After initially being depressed and struggling with this question most of my life, coming to the atheistic conclusion that it has no purpose, after discovering spirituality I vaguely accepted the notion that "The purpose of life is to evolve spiritually to ones highest level (Enlightenment)." I accepted it because it fit vaguely into the experiences and teachings that were/are resonating strongly with me, but I wasn't able to grasp the full sense in it for myself. After watching a discourse from an Enlightened master (who I did a workshop with when I was younger), I found these words and such sense in them that they really stick more than the vague "The purpose is to evolve" notion. Life has no purpose. To give a purpose or end goal to life is to disqualify the value of life itself. To attempt to put a purpose upon life is to reduce it to a means to an end, and therefore make it value-less on its own. If life had an end purpose, every moment of life would be just to reach that purpose, and would be a sleep-walk, confused, meaningless existence. Which is what most of humanity experiences, whether they know it or not. To make your life purpose to be this or that, is to not be present to living life itself but stumbling through life with your eyes fixed on an illusory goal, and when you get to that goal you realize that neither that goal mattered nor the life you lived as an "in order to" to get to that goal. The purpose of life is to awaken to life itself. To awaken to the complete reality and ecstasy of what it means to be alive. NOW. Every moment. To awaken from the delusion that there is a goal or end, and awaken to living life with LIFE, not to live like the living dead.
That's exactly what I was going to say. Something like that. We're living, and that's all that matters, we were given a LIFE, so we need to make it the best we can, there will be obstacles, and depending on how you deal with them/face them, you can make yourself a stronger person. Forget that you're going to die in the future, just live in the present, that's what smoking weed has helped me with. And I like it. My purpose is to fix what's happening now. And I hope your depression fades away
I would say the point of life is to experience. Which is essentially the same thing. Its difficult to fully appreciate the moment you're experiencing from when your mind is constantly fixed upon the past and future.
The depression was until a year ago, until I found spirituality. No more since then, never has come back, not once Everything is experience. Whether you sit at home eating yourself into oblivion or go nightclubbing and drop E and acid and get down and hookup with someone else rolling, theyre both experiences. Experience will occur as long as you stay alive..what makes an experience different, what makes the way you feel inside and look at the world different? Awakening from thought to presence and awareness.
Someday one should settle down. Responsibility will follow even the most Enlightened master. Sure, she can block it out... but surely she knows better. What's the purpose of purpose?
I personally believe the purpose of life is to achieve true understanding and "enlightenment" if you will. AKA spiritual development.
Responsibility to what? "Settle down" to what? The only responsibilities that we deem as humans are created by us..nothing man-made will "follow you" unless you follow it. Enlightened people don't just eschew all responsibility. Try and see if that suddenly makes you jump spiritually. Its much more to that. Incidentally, the only drive that is left upon complete personal fulfillment (enlightenment) is to help awaken and help and heal and be compassionate towards others. What else can be left when not a moment of ones existence is no longer influenced by personal desire or personal needs?
Most of us just being awakened have come back to the beloved terra from our home planets to help save this sacred one. If we succeed, we will claim our inheritance the earth and the oneness will overcome everything. Everyone has the option to follow whatever their heart desires.
Question: Say we did find the "Purpose" for life. People would start to pursue it in order to reach the highest level of themselves that they can achieve correct? Now, take that and correlate it with that of a someone who believes in faith and heaven... The effect has already been produced and you can see it from ordinary religious people. I work as a cashier at a grocery store and people forget to take out items from their cart all the time. I jokingly tell them that they could have gotten away with it but they stare at me and say "No!, God is watching me" or something similar to that. Some are so fasinated with what they believe to be the purpose of life that they devote their morals and ethics towards it. I for one, would rather not know the purpose of life or even have a belief in it. Maybe it turns out to be an extraordinary afterlife or turns out to be a waste of time and you die without ever getting to "LIVE". Either way, I'm content enough with life as it is.
The Purpose of Life? Once again, Purpose is a product of a Mind. No Mind, No Purpose. It requires a Mind somewhere to give anything Purpose. By design, Purpose of Man would require Intelligent Design. If there is no Mind, no Planning, no design, there certainly could be no purpose. As for Man, the Purpose of Life is whatever you decide it should be. It could be many things. Otherwise, you would have to ask, Why was Man created? Or rather, "What is the Purpose of Life Intelligent Design had in mind for Man," eh? Purposeful intent would belong to the creator and not the created, wouldn't it?
You guys are overcomplicating it, the purpose of life is to reproduce, thats is, anthing else is a delusional fantasy or survival mechanism, sometimes both. Life is just the spite of the 2nd law of thermodynamics
How is your version of 'what is lifes purpose' not a survival mechanism and a delusion? Why is it spite? Due to your own over complicating reality and mistaking it for your emotional response to it. Using your own advice, all thought about life is over complicating it, even attributing it to simple reproduction. The simplest, most uncomplicated answer is to let it be without even attempting to find a purpose for it.
