Srimad Bhagavatam 1.2.10

kāmasya nendriya-prītir
lābho jīveta yāvatā
jīvasya tattva-jijñāsā
nārtho yaś ceha karmabhiḥ

One should not strive much for sense-enjoyment and gain, a human being is meant
for inquiry about Absolute Truth thus no other duties should be the goal of one’s life.

In the Padma Purana in is explained that there are 8,400,000 species of living beings and therefore getting a human birth itself is very rare. If a person misuses his rare human birth, he is sure to be dragged down to the lower species of life and thus lose the ability to inquire about the real meaning of life. Only in the human birth one has the sufficient intelligence required to inquire about the Supreme Truth and end the vicious cycle of birth and death.

We have seen that many people are simply engaged in sense enjoyment and therefore spent most of their time in earning profits or involving themselves in unnecessary engagement. We should perform our required duties in order to maintain our livelihood, but these are not the goal of one’s life. The goal of life should be, how to get out of this material world of misery, where birth,death, old age and disease are rampant. We can start by simply chanting the Hare Krsna maha-mantra with sincerity and faith, this will unlock the treasures of inquiry unto the Supreme Absolute Truth.

Written by Sankarshan Das