When i was a child, i'm sure i had an opinion about, the meaning of this life.
In fact in writing and reading that last sentence, i recall now, precisely what that opinion was, as a child [of about 9 years old], and i can now also recall precisely where i was, when i had that thought.

But moving on, ...a bullet coursing through a man's brain, or a plumbers wrench crashing through his skull: aren't these consequences, and not a source of meaning(s) ?
And imo, those actions must be the end of thought, and meditation, for the person who is the 'object' of such a consequence.
Because [even if that person's consciousness continues on, of which, we have no certain knowledge] the person who is the object of that consequence, [his essential bodily presence in this life being now ended] he now has no reference or connection to this life, upon which to base any further meditation of, the meaning of this life.    


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The meaning of life ?

On thinking on such a question, i am reminded of that scene, and the circumstance, in the movie T2, where John Connor asks the Terminator, "Are we learning yet?".

Didn't John Connor's posed question shake your world ?    

Out of the mouth of babes ?

Yadda wrote on Sep 20^th, 2011 at 4:33pm:

Whooosh...

That's the sound of enlightenment rushing over your head... and the sound of one hand clapping....

It's the reason the east proposes many births before release.

Soren wrote on Sep 20^th, 2011 at 10:03pm:

And that dying with regret would preclude your release from Samsara for at least another life... Or so they'd say in the east.

NorthOfNorth wrote on Sep 21^st, 2011 at 3:50am:


Samsara... Now I get it. Kafka's Metamorphosis is an eastern parable. Everything is connected.

"One morning, as Gregor Samsara was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug."

A recent book by the sociologist Eric Kaufmann (Will the Religious Inherit the Earth?) makes the now-common observation that secular people have stopped having children. As a secular writer, he bewails this turn of events, but concedes that it has occurred for a reason: "The weakest link in the secular account of human nature is that it fails to account for people's powerful desire to seek immortality for themselves and their loved ones."

Traditional society had to confront infant mortality as well as death by hunger, disease and war. That shouldn't be too troubling, however: "We may not be able to duck death completely, but it becomes so infrequent that we can easily forget about it."

That is a Freudian slip for the record books. Contrary to what Professor Kaufmann seems to be saying, the mortality rate for human beings remains at 100%, where it always was. But that is not how we think about it. We understand the concept of death, just not as it might apply to us.

If we set out to invent our own identities, then by definition we must abominate the identities of our parents and our teachers. Our children, should we trouble to bring any into the world, also will abominate ours. If self-invention is the path to the meaning of life, it makes the messy job of bearing and raising children a superfluous burden, for we can raise our children by no other means than to teach them contempt for us, both by instruction, and by the example of set in showing contempt to our own parents.

That is why humanity has found no other way to perpetuate itself than by the continuity of tradition. A life that is worthwhile is one that is worthwhile in all its phases, from youth to old age. Of what use are the elderly? In a viable culture they are the transmitters of the accumulated wisdom of the generations. We will take the trouble to have children of our own only when we anticipate that they will respect us in our declining years, not merely because they tolerate us, but because we will have something yet to offer to the young.

In that case, we do not discover the meaning of life. We accept it, rather, as it is handed down to us. Tradition by itself is no guarantee of cultural viability. Half of the world's 6,700 languages today are spoken by small tribes in New Guinea, whose rate of extinction is frightful. Traditions perfected over centuries of isolated existence in Neolithic society can disappear in a few years in the clash with modernity. But there are some traditions in the West that have survived for millennia and have every hope of enduring for millennia still.

For those of you who still are searching for the meaning of life, the sooner you figure out that the search itself is the problem, the better off you will be. Since the Epic of Gilgamesh in the third millennium BC, our search has not been for meaning, but for immortality. And as the gods told Gilgamesh, you can't find immortality by looking for it.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MH30Dj01.html

Soren wrote on Sep 21^st, 2011 at 9:11am:

Yep... The relentless suffering of existence... Man and bug.

Yadda wrote on Sep 22^nd, 2011 at 8:56am:



Jesus said....

Matthew 11:28
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
29  Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
30  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.


To me, this description and advice, is exactly correct, and is exactly appropriate for us.

God's message to us, is simple.

Don't 'overthink' it.

NorthOfNorth wrote on Sep 23^rd, 2011 at 7:05am:



No.

You know very well helian, that i was just quoting some words, that were attributed to Jesus.