Is there any point in living? Has living any meaning, any point, any worth? Perhaps that is the question you have been asking yourself. Especially when you’ve had some time on your hands. Is there some goal to be achieved by life, by living? Is there some place you will reach one day by living? These are some of the questions that unite us across nations, religions, castes, colours, genders etc.
Osho, an Indian mystic from the 20th century, threw light on these questions in his book Destiny, Freedom and the Soul: What is the Meaning of Life? Osho suggests that living is a means. Not the end. The end is something that we create – often in the name of religion or God – in order to give meaning to our living. Nobody has seen the end, nobody can claim to have seen it.
Some of you will find that a little discouraging. What’s the point of anything then, you might say? But Osho asks you to consider something. Think of love. Do you love someone because you have got some end goal in mind? Or you simply love, for the sake of love? Think of beauty. What is the point of beauty? You see a sunset – you are mesmerised, it is so beautiful, but any fool can ask the question, “What is the meaning of it?” and you will have no answer to that.
Now let’s come to the question of living. Life exists in living. It is not a thing; it is a process. A process which consists only of those things that have no meaning at all. All these constituents of life don’t have any goal, they don’t lead you anywhere, and you don’t get anything out of them. You live. In other words, you don’t have to do anything to make life significant; life is significant in itself. Living itself is the point and there is no other point. The means and ends are together, not separate.
But… to be fair, seeing oneself as a process and not a thing is perhaps the hardest task in one’s spiritual journey. Let’s use Buddha’s allegory to explain. He said, “Life is just like the flame of the candle. It looks the same, but is never the same even for two consecutive moments. The old flame is continuously becoming smoke and new flame is coming up. The candle that you had burned in the evening is not the same candle that you will blow out in the morning. This is not the same flame that you had started; that has gone far away, nobody knows where. It is just a similarity of the flame that gives you the illusion that it is the same flame.” The same is true about our being.
Each moment your being is changing. A new being, a new world, a new experience coming to existence; the old one dying. Birth and death are parts of living which are taking place simulatenously within us, in every moment. They are events in our living experience. Just like our childhood was; it started at one point and ended at another. That’s all.
Remember, life is not somewhere waiting for you; it is happening in you. It is not in the future as a goal to be arrived at, nor it is in the past as a memory. It is here, now, in this moment. It is in your breathing, circulating in your blood, beating in your heart. Feel it.
Kalampedia 