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The Purpose of Life
ClayTheScribe
Veteran
I have been reading Sogyal Rinpoche's The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and he refers to near-death experiences (which I know not all Buddhists believe in). The one common experience people have is that they are asked to reflect on how much and in what ways they loved others and about the acquisition of knowledge in their lifetimes. That kind of re-affirmed something that came to me in an epiphany a while ago. The purpose of life is to love, learn and laugh. It is alliterative, so I do like how it sounds, but also it encapsulates most of what I believe we were put here to do. And you cannot do one without doing the others. You can simply love others, but if you do not learn about them in the world, your spiritual experience will be dampened. If you do not laugh, loving and learning are more difficult. If you learn, but do not love while doing so, you may learn in very unskillful and harmful ways such as learning about pain by inflicting it on others. Much of what you will learn will be hard to cope with, so you must laugh to make it easier. You can laugh, but if you do it out of ignorance, fear or hatred, you will acquire more karma and be further from enlightenment.
What all would you add to that list of the purpose of your life? What things don't fall under my three Ls?
What all would you add to that list of the purpose of your life? What things don't fall under my three Ls?
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Comments
In that order.
That's not selfish, I'm quoting HH the DL, here.....
The idea that Life has an Ultimate Meaning or purpose does not hold . This has meaning relative to that, and this has purpose in the context of that, but this and that together have no external reference......no context in which to take measure. Life at once cannot be contained in meaning. This is not the same as saying life is meaningless, because to say "meaningless" is to assign negative meaning. It is more accurate to say that it is inherently free of either meaning, or absence of meaning.
An Ultimate Cosmic Purpose, no matter how gloriously concieved, is a nightmare scenario where everything is bound, subordinated, and ultimately reduced to that purpose alone. It is the absolutizing of relative and contingent purpose, the fraction consuming the whole.
Poetically speaking, all I can see is endless free-play. This free-play has pattern and rhythm that in human experience has a basic feeling tone of ever-rising, or Joy. There is superabundance. As William Blake said "Energy is eternal delight".
There is within given relationships, such as "me and my world", deeply valued meanings, but if these meanings become absolutized and fixed, the unconditioned joy giving rise to the whole picture goes into eclipse. The world in eclipse is an endless reaching for lost Joy, one compensation after another
...can't speak for the experience of others though.
Cultivating a relationship with my God.
Becoming stronger THAT I can help others.
So now my purpose is to type this...
Next to eat lunch...
I trust my tools to strike as they should in the context of the natural moment... thus far the typing is going well! I suppose onto lunch!
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Since I've started learning about Buddhism, everyone has told me they are still searching for answers. The question occurred to me "are there no answers because Buddhism already contains the answer?" Thinking about it some more led me to the age old question of life, the universe, everything. And I realized that the answer is very simple and right in front of my face. It's to find the answer, for me. And that changes as we go throughout life. Therefore we need to hone our instincts to be able to follow our answer as it changes and we grow. That is what Buddhist practice gives you and that is why we meditate. This was very exciting. I was sure it wasn't an original thought, but I looked forward to sharing it anyway. I even imagined this conversation with you.
All this came to me while I was trying to practice mindful dishwashing. How's that for some attachment? I have a long way to go.
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I have to wonder if thinking about the meaning of life is more of a distraction. It's a moving target that's impossible to verify. Like @Zero said, maybe I should focus on the moment, and not worry about the rest of it.