There's an image in the poly cannon of a monk sitting alone on a hill while below people are getting drunk, singing, dancing, partying, and the Buddha in this description uses this image to describe what the authentic search for a true meaning and purpose in life might entail, that it requires going against the stream, it

requires the effort and the willingness to do something that other people are not doing to run against the grain of the world.

So the second image I'd like to bring to Bear.

It's a story of Viennese Austrian Viennese, Austrian Viennese, there's the same thing,

psychiatrist. In 1942 the psychiatrist was with his wife and family brought to Horizonstadt, a concentration

camp. And then he was moved on to Auschwitz and then to dock out his wife wound up in Bergen-Belsen with the rest of his family and they died.

And throughout the three years before he was liberated, Victor Frankel saw countless people just give up on life, surrender to the inhumane conditions and perish.

While he saw other people somehow survive the grueling internment and along with him make it to the

liberation that happened in 1945 when the Allies reached the horror that was Dachau.

So, Frankel, afterwards he was asked

to write a book summarizing what he had experienced

and the gist of his book, Man's Search for Meaning,

was that the difference between those who very often survived and those who perished was that those who survived found an authentic meaning, a deep purpose for their lives,

something that gave them a reason to live.

Because in those situations, those debased situations where everything goes wrong, where there is no pleasure or ease or comfort to be found, Frankle maintained that life still offers

truth and beauty to keep us going.

So I'm going to read you what he found in a moment, but first I'll make a couple notes.

It is human nature to seek our security and our meaning for life in what the Buddha called

the worldly winds of monetary gain, accumulation, seeking pleasurable sensations, achieving popularity,

pleasing other people.

And he says that basically, as I'm sure you've all experienced,

what happens is while those sources do provide some fleeting pleasure,

...