What is the purpose or meaning of life?
This is a question that has resounded through the ages. We are all keenly aware of our mortality, we understand that one day this earthly body which we feel ourselves to be will cease to exist. So it is only natural to wonder what this life is all about, and how best to spend the limited time that is available to us.
In my previous life as a traditional Christian, my focus for this life was to ensure I was saved in the next life. Yet, more and more, I understand that salvation is Now. Eternity is Now. I resonate more and more with the following quote from Alan Watts:
The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.
Alan Watts
We can have less refined or more refined goals for our life. A less refined goal, which will, paradoxically, ultimately lead to misery, is to try and squeeze as much pleasure as possible out of life. A more refined goal may be to dedicate one’s life to helping the poor.
But any such goal or purpose assigned to life contains the implicit or explicit assumption that following this purpose will lead to happiness. It is a mind-goal and it is composed of first taking the self to be an object.
This little “me” which the mind has modelled (with various attributes and likes and dislikes), is the protagonist of the purpose the mind is constructing. It then imagines a future with this little “me” attaining happiness, or a fulfilling life. Then it maps out all the steps required to get to this imagined future.
The tragedy is that some people operate their whole lives under this model, and once they achieve the state they imagine will make them happy, they find that they are still miserable.
Happiness is now or never.
It is ironic that the mind, in searching for happiness, is in that act obstructing happiness. For happiness, peace and joy are your true nature and therefore don't need to be sought out or planned for. This is the tragic delusion.
Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and sink down into some sensation - a sound, a feeling, a touch, a smell. Stay mindfully with that sensation, without thoughts. In that pure experience, are there any problems? Anything that needs to be done?
Prior to thinking, is there any problem? How could there be? It is only with the label “problem” that anything becomes a source of suffering. Prior to labelling, there is just isness, bare experience. There is simply peace.
This is the ground that Meister Eckhart talked so frequently about. You and God share this one ground, this one being, this one awareness. Living in this ground, prior to any “this or that”, to any labels or goals or desires - this is a place of rest. Once we find ourselves here, devoid of any further urgings of the will to seek anything “better”, for “better” is an alien concept in the ground, then there is peace and rest.
If anyone went on for a thousand years asking of life: “Why are you living?” life, if it could answer, would only say: “I live so that I may live.” That is because life lives out of its own ground and springs from its own source, and so it lives without asking why it is itself living.
Meister Eckhart, Sermon 5b
Does this mean that we just sit in meditation our whole lives? No, not necessarily (though that will be what unfolds for some). Actions, tasks and activities naturally emerge from the ground, from Awareness. They arise and there is no asking about why they arise - it is creation arising from the Infinite Ground, and the questioning mind has no part of it, for in the ground there is no desire to know.
Here I live from what is my own, as God lives from what is his own. Whoever has looked for an instant into this ground, to such a man a thousand marks of red, minted gold are no more than a counterfeit penny. It is out of this inner ground that you should perform all your works without asking, “Why?”
Meister Eckhart, Sermon 5b
This ground is no long distance away - there is no distance to travel. It is right here, right Now, when the questing, seeking, craving mind drops away. It can be accessed through meditation, mindfulness, or self-enquiry. When you find yourself craving for something or looking forward to something, ask yourself - “Who is craving? Who is desiring?”
Can you find a little “me” inside who is desiring? Or is it just a fleeting sensation or thought, arising and falling in the great Silence, the Infinite Ground? In such a search, if you come up empty handed, congratulations - the silence of unknowing is the answer, it is the ground from which you should live. It is the True Self.
Calm, empty, happy - without purpose.
Peace be with you all.