Existence wrote:Embracing my mortality, understanding it is as much a part of life as is living has freed me from times limits. Knowing there is nothing I can do to prevent my dying relieves me of filling my life with distractions. It has allowed me to view my existence as a journey, free from expectation and without destination, but rather an opportunity to learn, to become conscious of my existence and to appreciate that I live.

By embracing life's pointlessness it freed me form life's pursuits. It returned me to myself. It caused me to realize that the meaning of life for me, is found in the knowledge gained while living and not in the end result.

InsidiousExtent wrote:It is quite important to understand and differentiate between the two. Both originate from a different concept. We seek meaning because we we want to know, we want to know because we are curious, we are curious because we have to know things and about those things, in order to be able to handle them, if required. We seek meaning to find the logic, to reason, to realise, to share and to convert it into pure knowledge for every one else.

Meaning, comes first; purpose, second. You cannot define or comprehend the purpose of something, neither can you attribute a purpose to that "something" until you have a meaning attached to it. If you do not know how a wheel behaves, what purpose could possibly serve for you?

Since we cannot stand outside of what we live in, we can never experience ourselves from outside. We can access ourselves only from inside ourselves, nor do we control any external source. This is the reason why understanding or comprehending the "meaning" of life is possible in a multitude of manners and everyone is right and no one is wrong however, this feeling, this whole concept of yours about the meaning of life only lies within you. What you think about life is something you will only give an analogy for or compare it to something like "Life is like an ice-cream; eat it before it melts or people like shakespeare philosophise it like "life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man". What you can never do is define it in its originality. It's like not being able to define warmth, or anger. You cannot step out of those emotions when you are in the middle of them and hence, you don't know how to exactly define them, because you can't feel if you are not in the middle of it (you might try and define how you look when you are going through that emotion but not the emotion itself).

Conversely, since it is not possible to look down upon at ourselves and be looked down upon by ourselves cannot happen at the same time, we cannot define such ideas in their total actuality. Life is only a contextual idea of a conscious brain. "Life" exists only when you have an idea of it, when your brain realises I have a life. Rather than finding the "meaning" of life, we should try to understand why does this idea exist? How we think "life" is, is possibly only one way of looking at it.

This whole thing is my first impression and I request your opinions.

The purpose of life would be an off-topic discussion so i will leave it for now.

Jickay wrote:It is interesting how someone brought in Zen and enlightenment into the picture, though it doesn't have anything to do with life specifically since it is a human phenomenon.

It always seems like when this question is posed it only applies to humanity and a lot of other organisms get thrown out of the picture. In order to understand the meaning of something doesn't that something have to be properly defined? I don't think many people have a proper definition of life before trying to tackle this question, and therein lies the main fault of these arguments.

So, I ask everyone here, what is life?

Stanley Huang Wrote:
And I feel Greek thinkers did not talk about the idea of balance very much, and Indian thinkers like the idea of escapism, where Indians see life as suffering and Indian thinkers disliked life and wanted to escape from life and enter Nirvana.

I think Chinese thinkers in the past talked more about the balance of life, the relationship between life and nature where everything must function in a balance, just like the relationship between sky and earth or relationship between humans and all other animals.

Ichky wrote:

Jickay wrote:It is interesting how someone brought in Zen and enlightenment into the picture, though it doesn't have anything to do with life specifically since it is a human phenomenon.

It always seems like when this question is posed it only applies to humanity and a lot of other organisms get thrown out of the picture. In order to understand the meaning of something doesn't that something have to be properly defined? I don't think many people have a proper definition of life before trying to tackle this question, and therein lies the main fault of these arguments.

So, I ask everyone here, what is life?

As far as I am concerned. Life is Energy:

Life = E=mC^2

PaulNZ wrote:The meaning of life is a "why" question isn't it?
E = MC^2 seems like an answer to a how question to me, not a why question.

Ichky wrote:

Spectrum wrote:

Ichky wrote:

Jickay wrote:It is interesting how someone brought in Zen and enlightenment into the picture, though it doesn't have anything to do with life specifically since it is a human phenomenon.

It always seems like when this question is posed it only applies to humanity and a lot of other organisms get thrown out of the picture. In order to understand the meaning of something doesn't that something have to be properly defined? I don't think many people have a proper definition of life before trying to tackle this question, and therein lies the main fault of these arguments.

So, I ask everyone here, what is life?

As far as I am concerned. Life is Energy:

Life = E=mC^2

I find it difficult to equate life = E = MC2.
E=MC2 is total energy at rest, while life is a process that involves the transformations and movements of energy from one form to another.

Generally, the life of a living organism is the total activities between the birth (with consideration for prebirth) and death of an individual.

Morning Spectrum, I agree with you. All I am saying really is that if we break ourself down to the billions of cells within us, and then break them down further to the atoms and further down to whatever atom is made of.. essentially it is all Energy. The movement of life itself is the movement of energy as far as I am concerned. At sub-zero degree, nothing moves, not even life. Without Energy life is impossible.

We are all energy vibrating at different frequencies is that not?

Cronos988 wrote:I think the actual question, and the only one that can be answered in a meaningfull way, is what do I want to achieve in the limited time that I have. That has nothing to do with the meaning of life, but with the question: How do I get as happy as possible as long as possible.

Cronos988 wrote:

Spectrum wrote:What if everyone follow your advice, i.e. to live as happy as possible, as long as possible, and not to have any children at all?

So you claim people are generally more happy without children?
I was of the impression that fulfilling your "biological imperatives" makes most people happy.

Wooden shoe wrote:Having read Dr Dawkins "The selfish gene" it has become clear that the only purpose of life is to perpetuate the species, and human life is no exception. So this then is also the reason we as individuals exist.
So almost all we do is trying to maximize the ability for the successful results of our offspring to continue this process.