What do you think is the purpose of living? Is it to enjoy, make merry and be happy? Is it to lead a life of contentment? Is it wealth? Or is it something in addition to these things? Do you believe that your consciousness is eternal? If so, how would you like to see it continue?
Of course, I acknowledge that wealth and emotional happiness are important for living a good life, which in turn makes one more likely to be in tune with his/her natural self. However, are these ends in themselves, or are they the means to an end? The Hindu scriptures define one's legitimate and worthy aims in life as Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha. Do you agree with this definition? Do you agree with it partially? Where do you agree and where do you disagree? Is there something that can be added to this list? One's pleasure-seeking and need for emotional happiness may find expression in music, or mathematics, or dance, or work, and that may in turn lead him/her towards Moksha. Non-attachment is only possible by strong attachment to a single purpose, according to the Bhagavad Gita. Do you think non-attachment is an aim worthy of attainment? If so, why?
9 comments:
A very difficult and open ended question... purpose.. towards what or whom?
Very subjective and impossible to find an absolute answer to. The best that's possible to achieve perhaps is to define a purpose of one's own life just for one self. For e.g., an artist could think that art is the sole purpose of their existence. A philanthropist might think that community is the sole purpose for their existence. However, what about the purpose of our collective existence; i.e., the purpose of existence of this community or for that matter the universe? I don't think it is possible to answer that.
About whether consciousness is eternal, I do think so; I don't have a logical explanation. It is just a hunch based on intuition.
We are here for accomplishing universal assignment given to us.Unless we are evolved enough to get the right alignment to catch the signal from cosmos, we remain in Arjuna's state of mind with all the doubts and confusion lingering in our mind.
Perhaps for good reason Buddhistic metaphysics regards this question as pointless. It is frustrating and perplexing. Contemplating this even seems like a luxury considering how many other pressing questions remain open.
@Anonymous blog of April 10th:
The question is indeed perplexing and frustrating. With regard to Sumi's comment, I was referring to individual purpose, and not that of the universe, for which, I agree, the purpose is unknown and unknowable.
Indeed, many other pressing questions remain open, but I still do believe that this question is important, for various reasons.
I would like to try and answer the question myself.
I think the answer to this question is difficult, but not impossible. It is, of course, impossible if we try and find a general answer for everyone - religions have tried to do that over the centuries, and the only result of that has been hatred and dogma. Since people have evolved to a state where they (by and large) abhor hatred, and they have seen that a lot of this is a direct result of an attempt to answer this question, the question seems to have become irrelevant or inconvenient in the present age.
If we restrict ourselves to our individual selves, I believe it is possible to find the answer to this question. We only have to look hard enough. Noone can give us this answer, and I never implied that it is an easy question. I think the answer varies with our experience of the world and evolves as our perception of this experience changes, either for better or worse. If we do not seek this answer for our individual selves, I don't see the point in our existence. As Sumi said, it is not possible to find an absolute answer to this question that applies to everybody, and we have no business to tell others what their answer should be. Doing so only makes us missionaries, not seekers.
Since the purpose of living is determined by me according to me it is a very flexible ever changing thing, but never non existent though occasionally it could be pure nonsense from certain relative point of views! :) ... I believe, it is indeed to enjoy, make merry and be happy - "pursuit of happiness"! Yes, hopefully to lead a life of contentment. You know in spanish the word for happiness is "content" !!! Strange haan? I felt good when I discovered that straight connection and using it repeatedly. "Estoy contente" or something like that means I am happy!!!
Is it wealth? - these days it is lot to do with health than wealth - seriously everybody seem to know that ... health seems harder to achieve than wealth ... No pun intended. Wealth can be made these days, I think there is a significant percentage of Indians on the top 100 of the world's richest today, even in the top 10, and the most beautiful truth about wealth today is that most of those on the list made their money in their lifetime - it is not inherited. So wealth is not too difficult a pursuit as health or happiness, these days I believe. Anything additional to these things is always welcome in my world - I am never ashamed of greed! :) ...
Do you believe that your consciousness is eternal - I hope not, I have a really really bad consciousness - its terribly messed up, I wish it dies with me or before me, or before anybody else discovers all the secret dirt about it!!! :) ... It has lots of conflicts within and is very convoluted in portions! :) And dont even ask about my sub consciousness - it needs Buddha to define the layers of beastly ignorance filled undigested blabbers. Why would anybody want it to be eternal? I wish for a complete total death.
I agree with you that wealth and emotional happiness are important for living a good life, which in turn makes one more likely to be in tune with his/her natural self. Emotional Happiness is indeed a means to wealth, its hard to play this money making game without grand emotional supports. Wealth is never a means to emotional happiness. So EH is an interesting end to reach than wealth... EH is also dynamic and evolutionary, so fun to run after it than wealth!
Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha, hmmm? which one will I choose I wonder! :) Moksha clearly is a hallucination, kama needs lot of effort too - if it is to be made real!!! :) ... artha is easy and well defined today, dharma is too simple to pursue - because dharma is a very relative code of conduct - when you dont like a dharma you just have to switch places or culture or religion or time and usually it is there as a means to the impossible three ends of efficiently distributed artha, regulated domesticated kama or illusionary meaningless moksha.
Yes it is true, one's pleasure-seeking and need for emotional happiness may find expression in music, or mathematics, or dance, or work, and that may in turn lead him/her towards Moksha right her right now in this life! :). //Non-attachment is only possible by strong attachment to a single purpose, according to the Bhagavad Gita. Do you think non-attachment is an aim worthy of attainment?// Man, that is not an achievement that is an annoying character for people like me!!! ... Sometimes I am so deeply involved I stare back at people who are talking to me and stare back at my work and I am lost, I ask after 5 minutes, did you tell me something?!!! ... Tell me did you do that while writing your blog or not?! :)
Jokes aside, I do believe, attachment with detachment on the same task, is quite fruitful in life in pursuit of wealth and happiness. It is only with attachment you make wealth, with detachment you make happiness. People feel scared when they realize you will quit something abruptly after getting very deep into it. I think it is hard, but definitely very rewarding. To be attached to something so deeply that you seem detached from everything else, is easier when we are pursuing what we love, what makes us happy. To be ready to detach from something we got really used to, is really enlightening and amazingly liberating. As long as this attachment detachment game doesnt affect anyone it is fun and worthy playing.
This is a recursive question and will sure cause a core dump to an honest brain which embraces truthfulness and absoluteness and seeks justice(justification of ones beliefs) in our world of relative good and evil.
Try being dishonest to savor life!
@Madura's blog of July 18, 2008:
I thought the meaning of consciousness needs to be clarified, in the light of your comparing it with your mind.
There is a part of your awareness that is aware of your mind. How, for instance, do you happen to know that your mind is full of conflicts? How do you know that there is a lot of dirt in it? This knowledge doesn't come from the mind, but from something that is capable of observing it, which is indeed different from the mind. We get a new mind with every incarnation, and new conflicts, new skeletons in the cupboard as a consequence of our new experiences in the new incarnation. This cannot be the standard for eternity. Consciousness is so abstract that it is indeed even difficult to define precisely. Even relatively enlightened thinkers like Bertrand Russell (for whom I have a lot of respect, incidentally), gave up on the aspect of soul as consciousness because they said it couldn't be observed. While that may be very convenient, truth isn't about convenience. If you've been in states of meditation or very deep concentration, you'd realise that your awareness is in a totally different plane in those states - the observer is still there, but the observed is totally different. Then comes the issue of self-awareness. This is probably the easiest means to distinguish between consciousness and mind. When you begin to observe your thoughts, through practices such as Antar Mouna (Inner Silence), initially there is a lot of resistance from the mind, and the consciousness tends to get lost in the flow of thoughts. However, in time, as the practitioner becomes more and more adept, he/she beings to observe his/her mind more closely, watching each and every thought without allowing it to escape into mindlessness. As this process continues, the frequency of your thoughts starts to diminish, and your thoughts start increasing in power. When this happens, you can will thoughts to stop as per your convenience, and are no longer slave to their constant rattling. In this state of enhanced self-awareness, you can clearly identify the mind-patterns that prompt certain kinds of thoughts, and choose to eliminate harmful thought patterns and keep beneficial ones. As self-awareness thus increases, the dichotomy between mind and consciousness increases. In such states it would be clear to the observer that consciousness is indeed a separate entity, involved with, and yet aloof from, the mind and its conflicts, traps and weaknesses. In states of meditation, consciousness remains, but the mind ceases to be.
As they say, the mind with its present conditioning ceases to be upon death, and I suppose most of us would prefer it this way (I certainly would). I was referring to the eternity not of this mind, but of the aspect of awareness that is capable of observing this mind, which can be shown to exist empirically through practices such as Antar Mouna. I'd like to call this aspect of awareness consciousness, but I don't think it is pure consciousness. Consciousness in a modified form, maybe. Consciousness in its pure form is very difficult to experience.
The essential point is the following: In all our life experiences, we have the observer, the observed and the process of observation. The process of observation may change, for instance it is different in a dream than in reality as we know it. The observed obviously changes. The observer, however, remains the same. It is this observer that I can loosely, though imprecisely, refer to as consciousness. My question was whether you believe in the eternity of this observer. I was not talking about the eternity of your mind, or even its conscious, subconscious and unconscious portions.
Hi,
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BTW I help out some ex-IIMA guys who with another batch mate run www.rambhai.com where you can post links to your most loved blog-posts. Rambhai was the chaiwala at IIMA and it is a site where users can themselves share links to blog posts etc and other can find and vote on them. The best make it to the homepage!
This way you can reach out to rambhai readers some of whom could become your ardent fans.. who knows.. :)
Cheers,
Ray,
Replying several years after your comment as I've been inactive on this blog page. If you can still read this after so many years, I would like to thank you for your proposal. It is indeed worth looking at.
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