No Mr. bojangles. The "Way" of Life is to reproduce. The "Purpose" is way something different. Now there is only two ways to go here. At the beginning of the universe (Of which Life is a part) there was a causation, a first cause. Either "Intelligent Design" or no. And there is an old battle between the "Evolution Physics" and "Intelligent Design Physics" and it has nothing at all to do with religion. I'll not go any more into that, but suffice to say if there is a "Purpose of Life" it would have to come from the Intelligent Design side at the point of the first causation of the universe. Of which I think is probably right. We have a Mind to discern things but not the only minds on earth. Yet our Man Minds kinder to an enlightenment beyond all the other minds on Earth. I say look both ways and many other ways.
The assumption that everything is due to cause and effect, that everything is a part of a web of cause and effect, comes from the grounding in material phenomena. Is mass and material phenomenon all there is? There is also the space within which phenomenon exists, that can exist independent of whether phenomena arises in it or not. All phenomenon is subject to cause and effect. What about the natureless space within which phenomenon arises? That is empty, void of any nature, void of any material to be caused by or have an effect on? Is the universe the phenomenon that arises in the space, or the space itself? Our addictive feeling that cause and effect is a must and an always comes from relating to phenomenon as the absolute, comes from relating to the rate of change of phenomenon (time) as an absolute, comes from being grounded in phenomenon, which is impermanent. When one aligns with the space within which phenomenon arises, the space from with the cause-effect web of phenomenon emerged, one experientially realizes the possibility of the plausibility of the in-absoluteless of cause-effect and of time. If phenomenon comes and goes, if the big bang existed, and all matter and energy was the size of a pin-point, where did this pin point exist? In what space was this condensed phenomenon able to exist? The space for the pin point to exist in would have had to exist before and behind the pin-point at all times. Is this space not then the reality behind phenomenon, is it not then the universe itself? If it is the universe, then since cause and effect applies to that which can be caused and which can cause an effect - phenomenon, and since this nature is essentially devoid of any phenomenon as its intrinsic nature, it is not subject to cause and effect, or time. Did not have to have a point in time where it was caused, a creator, or to have come to be created at some point, because these are all properties of phenomenon, not emptiness. The universe is without beginning or end, without up or down, it has always been and will always be.
fuck eat and die. but i guess while your not eating fucking or dead you need to do everything to evolve from an eating fucking mortal animal?
Yeah...well man is pretty smart. We understand a lot. We got pictures and some understanding of our universe. Learning more fast. To travel space requires one big knowledge base of a few big minds. But anyhow...I came back because I think i found the answer. --- What is The Purpose of Life? Life is the purpose. --- Which begs me to ask, can we build a self sustaining eco-city that could self exist in outer space? Mankind master the universe? Can we daddy? Ha ha.
The dead have risen? Anyhow yeah you are right. Just one Big Tube consuming on one end and excretimentintational out the other end. A consuming tube is really all we are...really. Just like a cow. Moooo.
We understand nothing, even now there was that big science article that tore apart certain scientific beliefs about the universe. Pictures and knowledge of how many atoms and molecules, how many stars and star systems is just bookish knowledge about the physical nature of certain things. Heck, our core assumption still seems to be that the universe is simply comprised of phenomenon, and by studying the phenomenon we can understand the universe. What is the space in which all this phenomenon is able to exist? If all matter and energy were once the size of a pin-head, what empty space was it within which the pin-head was able to exist? This space would have had to exist before and behind the pinhead and all matter at all times. This empty space is devoid of study-able phenomenon, it is devoid of mass, devoid of direction, devoid of energy, devoid of everything- simply a void. It has no inherent nature, what nature is there to study as we do study all other phenomenon? If this empty space exists behind phenomenon at all times, is the universe phenomenon or primarily this empty space? If one is studying the phenomenon that arises in the space and not the space itself, how can one know the most basic nature of the universe? Of what use is knowledge about phenomenon? If we manage to pin point the exact smallest particle that comprises matter, manage to accurately date back the big bang, manage to accurately draw up an entire map of the universe, then what? What does this leave us with? Will we be satisfied, will we KNOW anything? We still will be left with the desire that there is something more, something deeper to know. The WHYs cannot be answered by science. It is a vicious cycle, knowledge never satiates, desires never satiate, what use is all this knowledge when it will never satiate us?
Hunger and thirst. Responsibility to those who you are associated with. Enlightenment is not detachment, as far as I know. It's closer to reattachment, but still nameless. Settling down... well, I suppose your body will never get old.
life=dna dna has one purpose.... to replicate so. life= replication the purpose of the universe is a whole different story, which just leads you in circles