Are the lives of people going in cycles: once up and other times down?

 Yes, we are born, grow, maintain, dwindle and die only to repeat the process in another body. Some bodies are better and some are worse but they keep coming till we are liberated from this cycle of birth and death - samsara.

Even within one life happiness and distress come and go and we have no more control over them than the seasons. Although the seasons are predictable our happiness and distress is not. At the start of a new year no one can accurately mark a calendar with all the good days and bad ones. The ups and downs are temporary, they come and go of their own accord. Faced with that, Sri Krishna advises us to learn to tolerate them without being disturbed.

O son of Kunti, the nonpermanent appearance of happiness and distress, and their disappearance in due course, are like the appearance and disappearance of winter and summer seasons. They arise from sense perception, O scion of Bharata, and one must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed. Bg 2.14

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