[Skybird]

Originally Posted by TarJak

Interesting, however what if there really is no meaning to existence? A first question, (to which I d not pretend to have an inkling of an answer), is why does there have to be a meaning to existence?

Why cannot it just be?

Indeed. You will find in Taoism, Buddhism and christian mysticism the idea that "it" simply is, and that this "being there" already is sufficient meaning in itself. the one spirit/mind/God/ultimate-ground always was, is and will be, it is no object of space and time, it simply "is", and thus it cannot die since it never got born.

Of course this paragraph is just a deformation of the reality behind it again, a product of my intellect distorting the "real-ness" behind it by trying to press it into words in an attempt to express it. But words are just a finger pointing at the moon, not the moon itself.

Does the entire universe exist for a reason other than the fact that something happened to create it? That something may have simply been an explosion, caused by what and to what purpose?

Something...?

I personally never liked the big Bang theory, it opens more questions than it answers. To me it just is the best idea science currently can show up with on the basis of what it has collected in info so far. But in principle it just is a mental and intellectual trap, leading us into a dead-end of our old conceptual thinking we are so fond of.

These are the questions that man has puzzled over to millenia and yet noone is any closer to have a clue about it than when these questions were first asked.

there were some about whom we tend to say that they got closer to the reasons - by own experience of it. Buddha's enlightenment. Jesus being understood to be the son of a god, a description that links him to a higher reason again. Maybe these are just symbols. however, other states of mind can be experienced, sometimes they struck a person out of the blue, sometimes they seem to come as the causal result of a long, disciplined meditation practice. However, such experiences have the potential to impress and influence persons significantly, and change all their life afterwards, and their state of mind and mental attitude and the way they approach things.

I cannot pretend to have any of the answers, however I am also comfortable in knowing that I may never know the answers and that when I die I will cease to exist. Just as everything else in the universe does.

Yes. Maybe you just ask too many questions. Isn't it enough that you just can sit and feel your body taking in the next breathing? Let your ego be, for a while, and tame your intellect a bit like you just tone down the volume of the radio. Realise how it feels to simply be. If you realise that, you embrace all universe in that very moment when you do. Space is just a conception like clay is a tool for the child to play with and form figures from it which then become it's whole playing universe and only reality for a while. Linear time - is a delusion human mind creates all by itself. We calculate the path of the balls in billiard, because that helps to win the match. But when the match is over, we stop calculating billiard balls, for the world and our life is no billard table. So it is with concepts of time and space as well. They are crooks used by our intellect.