Of science and spirituality

Without its ironies, Life would be so boring

Life is an enduring mystery! A logic-defying experience most of the time!

The other day, it was the birthday of a friend who is estranged from me. I wished him on WhatsApp but he didn’t acknowledge my message. He is a classmate from school. And he’s angry with me because I prevented him from driving back home, after we had had several drinks together, one night in 2012.  In fact, a couple of days after the episode, he had told me that “I could not be trusted to be a friend anymore.” I greatly appreciate his honesty in at least telling me so, on my face, even though it hurt me then that I was being misunderstood. Yesterday, someone who I don’t know too well at all, apart from him being a social acquaintance, contacted me, on his own, and without my even asking for it, offered to help me out with a complicated situation. While thanking him profusely, I said I was not sure if he knew me well enough and therefore appraised him so that he could be doubly sure if he really wanted to help me in the manner he was offering. This person cut me short though, saying: “I know you need this help right now. Don’t think too much AVIS. I implicitly trust you.”

I woke up this morning thinking about this irony. It was both stark and beautiful. It was tragic and moving. Tragic because someone who I grew up with has said that he does not want to trust me anymore – for the most unfounded reason! And moving because a mere acquaintance was willing to trust me!

There are no answers to why Life happens to us in the ways in which it does. Consider another instance: a former colleague of mine reached out recently saying he had landed a top job at a social media giant. This, despite the fact that, according to his own admission, “he is technologically challenged”. He classified it as a miracle and wondered how it had happened to him. And I pointed out to him that “all Life is a miracle”. So, let’s stop analyzing Life, trying to apply theoretical constructs or frameworks to it.

Think about it. Everything about Life is ironical. Those who have everything material are often searching for happiness, something that’s easily, freely available! And those who have nothing, while working hard to acquire everything material, are perhaps happier, because they know they can live, as they have lived so far, without money and things. Or those who have gone through a Life-changing crisis have often found a great inner peace. Because despite their upheavals, they have understood the impermanent and transient nature of Life! But when you think logically, when a storm ravages one’s Life, you expect pain, grief and suffering. Not inner peace. Yet ask anyone who’s been tossed up by Life and thrashed down, and they will swear that Life’s trials and tribulations have only made them stronger and more peaceful.

Clearly, then, we can never understand the meaning of Life. The only way to live well is to make this lifetime meaningful! Also, let’s welcome Life’s ironies and paradoxes. Because without them, won’t Life be boring and listless?

Life has no meaning: Just enjoy being alive!

Nobody has any answers to Life. Life itself offers no explanations, no justifications, no reasons, no meanings. It just spews out experience after experience; that which deliver lesson after lesson!

The best way to live Life is therefore to not stop asking questions, but to stop looking for answers or for meaning. Each individual must glean learnings from Life through personal experiences. That really is the beauty of Life. Among the zillion and more questions that have no answers, a simple one that really begs understanding is why this Life in the first place?

A fellow voyager through Life, who goes by the name Ma Anand Utkantha (meaning deep longing for bliss), has this experience to share: “After a very dramatic and Life-changing event in my Life I started to look for answers to the most perplexing questions about Life, about God, what is my purpose, what is “this” all about, why am I lying here, in a hospital’s intensive care, with my body completely destroyed, who am I after all, what do I want, why didn’t I die, why am I living. Sometime in Life one walks through a minefield, where the only thing that counts is how you can rely on yourself, not on others. I needed to learn that. I wanted to learn that so that I could do something meaningful with my Life for me and for others.” So, she goes to Osho, the Master, and gets this answer: “MEANING IS A HUMAN INVENTION. There is no meaning to Life itself, it is beyond meaning. One simply lives, for no other reason; one lives for Life’s sake. Then Life is not a means to something else, it is beautiful as it is; it is not fulfilling any purpose. In fact, it simply is. Because it is not fulfilling any purpose that it is so beautiful, so utterly beautiful. It has no utility, it is not full of commodities, it is full of poetry. What meaning does a rose flower have, what purpose? What is the meaning of a night full of stars? And what is the meaning of love? What is the meaning of all that you are surrounded by? There is no meaning in it. And if you are in need of meaning, then you will project. Then existence becomes just a screen and you project your meaning on it. Buddha says: ‘The inner emptiness is so beautiful, don’t stuff it with junk, leave it as it is.’ And that’s what meditation is all about, that’s what Zen is. It means living out of emptiness, asking nothing from Life, living moment to moment for no other reason, just enjoying being alive. It is more than you can ask for! What more meaning do you need? Is breathing not enough? Is this chirping of the birds not enough? Is the green and the red and the gold of the trees not enough? Is this vast existence with all its splendor not enough? Do you still want some meaning?”

So, enjoy the undiluted poetry of Life in the emptiness of your soul. Stop searching for answers and meanings in Life. Start living. Simply.

