Q: A friend recently asked me an important question and wondered if you could shed some light. She asked, what is the point of living? … (she) wondered if all is perfect then why create or manifest humanity? Are we trying to work through something? which of course suggests imperfection. Perhaps you have a suggested reading?
This is such an important question today as we face unimaginable change, losses seemingly on every front, the swirl of fear and uncertainty, a profound erosion of care, and yet we also see immense creativity, a deep commitment to shared generosity and basic goodness,…and much more.
“What is the point.” we sometimes ask, as we veer between nihilism or despair on one hand and fantasies of protection and the many forms of grasping hope on the other. Is there a way to understand our everyday, grounded practice as it relates to this huge question — what is the point — and how does it bear on our lives now?
Remember, spiritual practice, and Buddhist practice in particular, is not about creating new ways to solve problems. Our practices help us open to a more wise and compassionate space from which we can respond creatively to our inevitable and unending problems. Zen practice won’t give you a new solution. It will, however, shape and inform how you come to every solution and reminds you that every solution is provisional.
Here is what I wrote…
A: As to your friend’s question, “What is the point of living?” The point is to live. We are given this amazingly miraculous thing called “a life,” so we have a responsibility to take care of it and to care for each other—to care for all things that have been given a life. I don’t have the capacity nor inclination to tackle the larger philosophical or theological issues surrounding your question. People have been speculating about these big questions for as long as people have been given lives, and I sense that a good deal of the philosophizing is done out of a vulnerable and fearful attempt to face the existential question of existence in a way that will give them some ground to stand on or some assurance that they are doing the right thing or going in the right direction. In our spiritual search, we want answers that will console us, or at least ones that offer us something, rather than nothing.
The Buddha refused to answer most of these kinds of questions, not because they were not important, but they were not the essential questions that would help inform and guide a life. The question you pose in your note, along with the additional query from your friend, “if it is all perfect, then why create or manifest humanity?” includes some pretty important assumptions. Things are “perfect,” meaning they are a perfect manifestation of all the causes and conditions that went into manifesting each thing and each moment. Things are not perfect in some ordinary way of matching human preference from a self-referenced perspective. Obviously, many terrible things happen, seemingly daily, and these are also perfect manifestations of the causes and conditions that went into manifesting them. Human beings are part of that perfection—part of that manifestation—not some separate aberration set aside from “nature” which can be romanticized as “perfect.” Each of us are also a perfect result of everything that went in to making us. This is the foundation of the natural world and it is also what we chant in our confession and repentance [All my ancient twisted karma…].
Our lives on this earth are temporary and precariously balanced along with everything else, and we are also likely to become perfectly extinct as a species if we allow our self-centered minds and egoic desires to rule. We humans are supremely creative and also ruthlessly destructive, but those are just human creations — linguistic descriptors of perfect actions (i.e. naturally interdependent, arising as mutual causation), but offered from a single person’s individual viewpoint. Remember — awakening is stepping beyond a personal viewpoint.
The universe is an equal opportunity employer—everyone gets a chance—but everyone and everything has to play by the rules, which means that no matter what we think or wish, everything always effects everything else, intimately and without end. So, it is probably a good idea to be awake to what we do and to the consequences of how we are doing it — how we live our lives. And herein lies a response to your friend’s question. The point is to live a life in the service of life. Our purpose is to support and cherish this miraculous existence so that the ongoing perfection of impermanence and mutual causality, the contingent flow of dependent origination, this vast web of one-thing arising, might be wholesome and generative to all. We are all part of the game and how we play it matters. There is only one thing happening, and it looks like this!
Of course, I am making my own assumptions in my reply—that there is no master manipulator calling the shots. There may or may not be some divine direction, but that is not what we are discussing here and it open up an additional discussion that is not required now. The lawful interdependence of everything is what is in charge. The dharma might be called the guiding energy of “god" or “great spirit” or “universal mind.” But, these are, again, additional human descriptions of what is always and already happening anyway. There is no perfect existence which exists out there which is then spoiled by humans. Humans do spoil things but that is part of the immense fullness of existence, including clumsy and brilliant humans, and we are not more or less important than anything else in nature. However, because we have been given these big brains which can imagine and create almost anything, we do have an enormous impact on each other and everything else on the planet. So we have an immense responsibility to wake up. The point is to pay attention, to care, to love, and to be humble in the face of it all. Ultimately, we don’t really know.
With a respectful bow,
Flint
P.S. You can also see and hear my offering of this at online Inquiry: September 8, 2020