Meaning and Purpose
The following quiz tackles questions about meaning. What does this all mean? Does life have some purpose, some meaning? It’s got to, right? Or no? Why are we here? Can these questions be answered, and does it even make sense to ask them?
It’s a self-evaluated test, but if you click on the + signs below each of the questions, you’re bound to find some answers. Will they be meaningful for you? The ones you sought? Only one person can answer that.
What’s the most sensible thing to do in this lifetime?
a. Develop purity within ourselves
b. Accumulating enough wealth, so we can help the next generation, too.
c. Work on and fix our relationships with others
d. Be nice to others
e. All of the above
Did I get this right?
Unless you have a great deal of purity, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to retain higher spiritual energy, or we might say, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to stay in a higher consciousness.
As you become more conscious of your body, which is eternity, a sense of ease, a fullness beyond description, occurs. In deep meditation we see nothing but purity.
Purity is receptivity, the ability to sit and wait patiently, for as long as necessary, for the coming of the light. Keeping a vigil from lifetime to lifetime, waiting. Purity means lack of hatred, lack of jealousy, lack of fear, lack of any volatile, antagonistic energy. It is the absence of greed, the absence of lust, the absence of anything that can stain consciousness. Greed, fear, lust, hate, jealousy, these are all part of reality too. They exist, but they are partialities. They are small bundles of consciousness wrapped tightly. They are barbs on which you can injure yourself, volatile energies which serve as separations between yourself and perfect stillness, an end to suffering, an end to salvation, an end to realization.
Have what you will, do what you shall, without the realization of eternity, without living in that eternal consciousness, you are alone, separate, fixated, unhappy, incomplete. Human beings become so obsessed with partialities that they miss eternity. It’s what we call penny wise but pound foolish. We’re so busy trying to perfect our desires and the things that matter and sustain us in this world that we don’t see what really is, but these things, no matter how we bring them to perfection, don’t last. Accumulate vast sums of money today and feel better, but tomorrow you’ll die and it’s all gone away. Perfect your friendships and your relationships, but then tomorrow someone will forget you. Someone else will die, and it’s all gone away. Do what you will, succeed at what you shall, but these are all temporary bulwarks, shortstops against existence itself.
To think that fulfilling yourself in this world will create eternal fulfillment is absurd. We think this way, and we feel this way, because we lack purity. Purity is the ability to see dharma, truth, in its manifold forms, both in the field of action, which we call this world, the physical world, the field of manifestation, and in and through the subtle physical worlds, in any plane or any loka. To develop purity is essential then, just for your own peace of mind. Otherwise you’ll go through this world like a mad person, howling and screaming and cursing, never satisfied, never happy. You’ll go howling, screaming, yelling, and kicking from lifetime to lifetime. It doesn’t end with death – it should be so simple. But it goes on and on and on.
Which of the following activities is the most meaningful?
a. Building a church
b. Building a Buddhist temple
c. Making a sizable donation to a charity
d. Establishing a habit of practicing compassion
e. Saving a whole village by stopping the spread of the Ebola virus
Did I get this right?
Buddhism leads you to the understanding, to the awareness, that all things are holy, not just those who meditate and those who become enlightened. That would only be a partial understanding. The real miracle of life is that everything is holy – even the people who do the opposite of what you would consider to be spiritual are as miraculous. The dark has its own light, in other words.
In the beginning, we define what is spiritual and what is not, what is practice, what is not. But as you go on, you see that everybody and everything is an instrument of infinity. You see the miraculous in all things. That’s the greatest miracle, of course, is that everything – not just the categories that you set up, but all things – are holy. All things are divine. And yet we pick and choose among them what’s appropriate for us.
The greatest miracle is the miracle of wakefulness, to awaken from the dream of life and to see infinity everywhere, even in the finite, even in this world, in the simple doings of life – to be able to drive a car or mow the lawn, do your laundry, go for a run, go shopping, to take a shower – but in those activities to be in a field of light while you’re performing them, and to see them as templates of all universes, of all realities. To be in thousands of states of mind simultaneously as you perform simple physical tasks gives you a reverence for life. You realize that there is nothing that is not perfect. There is nothing that is not miraculous.
Does life have meaning and purpose?
a. Yes
b. No
c. Yes, but we can’t know what it is
d. No, but we can choose a purpose and then it will have purpose, at least for us
e. Yes, and the exact value is 42
Did I get this right?
Pure and simple, balance is happiness – happiness in spiritual practice, happiness while meditating, happiness while working, while playing, in pleasure and pain, in sickness and in health, in life and in death, in all circumstances. That’s balance.
