Though to my understanding, when most people ask about the meaning of life, they are asking why they are here to begin with or what purpose they have in the first place.

It should also be noted that the following statements have very different implications:

There is no meaning to life; therefore, make whatever you want out of your life.

The inherent meaning of life is to make whatever we want out of our lives.

Most people are actually referring to the first statement with the premise implied and this is where the confusion is coming from.

Although I appreciate conversation in my thread, I feel as though my point was missed entirely. It may have been my mistake labeling the thread "The meaning of Life", but I actually never intended to discuss what "the meaning of life" might be.

Let me start again.

For the longest time, I tried to understand life in terms of "meanings": Life has this meaning, life has that meaning, or the purpose of life is to do this , or even "there is no meaning" and so on. Under this frame of mind, life had to be defined in terms of meanings (or having no meaning).

Now, I speculate whether defining or understanding life in terms of meanings is appropriate. It might be like trying to understand a body of water in terms of weight, where as it might be more appropriate to understand how much water you have in terms of volume.

So I'm not questioning what the meaning of life is, yet several people have taken it upon themselves to answer that. I'm asking if there is another way of understanding life, perhaps under different terms, or no terms. So this thread is more about trying to understand life, particularly human life, in another frame of mind.

In short, I believe questioning "what is the meaning of life" is an attempt to understand life. But there may be other ways of understanding life, other than in terms of meanings.

I re-read your opening post. Have you read any Heidegger? You'd be all over it. (To tell the truth, I've only pursued modern derivatives of Heidegger, but maybe I should read the man himself; I'm just afraid the language would be hard to follow.)

So yours is a meta-question: Is there a framework for existence outside of meaning? Heavy stuff, man. I see you heading further down the Buddhist path, yes? This is so Zen. Can you experience the shovel in its shovel-ness rather than existing as something to shovel with? Does it even have any shovel-ness aside from that? What about a person? What about yourself? Can you experience yourself as something without meaning? I think by definition, if you could, you wouldn't be able to tell us about it.

Neurolinguistic Programming contains some thinking on the effect of language on thought. Don't go for any of the cheap technology stuff about V-A-K and eye movements written by people looking to make a buck off the movement; go to John Grinder's "new phase" books starting with "Turtles All The Way Down." He helped me get a real handle on the usefulness of alternate viewpoints and systems of interpretation.

Ultimately the only way to understand life's meaning would be to experience it directly in my opinion. As Sempu mentioned, what you describe sounds a lot like Zen Buddhism. In trying to explain things, too much information is lost in the conversion process. You can explain what its like to smell a flower but its never the same as smelling a flower for yourself. Likewise, someone trying to explain what the meaning of life is not the same as experiencing it directly yourself.

I would also think that such a thing resides outside the domain of logic and science. They attempt to explain ultimately "what happens" but not ultimately "what is" or ultimately "why". The way to find out what something is would be experience it directly imo.


For me, this is how I view things:

what happens -> logic and science
what is --> direct experience
why --> religion

and I'll leave it at that as I don't intend to debate these at all.

I think this is what I'm talking about. It's obviously hard to describe as its entering a whole other way of understanding things. Fun though. :D

Language obviously has a significant impact on our way of thinking. And our language interprets and understands the things around us in terms of its purpose. Like a shovel is a shovel because I can dig with it. If I can't dig with it, its junk.

Now, a shovel is a pretty shallow topic that perhaps doesn't deserve deep thought and attempted newer understandings. But something as significant as life might deserve a more objective understanding - one that isn't limited by our language or frame of mind.

Btw, thank you both Sempu and Baneful for the thoughts, particularly regarding Zen. I will check that out for sure.

You may find Zen koans to be rather interesting.

Oh, I don't know, maybe it's good for practicing on. Once you've got "shovel" down then you can work up to more advanced implements :)

A Zen master would probably say that there's no difference between a shovel and anything else for experiencing pure existence...

Caveman, you're speaking of the human value of reason. As in, how we interpret the world around us. If we think about it in the simplest ways, there is more than what meets the eye. Think of it in terms of light, we only perceive a small portion of the whole spectrum. I'm glad you brought this thread up, because as I said in my previous post, I can think of many people who need to be more open-minded.

You wouldn't happen to be a Zen master, would you;)

Well said.

The purpose of this thread was twofold. First, I find alternate ways of thinking to be fun and challenging. Secondly, this can be beneficial to other people who struggle to find meaning in life. To them, I say it's not about meaning. It's about music. Just let it in, let yourself sing, dance and have fun. :)

i wonder why there are always so much valueable reasons in life - just return to the core, enjoy yourselfe, enjoy your freetime, grab some food and drinks and enjoy the environment :)

Maybe...

The meaning of life is that we are a being,
while,
the meaning of death is that we are an object?

in the end life is an illusion, we put so much meaning into things that we forget to LIVE at all - As long as people dont realize that fact nothing changes, nothing is won!

No matter if you are Bill "Windows Man" Gates or Lost "No Money, No Home" soul under the next bridge of the river next door :

You can still live with whatever you have, and the less you have, the less you care about things which are such stupid timewaste :)

We are overfeed, we are spoiled little brats which run out of control, we dream from neverending richness, the great god who watches only OUR steps. We are selfish and Greedy little children.

There are 2 Ways at least which i see:

1) We die out - What will perhaps mostly happen, dont be depressed, you all see it coming...

2) We do what not well educated Children can do best, we have fun without destroying things.

There is nothing more, nothing less. Every meaning is self created, and we run behind our many dreams like the dog after the bone. And i fear, the dog has in the end more brain as the Stupid children which we are deep to our core.

let me simplify my take on life.

it's when you're not dead.