Once a beautiful and richly-dressed woman visited a house. The master of the house asked her who she was; and she replied that she was the goddess of wealth. With great delight the master of the house invited her in.

Soon appeared another woman who was ugly and dressed in rags. The master asked who she was and the woman replied that she was the goddess of poverty. The frightened master tried to drive her out of the house, but she refused to depart.

“The goddess of wealth is my sister,” she said. “There is an agreement between us that we are never to live separately. If you chase me out, she is to go with me.” Sure enough, as soon as the ugly woman went out, the other woman disappeared.

Nature is marked with changes. The flowers bloom and fade; the tides rise and fall; the moon waxes and wanes; and the seasons come and go.

Just as nature is a circle of moods, so is human life. Like tides, man’s moods rise and fall; life is happy and then sad.We like to think life is like a rose, but remember that the rose has thorns too, otherwise we will be hurt.

The Buddha taught that there are eight worldly conditions which affect human life: gain and loss, fame and ill-fame, praise and blame, and happiness and sorrow.

We rejoice at the arrival of gain, fame and happiness, and lament at the arrival of their counterparts. But these conditions are really two sides of a coin.

Birth goes with death; fortune goes with misfortune. Bad things follow good things. Yesterday’s joy will become today’s sadness; yet today’s sadness will grow into tomorrow’s joy. Like a wheel constantly turning, sadness turns to joy, exultation to depression, happiness to melancholy.

Like the flowers, our joy today will fade and wither into sadness; yet as today’s dead flower carries the seed of tomorrow’s bloom, so does today’s sadness carry the seed of tomorrow’s joys.

Therefore, the Buddha urges us to develop equanimity – the evenness of mind so as not to be tossed high up with elation or drowned deep with sorrow. Like a solid rock unshaken by the winds, we maintain our serenity in the face of those worldly conditions.

Those seeking true happiness must transcend these conditions and be free from emotional attachments. Be like the lotus, unsoiled by the mud it springs from.

Extracted from Buddhism for You, lesson 6.