The Meaning of Life

What is the meaning of life? The answer, I propose, is in the formless, attribute-less soil from which the question takes root.

         Meaning is context dependent, and context can only exist in the relative (dualistic) plane of thought and perception. The question can only arise from a mind that has been conditioned to function in a dualistic environment, where a point “A” leads to a linear point “B.” The thief goes to jail and we reason that it was because he stole the bracelet. A student fails the test and we reason that it was because she didn’t study hard enough. In what is referred as the New Age movement, we get into a car accident and it is because we have been focusing on the negative. It is this dualistic identification that births the question: “what is the meaning of life?”

         The wise seers, the sages of antiquity and the true scientist who have maintained a mind opened in wonder have navigated towards the root where these deep questions arise and have found that at the depths, duality disappears. The lines, the boundaries that seemingly separate are not there, are not real. There is no two-ness in actuality. “Then how and why does form arise? Why was the world created? Why is there suffering?” The persistence in the questioning is indicative of our level of identification this dualistic phenomenon. We have our foot planted on one side, creating a division of sides and we wish to know why the other exists, not realizing that sides are always expressions of the very same oneness. Pleasure would never be known if it wasn’t for the pain that arises from the very same source. We would never know the meaning of beauty if we did not face something that seemed to lack it. Yet the two cannot be but interrelated.

         When awareness has navigated beyond the realm of dualistic identification, the question of the meaning of life itself becomes meaningless. It is like trying to understand the movement of something that has been revealed to be pure and devoid of movement. Like trying to get to know a character from a comic book that you read by asking the pages questions. Form is all an after effect; an impersonal phenomena. When I first confronted this, I felt an internal resistance, for I “wanted” there to be meaning, I “wanted” there to be a reason, or else things would be so cold, so cruel and empty. I had become a religious adherent that “needed” his boon, his prize, his heaven, something to look forward to—something to believe in. Maturity soon allowed me to see the immature nature of such egocentric neediness. It is a phase of weakness that can only happen when there is identification to duality, to what was never real at all. This is the reason that uncontrollable laugher is often the most natural expression evoked when awakening expresses itself through a seeming individual. The silliness of it all is so shockingly apparent, but not in a judgmental way at all (for that would be another dualistic stance), more like when you awaken from a dream at night that you spent so much energy on. You ran for your life, you worried, you cried, you sweated and it was all an illusion, a hallucination.

         I remember watching a documentary where several awakened teachers were asked what the meaning of life was. Only one answered in the most truthful way—he just smiled, did not say a single word. This very moment, just how it shows up, is the very meaning of life.