For the last few years I have struggled to find the meaning of life and living. I have found no meaning. In fact, I am convinced that there is none. Or there is none that can be uniquely determined and confirmed. If you ask around you get answers like meaning of life is to discover life, to love, to help others, to enjoy .... none of that is convincing or satisfying. They all sound like just attempts to give a nice sounding answer. Maybe I am not yet ready to comprehend it. The most convincing approach to this is what Buddha apparently said "Search for the meaning of life is meaningless." What I take away from that is that the pursuit of finding a meaning will not reveal the meaning. It is a wrong approach to comprehend it; the meaning will become apparent to me when I am ready. Officially, I have dropped the pursuit.
However, I still have no answer. Actually, it has stopped bothering me most of the time. However, whenever I am feeling low, the sheer meaninglessness of life creates a vacuum in me. Meaninglessness makes me wonder what to look forward to in my life. Often, I think there is nothing to look forward to.
Another approach which I have come to like is just to live in the NOW (present moment) and not to think about past, future or the meaning of life. By focusing on enjoying the present moment, in what ever shape and form it comes in, I stop caring about the future and with that, also about the meaning of life. This works great as long as I can stay in the NOW. Unfortunately, the past and future always sneak back and often take full possession of me and with it the meaninglessness reappears. So the meaninglessness of life appears as a thought when I am not in the NOW.
So, maybe the meaning of life is just "living in the NOW" - without pursuit of anything. Otherwise, you are not really living.
It is all a part of The Reality.
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Is there any other objective besides finding "meaning of life" that keeps one going? What is required to keep one going without feeling aimless?
ReplyDeleteI remain convinced of an absence of any absolute and objective meaning to living and life. "Meaning" is a concept - a prduct of the mind and thinking, and hence not absolute. The desire for meaning is born out of our belief that there has to be an absolute meaning and it must be possible to understand it. Often the meaning is essentially our subjective vision of what the personal future should be like. In other words, it is a realistic dream of the end of our personal story. And I do believe we need such dreams to motivate us.
ReplyDeleteThat is why if I cannot form realistic dreams of my future, I become more accutely aware of the meaninglessness of life. The problem lies in the mind dwelling in the future (colored by the past events). It comes from my mind which paints bleak pictures of the future. And I know that this does not happen if I live in the NOW and just enjoy it - when the mind is not allowed to get an upper hand. When I am in the NOW, I do not see any meaning either, but the search for meaning "loses its meaning" and importance. And that is what I call "living".
The bottom line is I should have dreams to motivate me and guide me with a direction in life. But I must be able to believe in my dreams for them to really help me. And I should be able to accept if things turn out to be different in reality (that is always very tough). But these dreams have nothing to do with the meaning of life. The real living is when I am not influenced by purpose, meaning or intent. That happens in the NOW.
Some of this is not easy to express in words since words are poor approximations of what one feels and senses.