Throughout life, each of us asks many questions. But there is one over which mankind struggles the longest. What is the meaning of life, we ask ourselves. And we don’t find an answer. What does this mean, says the psychologist.
Philosophers, clerics, psychologists have answered this question for centuries, but no answer has proven to be universally correct. Because every person has his own meaning in life.
This question was asked by all world religions, and they all answered it in their own way. Jesus said that the meaning of life is in faith in God and in finding the kingdom of God after death. The Buddha believed that the meaning of life is to live it in harmony, rejecting desire and hatred.
Muhammad said that life is entrusted to people by God in order to dedicate it to the understanding of God, and this leads to eternal life.
Plato remarked that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Therefore, the meaning is to explore it, to comprehend it. Nietzsche connected the meaning of life with the death of God, and, consequently, with the loss of faith in absolute moral laws, the cosmic order. Camus believed that we ourselves create the meaning of our lives by making decisions.
But no one has offered a definite, clear, if you like, universal answer. Perhaps because to begin with it is still worth answering another question that stands next to it: “Why do we want to know this?” This is a much more relevant question, if only because it can be answered. So, why have people been busy searching for the meaning of life for many centuries now?
The denial of death and the search for the meaning of life is a great lie that defines the lives of many people.
Yes, because none of us wants to accept that life is meaningless. Instead of accepting this fact and moving on, many people spend their entire lives trying to find it. They are looking for it in religion, philosophy, psychology.
People think that if they get rich and become famous, they can cheat death. There are madmen who believe that they can defeat death by taking over the world. The denial of death and the search for the meaning of life is a great lie that defines the lives of many people on the planet.
Denial, like any defense mechanism, has a side effect. The more violently we deny something, the more it is filled with meaning. The more we deny death, the less we notice how confidently we are moving towards it. A prime example is how many people deny climate change despite the facts. Sigmund Freud would say to this that we unconsciously want death, unconsciously wish it on the planet.
In the Eastern tradition, methods of deep meditation are practiced, where the main thing that is contemplated is death. People spend many hours meditating on their death. They literally imagine, visualize how they lie in the grave and rot! The purpose of this action is to reach a state in which there is no attachment to life, so that we can fully realize that we are mortal. Only by accepting the fact of the inevitability of death, we can free ourselves from the gravitating attachment to life and from the problems that it brings.
Buddha and his followers did not cling to life, they meditated on death
Clinging to life, trying to find meaning in everything, we come to false gods, values, myths that hurt not only us, but also others. If we come up with the idea that the meaning is in praying to God, then everyone who does not pray to him will be lower than us. If we decide that one group of people (to which we obviously belong) is a group of “good people”, then another one will obviously become a “group of bad people”. Both lead to tension and disagreement.
The Buddha and his followers did not cling to life. They meditated on death, renouncing vain ideas about life, the thirst for revenge, power or glory, envy and rivalry. For those who are accustomed to seeking meaning with the stubbornness of a maniac, this kind of meditation is insane. But for Buddhist monks, the crazy thing is to cling so tenaciously to your life and think that death is what happens to others.
Source: Psychocentral