What Is The Goal of Spiritual Practice?

Before we start walking a path, we should have some idea at least about why we are walking it and about where it leads. In the Buddha's eight-fold system, this is called "samyak drshti", the right view. When we consider the lives of great masters like Swami Vivekananda and Sri Ramakrishna, we are not only fired up by their fervor, intensity and renunciation but we can also learn something about what is to be valued in spiritual life and what is to be aimed for (and perhaps also what is...