his past misdeeds he has already received a body, which, although temporary, is the cause of his misery. Actually the living entity should not have taken on a material body, but he has been awarded the material body for sense gratification. Therefore I think it not befitting an intelligent man to involve himself again in the activities of sense gratification, by which he perpetually gets material bodies one after another." (Bhag. 5.5.4)