Life's meaning/purpose

Oh I'd say it is. Try holding your breath and see how emotionally fulfilling it is. Better still, tie a rope around your neck and pretty soon there will be no emotions. Air is not only significant for your emotional well being. It is something that enables this emotional life.

Besides, how is your mood whenever you are forced to endure a foul smell?

if i didn't breath but could still live my experience at life wouldn't be that bad. i understand what you're getting at but you don't need to breath for emotional reasons imo

If you didn't breathe your experience wouldn't be at all.

why do you think that i'm only aware that i'm breathing when i consciously think about it for the most part

Is that "clear" anything to do with the Warren Beatty book?

cyracuz brought it up by comparing to my point about how you forget life doesn't have meaning. that although its minor its still there all the time. but its so minor that you don't notice it, like breathing. (metaphor between the two since they are both there all the time and minor)

I am simply saying that the brain needs air to function, without it it dies. So breathing is essential. Probably more important than the thoughts in your head.

No doubt important, but we breathe so that we can keep thinking and experiencing.



In a good way right?

"how you forget life doesn't have meaning. that although its minor its still there all the time"

I agree in that we never forget life has "meaning", as if we did forget we would surely commit suicide en mass. I disagree though in that life's "meaning" is a minor part of our lives. Life's meaning IS our lives. We acknowledge life has some abstract or concrete meaning when we pull ourselves out of bed every morning. Such a simple act is so profound in what it signifies.

I like this thread...... so to the top!

As far as I'm concerned meanings are human constructions. Life does not come with meaning; we ascribe meaning to all experienced phenomena. In fact, the interpretive process is part of what we mean by experience. Objectivism and its counterpart, absolutism, are platonic fictions. Subjectivism and relativism more accurately characterize what our lives are about. The meaningful life is a life that we have constructed creatively. Indeed, our life should be an artistic creation. When we fail to effectively give meaning to experience we suffer alienation, depression and ennui.

I disagree with you there Jl. Is a glass merely a construction of our mind? I think that what the Buddha was saying was that we must be aware that our concepts of things might be attached to emotions that might delude us from seeing what the thing is.

To me life is meaning not because of "creation", but because of harmony between my awareness and reality itself.

Ray, good points. I'm not saying I'm absolutely right, since I am a perspectivist. The glass is many possibilities, depending on level of observation, vessel, molecules, atoms, quarks, strings, etc. ad-who knows? The concept, "glass" is undeniably our construction. "Reality" is also a foundational notion, just as is "foundation." To me (my perspective again) the value of ideas is (1) in their aesthetic value, and (2) in their pragmatic value. Both have some relevance to your notion of "harmony with reality," I suppose.
Are you saying that the buddhist notion of attachment has only to do with emotions and that the absence of emotion permits us to experience the "suchness" (a zen notion) of things? My understanding, for what it's worth, is that attachment leads to suffering (dukkha) because it freezes the inherent flux (sunyatta) of everything, including the "self") causing us the pain of delusional "suffering." Actually, there's no suffering, only the flow of concrete experience. Meaning and purpose give us the feeling of having grasped reality, of having stopped its flux and feeding the illusion of self. But the buddhist notion of liberation or enlightenment goes beyond that, beyond pleasure vs pain, meanginfulness vs meaninglelssness, etc. beyond all dualisms.

Hmm, interesting Jl.



The inherent flux of everything will always be in flux. The thing which causes suffering I think is is told by the second noble truth, desire. However, I think that this is more strongly applied to a mental suffering and not physical, since we do feel pain when we're hurt. However, sometimes we create our pain by focusing on a part of our body too much, and I think that meditation allows us to defocus from this sense of phantom uncomfort to a relaxing and more direct experience of breathing in and out. Now taht I think about it, pain is a warning sign to tell our body that we are hurt. Therefore, we avoid it, but sometimes when we are hurt, we tend to cause more mental suffering by thinking of wanting so much to get away from the pain when we know that it will take time for the wound to heal.

The self thing, is the delusional side-effect of sentiency. We know that we are a being, but then the delusion of the "ego" comes in. In this case, we are too absorbed by ourselves, that we create an illusion of separateness from reality. Am I getting this right?

Sounds good to me, especially your implied distinction between physical pain and the suffering we create by our attachments to it. Remember, "attachment" refers to BOTH our pursuance and our avoidance of something.

I see. Don't you tihnk that it has complications though?
I think that its' okay to want something as long as you don't want things that are harmful to others and yourself, and as long as you don't kill yourseves over it. Sometimes desire is needed. A sense of avoidance is also needed. Pain signals tell us to avoid pain, and this is useful because pain warns us of harmful things and the feeling itself is not good.
I see that sometimes we have to go through pain that is unavoidable, and desiring to put the pain away could escalate into mental suffering, but if the desire is there but not on a scale that would lead to suffering, I think it's okay. It's like fire. Small fires are useful, but wild ones are dangerous.

Ray, what you say is correct, but it is on a slightly different line of thought. I, too, recognize the importance of desire, in that without movitation we would just turn off behaviorally and turn to slime. Even rational thought is motivated behavior, meaning it is goal-oriented or expressive of some desire (to pursue or avoid). Attachment is not the same thing as desire in this sense. It refers to a mental fixation on the object of desire; it freezes the object as an abstract good. When you offer me a piece of chocolate I take it and enjoy it, but I try to not be "attached" to the pleasure of the taste such that my mind is not able to attend to what is happening at other moments. When there is no chocolate in the present, I tend to and enjoy what is present. A free, flowing, present, mind is one that is not fixated by attachments in this sense.

Oh, I see. Thanks for clearing that up. No wonder it usually says attachment rather than desire.

I think this includes freedom from attachments to the abstract goods of fame, social rank, security, power, wealth, beauty, virtue, even love.

JLNobody wrote:


This reminds me of the ascets in Herman Hesse's book "Siddharta". They sit in the mud, denying their egos, taking refuge in trees, carcasses and animals to "kill" their egos and become one with everything. Siddhartha tries this, but he discovers that his ego is swelling unattended with pride at how good he is doing. He realizes that he is not becoming less attatched.