Meaning of Life

Misunderstanding the senses leads us on the wrong path in life. Many who have followed this path have not seen the falasy and have ended up wasting their entire lives.

The Senses

The senses create a powerful illusion if we don’t understand them. Naively we think what we experience is what is there. Only partially correct. When our senses are intact we get an experience. So the experience depends upon our senses and so it’s not just the world straight and simple.

Eyes create sight experiences, noses smell experiences. We are well familiar. But its wrong to say the world is actually made of the things we see or smell. The sound of a tree falling in a forest with no-one to hear it obviously doesn’t make a sound. You need ears to get a sound.

If one doubts whether the tree needs hearing to make a sound we need only ask a deaf person what sound it makes. However the deaf person may well feel the vibrations. They may also see it, which a blind person won’t experience. So the tree falling creates many experiences in many senses, in many people. There is no single *experience* of the tree falling. Each person not only has multiple experiences themselves like seeing and hearing, but each person has a different experience. This is the source of the Great Illusion because we know in truth there is just one tree falling.

In the East there is a 6th sense in addition to the normal 5. This is the sense that experiences thoughts. When we experience something we may have a sight and a sound but we will probably also experience the creation of a thought about it. This is a source of much confusion. In the case of the tree falling the thoughst will be diverse. But in the context of this discussion one of them may be what is the Truth? What is the correct true thought? Did a tree really just fall? Arguments may break out as people challenge their various experiences. But it is really helpful to see that these thoughts are created by the events as much as the sights and sounds. Less mentally strong people may, like blind people, have duller thoughts but at root thoughts are just part of our experience.

The Way To Freedom

In our thoughts we may pursue this now self generaing snow ball of what “really” happened if our senses are interacting with the tree falling and creating lots of different experiences. What does a tree falling “really” mean. What we conclude after much thought is that a tree falling has no quality of itself. It needs to interact with the world to take on a form, and the form created depends upon what is there. The sound of a tree falling in a forest with no one there, like Schroedingers Cat with the box closed, is what is called Sunyata in Buddism. It can be either, but itself it is neither. It doesn’t mean that it switches between states, or that it is confused about what it is, it IS Sunyata. The confusion only occurs in our thoughts which by definition deal with things that are this way and that. Sunyata can’t be thought. Sunyata is the cause of thoughts! To the wise however they can see that the manifestation of concrete things is itself Sunyata. They are not to be separated. As the Heart Sutra says: Form is Void and Void is Form.

One doesn’t need this level of wisdom however to steer in the correct direction. Mistaking our experiences to be Real and Truthful, rather than created and relative we often attribute far too much importance in them. In particular we pursue a particular aspect of experiences which is whether we like them or not. A person who has not understood that their experinces as just their own, small, local, temporary and created puts a wall around themselves. They become trapped within their senses. In philosophy this position is called Solipsism. How do you prove that anyone else is real? The problem with this is that if start from the awareness that there are other people then how do you prove that your experience is real! If we become attached to our senses then we end up owning them. We are fully trapped and end up believing in a single observer and self experiencing these private phenomena and we end up reject the existence of others.

It is interesting that as a kid I ended up proving the need for Sunyata. But because of a fundemntal attachment to my senses I ended up believing in a personal space in which experiences arose with indefinable sunyata on the outside. Only half correct. I couldn’t see the attachment to my senses that was driving this bubble, private cinema view of life.

Once attachment to senses is gone we live in a world finitely larger than the bubble of private experiece. It means that the worst experiences, while they are indeed happening to us, lose their finality and permanence, and are seen as just a part of the great world. When we see someone else having horrible experiences they are as important to us as our own. Even tho when we have an experience it is real and solid, we understand it in the context of the Great Infinite World of which our tiny bubbles of created experience grow and pop endlessly. We become truly freed from the trap of ourself. Some will say that we lose the intensity of pleasure and indulging our own likes. But do you prefer a comfortable prison or the infinitity of freedom? Red pill or blue pill. Although its not a fair comparison because expanding beyond the senses delivers us into a world without the pressing concerns for like and dislike.

So What is Reality?

So what is out there? The key thing is we uncouple from the endless drive for like and dislike. It is still there but isn’t totally absorbing. Instead we begin to switch to a more universal point of view. Other people become as important to us as ourself. Intellectually we’ve always been able to see this: what in reality actually separated us? Despite thinking we know, no one will ever find an answer to that question cos there is nothing there!

The Meaning of Life

So the Meaning of Life reveals itself outside our sense. It isn’t the endless pursuit of pleasure, or escaping the suffering and troubles of our life. It is freeing ourself from these concerns by letting go of the importants of our senses and putting them in a proper perspective of just momentary creations in a vast boundless universe full of endless beings and even more endless experiences. Once we begin to let go, then we will start to experience the fullness of existence.

Practically it means being brave, being bigger than we think we are, being a Hero and achieving what we think is impossible. Faced with difficult situations, or being blinded by bad experiences, we have that faith in the Bigger Thing, the thing beyond our apparent senses and thoughts. Doesn’t matter what that thing is, the issue is unattaching from the specific here and now that has us trapped. Each time we do this we become bigger, or more accurately we let go of the smaller self that has us trapped. Practically it means paying more attention to others, and learning to consider them as much as ourself. If we can serve another then we have truly unattched from our own senses. Of course we can do this too much, their senses are also not to be take too seriously. Perhaps if they are demanding we can help them serve more and unattach from the demands and perspectives of their own sense and thoughts.

What is interesting about this analysis is that it agrees completely with the wisdom of every age and time. Whether it is Jesus or Muhammad, or Krishna, or Buddha the core teaching is to avoid the small of Evil and open our hearts to the big of Good. It means being humble not arrogant, it means subservient not in command, it means listening not commanding, it means being a carer not a warrior. Those who get trapped in the senses gradually get cut off from the world, and while they may feel that they are large, it is because they have forgotten what is really great. By contrast those who know what is really great no longer get impressed by their own tiny existence and become very simple and straighforward. It is sad how often this is misunderstood. The Glory of God so often associated with triumph and success, and personal gratification and winning. You know when you have God on your side, and when you are a truely Great Person not when you win and celebrate, but when you lose and are content with that, because what can we ever gain that is even close to the grandure of the infinite reality that hosts our every experience and thought? When you see people celebrating victory you know you are in the comany of the small people, the servant of the Devil, the victims of the Great Illusion, too foolish (as yet) to escape the trap of their senses.