The Meaning of Life

 

Book: "The Path of Beauty". Chapter One

The Meaning of Life

When the Soul Speaks, the Self rushes to listen in its lap. 

Ila. What, ultimately, is the meaning of Life, Sura? What can and what should I do in relation to my own Existence? Why do so many questions besiege me, robbing me of confidence when I believed I had understood? Years pass, and what yesterday filled me with joy today casts me adrift, a castaway on a lost shore. I search without knowing what I seek, without comprehending what my Soul needs, without even managing to understand it. I feel like a river whose flow has dried, leaving isolated pools and puddles, neither flowing nor completely evaporating under the midday sun; small basins where all manner of elusive creatures and desires thrive, brought to bloom by anxiety, flames of my burning ignorance that later transform into painful questions.

Sura. My dear friend, what do your restless questions bring to the perfection of this very instant? Are they not, as you yourself have discovered, the perfume of your desiring mind? Do they not, perhaps, express a form of basic attention, of initial movement, even when they are merely a reaction to the scenario of Life in which they appear—that which you call "your Life"? Understand, first, that questions are neither true nor false; they express both knowledge and ignorance simultaneously. Questions carry within them implicit matrices of answers, and these are nothing but a play of representations that will only acquire meaning when we are capable of connecting those images with our Life, and will cease to hold meaning when their representations become alien to us.

Ila. And what can I do with this fire that presses upon me, with this boiling anxiety that conditions and limits me? There are moments when I cannot even give form to my question... and my frustration becomes unbearable.

Sura. You cannot formulate the desire that underlies your question because that desire is not contained within your form of Speech. The mind reflects the impulses of the Will or of Feeling, utilizing the images of your particular cultural language. In any case, it is not as important that you express the question verbally as it is that you understand the desire that sustains it, the impulse that is reflected in your mind, taking the form of a concept, of numerous concepts. Your questions are a reflection of something that is not merely mental, of something much more basic that is present at a cellular level, and at a molecular level... It is an impulse so spontaneous and direct, so unique, that it neither presupposes nor admits a contrary movement.

Ila. You say that questions are neither true nor false. Are they, then, non-dual?

Sura. Although the contents of questions, their meanings, belong to the realm of human language—that is, to the world of duality-ridden representations with which ordinary thought limits Reality—the action that expresses the very act of questioning reveals a creative impulse that is spontaneous and non-dual.

Ila. From where does that creative impulse proceed, dear Sura?

Sura. From the play of creation and dissolution of forms that we call the Universe, forms that adopt the language of Life. On some occasions, the question acts as a force that extends the field of objects of perception. Thus, the scientific inquiry of our time regarding the microscopic composition of beings and objects has led us to see, through scientific tools and apparatus, entities and scenarios that were not unveiled to the naked eye. In other cases, the question leads us to extend the field of conceptual objects, as occurs with the objects of ethics. It is through Speech, expressed in different languages, that the world appears, and it is sustained by Speech, and it dissolves when Speech dissipates.

Ila. And what is the purpose of that creative impulse of Speech?

Sura. There is no single purpose. Purposes themselves are forms of Speech that appear linked to the action of Life, becoming complexified in their process of unfolding. Purposes are the mental reflections, dual therefore, of the non-dual action of the Imperishable Universal Life.

Ila. Are my anxiety and my desire forms of Speech?

Sura. They are. They present themselves and disappear spontaneously. Anxiety and desire are forms of the Speech of the Will of Life, which you then elaborate into different reflections in your Feeling and your Thinking. What questions does the jasmine, whose perfume already climbs into your gaze, evoke in you?

A colorful silence was woven with the song of the birds. The silence yielded to Speech.

Ila. I have read with interest what our science tells us about the human condition, I have walked through the splendid buildings we call knowledge, and my heart has obtained no nectar, no lasting joy, no word that enlivens my Life. I see how our knowledges relegate my humanity, yours, everyone's, to be no more than an infinitesimal cosmic accident, whose result is this identity, precarious and suffering from fleeting pleasures. An inert infinitude tolerates our deficiencies. Yesterday we were children of the Gods, or their lovers, or the best of their works, the center of the Universe. Today we are nothing more than the clumsy extras of our own machines, with which we absurdly want to compete in their calculating repetitiveness and their smallness. I feel orphaned of the Divine, and what is worse, responsible for having sold the bliss of a simple yearning for Beauty and joy in exchange for thirty pieces of technology.

