Quote:
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?
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Joseph Campbell used to say that people often talk about searching for "the meaning of life" when what they are really looking for is the experience of being fully alive.
Only humans (as far as we know) seem inclined to ascribe a pre-ordained meaning to their existence, as if there needed to be some grand eternal supernatural point to it all. Life just
is: there is no point, beyond being alive, other than the aims and purposes that we adopt or create for ourselves. Which ideally should arise from and add to that experience of being alive as the unique individual that each one of us is.
In one of the gospels that didn't make it into the church-approved canon - the gospel of Thomas - when Jesus is asked about when the Kingdom of Heaven will come, he is reported to have given a much different answer than the one the Powers That Be allowed into the official version.
He said, "It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, 'Look, here!' or 'Look, there!' Rather,
the Father's kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don't see it."
When is eternity? Where is "heaven"? It's here, it's now, if you can see it already immanent in the world as well as transcendent of it. So is hell - if that's what you see, if that's the world that you make for yourself.
There is a Zen saying that when one person becomes enlightened, the entirety of existence becomes enlightened. What has changed about the entirety of existence? Nothing, except that the entirety of existence
for that individual is what s/he perceives it to be, nothing more and nothing less. When that perception is enlightened, so is the world - for that individual. The kingdom of heaven is spread out upon the earth - and s/he can see it.