Don’t ask What’s-In-It-For-Me. Ask How-Can-I-Create-Value

If you begin to understand what Life is all about chances are you will question its very idea. Because you will be appalled at its meaninglessness. For sure Life is a journey between birth and death. You come with nothing and will go with nothing. So, isn’t it meaningless? Then what’s the point in being born? What’s the point in living, in working harder and harder, struggling to earn a living, raise a family and deal with all the ups and downs of Life? 

This is a pure human conundrum. No other aspect of creation has this ability to think and question. Only humans have this ability – which is also why only humans suffer. If you watch other species they are ‘content’ eating, growing, procreating and dying. They don’t resist Life. They don’t question. But because the human being has a mind, the mind raises these ‘pertinent, relevant’ questions. Which truly are unanswerable. And since they cannot be answered, the seeker is disillusioned and, often, depressed, restless or confounded.

But there’s a different way to look at Life. Which is not to look at it from a What’s-In-It-For-Me point of view but to see it from a How-Can-I-Create-Value point of view. Which is to live and work in such a manner that you leave the world, after you are gone, much better than when you found it. Surely, you know that you will not be around forever. You will not be able to even take any of what you created in your lifetime with you. But you do have the opportunity to leave behind a lot – your thinking, your legacy and your imprint on the world. When trying to understand Life, understand this opportunity too. Then, and only then, will you “wake up” and stop trying to find meaning in Life. Instead you will, despite Life’s evident meaninglessness, work towards making your Life meaningful!

Simply blow your whistle if you feel you must

To live a Life of meaning, you must first understand the meaning of Life. And the truth is, in reality, Life has no meaning. Think about it – what kind of a meaning does Life offer when you are born, without choice, empty-handed and you have to die, again empty-handed; even all the experiences that you have during a lifetime and the learnings, they would seem futile because no one knows if there is an afterlife and if you will even remember any of these in that Life!!! So, the whole Life experience is meaningless at one level. But there’s every opportunity to create your own meaning in Life. To do that, though, you must participate in and with Life.

Most people find their lives listless, meaningless, because they are passive. They are lost in earning-a-living, as opposed to living. Earning-a-living is but one aspect of Life. But if you get obsessed with that one single aspect then you lose yourself to its trappings – worry, anxiety, fear, insecurity, sorrow, grief, anger, jealousy, hatred! Then you are not living. You are merely existing.

To participate in Life, be with it in each moment! Whatever Life throws at you, be with it. Don’t be lost in your idea of Life. You will never find it. Because Life conforms to no (one’s) fixed idea. When you say and expect that Life has to be this way only – you have surely consigned your lifetime to misery and suffering. Because Life’s not going to oblige. Instead be open to receiving anything in Life, from Life, in totality, fully. Let your energy flow into Life’s every moment. Something makes you exult, rejoice over it. Something makes you sad, grieve over it. Whatever makes you offer yourself fully to Life, as it is happening to you in a given moment, do it. Don’t stick to one idea of Life, else you will get stuck in a rut!  

There’s this beautiful story of the Hassidic Master Baal Shem. It was a holiday and several of the Master’s faithful followers had gathered for a communion. 

A man had come with his retarded son. He was a little worried about the boy. He was worried that the boy may do something embarrassing. So he was keeping an eye on the boy. When the prayers were said, the boy asked his father, “I have got a whistle – can I play on it?”

The father said, “Absolutely not – where is your whistle?” Because the father was afraid that the boy may not even listen to his “no”. The boy pointed to his trouser pocket, that revealed the bulge of the whistle and the father kept his hand on the son’s pocket to ensure that the boy does not get adventurous.

Soon, Baal Shem led the congregation to ecstatic prayer. Then there was dancing, and the father forgot about his son’s whistle – taking his hand off his son’s trouser pocket – and he also started dancing. Hassids in prayer are dancers, joyous people – the very idea of Judaism is to let go, to be free, to dance as if there’s no tomorrow. When everybody was praying to God and dancing, suddenly the boy could not resist it any more. He pulled out his whistle and blew on it. Everybody was shocked. And the father was embarrassed. But Baal Shem came up to the boy, hugged him and said: “Our prayers are heard. Without this whistle, all was futile – because this was the only spontaneous thing here. All else was ritual.”

There’s a huge learning here for each one of us. Are you living spontaneously like that boy? Or are you trapped in your own rituals – even if you are subconsciously? Do you feel like doing something else – like dancing or singing or blowing a whistle – but restrain yourself because you think you have ‘outgrown’ that stage or think it to be ‘inappropriate’ to do such a thing? Why not abandon all fixed notions and ideas you have of Life and stop searching for meaning in Life? Instead simply let go and create your own meaning of Life! And if that requires you to blow your whistle, whenever you feel like it, you possibly simply MUST!