Sura. Dear friend, neither the world nor the Human is today less perfect than they were yesterday. You cannot demand from science a knowledge contrary to its procedures, nor should you be frustrated by the fact that its magnificent trees do not produce fruits that quench your thirst for being. Stop reproaching the pine for not producing roses, and find the Path of Beauty. There was a time when you believed in science, and today that it has left you abandoned to the coldness of its mathematical cosmos, you rebel against it, and what is worse, you become entangled in your rejection. Curiously, you feel the need to justify your most intimate intuitions by leaning on its theories or refuting them. You do not need the approval of any science, nor any religion to understand Existence, to be what you already are. It is not necessary for a Nobel laureate to tell you what the meaning of your Life, or of the Universe, is; you do not need any Guru, any sage, to illuminate your Soul, for you are already Light, awaiting its moment and expressing the perfection of waiting. The child needs no meaning for Life, nor the gazelle escaping the lioness, nor the bacterium riding on an insect. The question about the meaning of Life expresses the desire to die to a Life like the one you lead, like the one you see in world societies, a Life consumed by absurdity and blindness.

Ila. But we cannot live like the animal, nor like the child. The Human Being needs a Life with meaning, needs purposes, intentions, and goals.

Sura. You continue wanting to limit Life to a single meaning, to a correct mental answer that unveils a meaning of the Universe that can be expressed in a finite sequence of words. The weight of your old belief in science still weighs upon you. That belief is like an ember that we resist extinguishing even after it has shown its incapacity to warm our Soul. An infinite Universe has infinite purposes. Life itself is a purpose and a meaning in itself, a pure intention that "it blooms because it blooms," in turn composed of infinite intentions. Every action is a purpose expressing a unique and distinct mode of the Essence. You desire a unifying metaphysical answer for something as evanescent and spontaneous as your Being, Being itself. You wish to reduce the Universe to a few conceptual representations and you miss the old images of the Gods, of God.

Ila. Yes, Sura, I miss God, the idea of a Superior and Perfect Being, although I do not long for the old religions. They fulfilled their function when we were children as a species, but today they are a hindrance to the spontaneity of the Human Soul; they are political and economic actions of identity that have lost the reference to the Living God and merely repeat with apathy a withered machinery. The great religions, alive when their founders were among us, today clash with the absence of consistent ethics in their social practices. They lost their innocence in bloody wars, a very high price to pay for the formation of social identities. Their past violences are still a sad present, sugarcoating violences in new narratives of psychological domination.

Sura. Religions, great or small, are expressions of the Dharma of an epoch. Nevertheless, the Human Soul expresses a Perennial Dharma.

Ila. What is Dharma? I have heard this word again and again, but I do not quite grasp its meaning. In Buddhism, for example, Dharma is spoken of in the plural. The general sense of the word seems to denote Buddhism itself, the Law that Buddha taught, Reality, Truth. But other times, in more philosophical discourse, it seems to refer to the elements of Existence, and more precisely to the constituent principle of a thing, be it material or immaterial. In Hinduism, on the other hand, it has a clearer ethical connotation. In the Bhagavad Gita, we read that when the Dharma of the world declines, the Supreme Being takes human form, and such an avatar restores the order of things. Is Dharma, then, a way of acting in the world, a choice of what is correct? Is Dharma linked to individual karma?

Sura. Many ancient words are covered by the dust of centuries and it is difficult for us to understand their meaning today. The representations associated with a concept are linked to the forms of Life that a particular society develops. In those representations, there are not only conceptual connotations, but also those of the Feeling and Volition of the community that uses them. For us, in the late technological materialism of our century, after more than five hundred years of instrumental rationality, Dharma resonates distant and imperceptible, no matter that the relevance of Dharma for the Human is no less today than it was yesterday.

My Life, your Life, is the unfolding of a Dharma, the course taken by things as far as I am concerned. If we listen to the Rishis of the Rigveda, we see that the word "Dharma" appears as the proper name of a Deva, particularly of an Aditya, one of the sons of the Cosmic Infinite Mother. However, the term most used in the Veda to speak of cosmic order is "Rta," a word that appears from the very first hymn of the book. Rta is the ancestor of Dharma in the development of the vision of those Rishis. We could say that the concept of Dharma has a long unfolding in our humanity, and that it is the result of the macrocosmic projection of Rta onto the microcosm of human order on this splendid Earth. It is a projection that we observe in a generalized manner in human societies even from times prior to cities, in the ceremonies of the shaman's flight in hunter-gatherer groups. Dharma expresses, in our sphere of experience, the deepest mode of being of things. In my Life, both particular and social, it establishes the relationship of my Psyche with the microcosm and macrocosm in which my Life unfolds; it expresses my response and the form of my awakening in Being. My psychological awakening includes both fulfilled expressions of understanding and failed attempts, both pure and genuine, spontaneous as my intoxicated contemplation of the starry sky...