How do you do that? How can you be balanced in a world like this? You’ve got to be kidding, right?
Well, the world has always been this way, at least in one form or another. I mean, I’m sure in the Middle Ages, or in the ancient Chinese civilization or the mystery world of Egypt, ancient Atlantis – you pick a universe, a cosmos, it doesn’t matter – there’s always something going on. There is always somebody on your case. Dogs have fleas; people have each other. We’re born to die. Life is a continuing tragedy, tragicomedy. Everything and everyone we love suffers. We suffer. How can you be happy? Life is a horror show, isn’t it? Well, sure, certainly, I mean, yeah, obviously. Anybody who doesn’t see that has not grown up and known life.
Spiritual balance is the ability to, in spite of all that, remain happy – not to be hostile to your neighbor when they’re being hostile, not to get caught up in the trivia. Spiritual balance, in other words, is the ability to climb up the mountain and be in a world of light. The lack of spiritual balance is to get so hassled by the details of life and trying to get everything so straight to climb up the spiritual mountain that you never really do.
Spiritual balance is the ability to get above it all, to see that there’s something more noble – call it divine, happy, bright, brilliant – to this thing we call life. Spiritual balance is the ability to be straight with yourself. The purpose of life is happiness. What else could it possibly be? The purpose of life is something that, of course, that we choose. Life doesn’t have a purpose. Don’t be absurd. The cosmos just is. But by choosing a purpose, in yoga, in Buddhism, we learn that by choosing a purpose, we choose an outcome. Our purpose, our intent, is the outcome immediately. If you feel that the purpose of life is happiness, enlightenment, understanding, then that’s what you’ll experience. If you feel the purpose of life is struggle, Darwinian fitness, you know, dog eat dog, then I guess you’ll be eaten by a dog, I don’t know what will happen. Or you’ll eat a dog. You experience or you become what you focus on – this is one of the principle rules in yoga.
there isn’t really a singular meaning and purpose to life. There are as many meanings and purposes as there are people. And the meaning and purpose of your life will change as you shift.
What's so difficult about giving?
a. To give something meaningful will cost a lot of money or time or energy
b. Not knowing whether the person will reciprocate my giving?
Did I get this right?
Anything that you can think is an illusion. Anything that you can feel is an illusion. Anything that you can see, even your highest understanding of truth, of dharma, is an illusion – an illusion in the sense that it’s a limited thought. A limited thought is a limited thought.
You must understand that anything you understand is not a true understanding. Anything that you feel is not a true feeling. Anything that you know is not a true knowing. Anything that you believe is not a true believing. While all of the things that you believe, know, see, and feel do exist in their own right, in the relative existence, still, they’re finite and limited. They’re ways of looking at existence, but existence is infinite – infinite meaning that it’s beyond all ways of looking.
All concepts, all knowing, all truths, all religious systems, all beliefs fall away in the white light of eternity. The knowledge is so complete, the bliss is so ecstatic, the perfection of existence is so bright and fathomless, endless – that all of our lives, all of the lives that have ever been or will ever be are but a candle held to the sun. When we hold a candle flame up to the sun we don’t see it; in the light of the sun it is gone.
Good and bad, love and hate, life and death, importance and unimportance, all these are mere relative concepts or ideas that fall away with the attainment of knowledge.
It might seem that this knowledge is cold, that it’s devoid of emotion, that it’s empty. This is another illusion. It might seem that this knowledge is useful, that it will help us in life, that it will help us go beyond death. This is another illusion. It might seem – this is another illusion. It – this is another illusion. The idea that this is an illusion – this is another illusion. Anything that you can say, think, feel, believe, trust, count on or feel is untrue is an illusion. The fact that you supposed that you were thinking these things is an illusion. The fact that there are these things is an illusion. Nothing is as it seems. This is an illusion. There are no illusions. This is a gross illusion.
Illusion, however, doesn’t mean that something is not real. Everything is real and nothing is real. Illusion simply means that something is less real than something else. This life and this world simply and certainly exist. Dreams exist. Who is to say that the reality within the dream is not real? The dream is real, but it does not last. This is an illusion. The reality is real and it does last. This is an illusion. No matter which way you turn there’s nothing but illusion. How do we find a way out? By realizing that there’s no place to go, that there’s no way out, that there’s no way in. All that exists is the Self. The Self is infinite, the Self is eternal. You are that Self. There is nothing else. Beyond words, thoughts, ideas, forms and belief systems, there is nothing but the Self.