The Buddha recommends that if you have householder grief, try to replace it with renunciate grief. The real problem is that you haven’t found a deathless happiness inside.

"It’s very sad when you hear about people saying, “Do you want happiness? An unconditioned happiness? Poor you.” What’s wrong with wanting a happiness that’s totally blameless, a happiness that doesn’t take anything away from anyone else? If you don’t have that kind of happiness, the only kind of happiness you’re going to find in life is the type that does take things from others.

I was reading a while back about a teacher who said he wouldn’t want to live in a world without suffering because he wouldn’t then be able to exercise his compassion — which is a very selfish wish: You want there to be people who are suffering so that you can enjoy being compassionate to them? Your sense of well-being needs to feed off other people’s pain? What kind of ideal is that? The best possible ideal is to follow a path leading to a happiness that doesn’t depend on other people’s suffering in any way, shape, or form. Then you can show that path to other people. If they feel so moved, they can practice it, too. That’s the way the Buddha taught, and there hasn’t been any improvement on it since.

So there’s nothing wrong with having a goal. As the Buddha said, the anguish that comes from realizing that you haven’t reached your goal is much better than the pleasure that comes from indulging in sensual pleasures. He talks about worldly or householder grief and renunciate grief. Householder joy and renunciate joy. Householder equanimity and renunciate equanimity. Householder grief is realizing that you’d like to have pleasant sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and ideas, but you’ve got unpleasant ones. For most people, the antidote to that is to find pleasant ones, i.e., householder joy. But that’s not the path the Buddha recommends. He recommends that if you have householder grief, try to replace it with renunciate grief. In other words, even though things are uncomfortable outside, that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that you haven’t found a deathless happiness inside. The grief that comes when you reflect on the fact that you haven’t reached the deathless yet motivates you in the right direction: to follow the path leading to renunciate joy. That’s the joy that comes when you realize that the qualities you’ve developed inside really have led to Awakening. From there you go to renunciate equanimity, the peace of mind that comes when you’ve attained your goal.

People often have immature attitudes about goals, which is why some teachers say to drop all idea of goals when you meditate. That may be a useful attitude for short-term meditation, but for the long term it leads to experienced meditators whose experience of meditation is of going nowhere, and who develop a perverse pride around their nowhere as well. The long-term solution is to develop a mature attitude toward your goal, one that realizes that even though the path may take time, you can take comfort in the fact that it’s a good path and it’s headed in the right direction. This is the mature kind of attitude that really does yield results. There is a deathless happiness, and it can be found through your efforts. Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Path Has a Goal" (Meditations4)

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