On the other hand, the voice of the Rishi that we hear in the Gita sings of Dharma as rarely has been done until today: it speaks to us of Dharma in the midst of battle. The action that expresses the deepest order of things does not manifest in the same way when we meditate secluded in a mountain cave, in the heart of solitude, as when we walk amidst human conflicts. How simple it is to follow unambiguous criteria of action when it is limited and ends in the scenario of my retreat, forgetting the human group and its storms! How difficult it is to be equitable, generous, honest, and sincere when the Life of those we love seems to depend on an action that would force us to abandon Dharma to benefit them! How simple it is to be like others when we are in the world, or to be as my will determines when I am alone! How difficult it is to walk among ignorance and violence, apathy and malevolence, without our Heart shrinking and capitulating before the powerful blind inertias of Life!

The Yogi calls the world an illusion, but considers the monsters against which his Soul struggles in his retreat to be real, and wishes to subdue them with austerities. The Yogi sees his dispassion and detachment as real forms, his stark approach to pleasure and pain. But these dual representations of the Soul are no less imaginary, no less egoic, than the representations of wealth and power in which anyone who takes the world and its society as the ultimate referent of the Real lives.

The Human Soul has two awakenings. One in Life and another "outside of Life." Or, if you prefer, there is an awakening in immanence and another in transcendence. The Yogi does not awaken in Life, does not open his eyes to immanence, but rather closes them and rejects it. The ordinary person who lives with his group in cities or villages does not awaken outside of Life, in transcendence, of which he is suspicious as something insubstantial and imaginary, of which he only has mediated news from priests and archaic tales. Only by awakening to both expressions of Reality, as we find in the broader myth of Shiva, can we undo the duality of dream-waking, Samsara-Nirvana.

Ila. Have you had both awakenings?

Sura. Dear Ila, something in me colored Samsara with the hues of Nirvana, only to then cover my Nirvana with the veils of Samsara. From that first reading I made of the Gita in the meditation of joyful dawns, from those instants of quenched thirst, of burns under the sun of the ancestral and perennial Dharma of its verses, were distilled the drops of my own Dharma, my nectar, my ambrosia. I feel, my friend, that in some way, something in me has not ceased to live in that Tavern of Light where there are no longer two worlds or two awakenings. My Soul is asleep and awake at the same time, but without somnambulism. My Masks enjoy and suffer... and yet... Ananda... Oh, Blessed Ananda!

Sura lost his sight in a flock of white herons that fluttered above their heads.

Ila. So, is there not a single Dharma for all Humans?

Sura. Dharma is not only Human. It is the infinite reflections of Rta, each one expressing something unique. Awaken to your own Dharma, whatever it may be, and follow that impulse without hindering it with narratives of duality. There is more benefit for your Soul in following its own Dharma than in following the elevated Dharma of any other.

Ila. But is there not a single Reality, a Unique Being? Would that not correspond to a single code of action in relation to the Universal Law?

Sura. The Unity of Reality is simultaneously Plurality. You will undoubtedly have heard this hundreds of times. The One is not a number, but the condition of possibility of number and form. Follow your own Dharma, for in what you call your own Dharma there is nothing personal: your Soul is Transpersonal.

Ila. My Dharma speaks to me of love. Though forgetfulness too often returns me to this daily struggle that tosses me from one state of mind to another. I remember some time ago when you showed me the core of human devotion in Hanuman’s words to Rama, which for me express the Essence of love: "When I do not know who I am, I worship You. When I know who I am, I am You." My problem is that, more often than not, I ignore who I am, and the winds of the world carry me from one place to another. I try to live in that adoration of Being, but it is not enough.

Sura. Cease trying; simply love without any purpose. When you love, there are no two. The states of adoration and unification complement each other; both are necessary. Anxiety seizes you when your adoration, your love, does not find its way to annihilation in the Other. Do you not see that separation and absence give form to Unification and Presence? How could you unite with what you love if you were not separated from that with which you seek unity?

Ila. Should I then practice the remembrance of Being?

Sura. No action, mechanical or non-mechanical, can give you what you already have, what you are, Being itself. Moreover, practice—any action whose purpose is to arrive where you already are, where you already are what you are—can only confuse you and take you away from there. Existence is Encounter and Forgetfulness. Each living Encounter is unique and one thanks to Forgetfulness.