The purpose of Life? "to suffer and die"?

[KurtNYC]

One of my relatives wrote that she was depressed after dealing with mental patients who are catatonic. She asked if Life in general was really like that -- that we suffer and die and what is it all for? I had a few answers for her.

"What is the purpose of life if we just suffer and die?"

That's an easy one....

To let warm summer rain drops land on your face.
To look at a baby's toes and wonder at how impossibly small they are.
To smell the freshness of the air after an evening thunderstorm.
To picnic on a hillside and watch the shadows of clouds crossing the valley.
To laugh a basket of puppies in constant motion.
To taste a glass of high-acid Barbera next to home made pizza with fresh basil.
To lay on your back on a summer night and watch the annual fireworks show.
To smell your mother's chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven.
To share the joys and trials of Life with people you love.
To hold your newborn in your arms for the first time.
To ride rollercoasters and ferris wheels.
To drive through rolling hills when the leaves have turned a thousand colors.
To hear the crickets sing at night next a cool lake.
To go to a drive-in movie in your pajamas.
To ride horses on a summer morning.
To hear Mozart played by a string quartet.
To hear Gershwin played on a grand piano.
To laugh at silly jokes.
To wander around a flea market on Portabello Road, the Camden locks or Rue St. Laurent
To see a purple sunset over the Pacific ocean.
To take a ride in a hot air balloon over the Adirondaks.
To watch "Gone With the Wind" in a real movie theater.
To watch a baby smile and charm strangers on a subway train.
To walk through clouds of white chestnut pedals that blow off the trees in April.
To catch fireflies in a coffee can and then let them go.
To sing along 50,000 people when a Beatle song comes over the soundsystem before a concert starts.
To catch snowflakes on your tongue.
To hear children laughing.
To receive unexpected help from a stranger.
To share your picnic dinner with other concert-goers at a Hollywood Bowl concert.
To sit on the sunny banks of a great river and read a good book.
To ride on the back of a motorcycle going just a little too fast.
To bang out an AC/DC tune on your Les Paul with more enthusiasm than skill.
To eat sweet strawberries dipped in dark chocolate.
To smell a pine forrest...

and I'm sure I have missed a few thousand things.

[Dolomite]

1. The Buddha says: All life is suffering.

Such was the point I was left with after reading The Dharma Bums.

[Armstead]

6. Not necessarily....

Suffering is one level of life. Or one half of the picture. It's what happens when we get too attached in the wrong way to the wrong things.

But his larger point was that life is actually much bigger than the realm of suffering, and it is within our power to move into that larger view to transcend it.

[deutsey]

9. Buddha also said there's a way out of suffering

That "way" is what Buddhism is about.

[Warpy]

10. What the Buddha said

was that we are born and that at some point we will suffer and die. The point to life was what we did with it. The way to end suffering was to end attachment, to approach pain and pleasure with equanimity.

You can't really summarize it all in a couple of sentences, but that's basically it. Buddhism is a set of teachings on how to end suffering through detachment and how to end the sufferings of others through right action.

[johnnie]

13. We are born into suffering

I thought it was.

[Blue_Tires]

27. well said n/t

[MazeRat7]

29. You are correct. Its the eight-fold path that leads us out of suffering.

While I love all of them... I value the 3 on ethical conduct the highest (Right Speech, Right Action, & Right Livelihood). Or should I say, they are the easiest for me.

MZr7

For others look HERE for some more information and discussion.

[renate]

14. I sure don't think that's what Buddha said

For one thing, the Dalai Lama is well known to be a happy guy, despite all that he's suffered.

My understanding is that he says attachment/desire causes suffering--attachment to things or attachment to the idea of situations being a certain way. When our lives are not what we desire them to be, we suffer. When we let go of the desire for things to be a certain way and focus on Being Here Now, we become truly alive, happy, and at peace.

I think Buddhism is a pretty joyful philosophy, really, although letting go of wanting things to be a certain way is tough (obviously, or we wouldn't all be here on DU fretting about the way the world is going).

[MadMaddie]

2. To smell Spring Rain as it comes in on a Sunny day.....

To see your nephew two hours after he is born.....so small and yet so perfect...

These are wonderful!!!!

[Armstead]

3. You got me at Mozart

Whenever I have doubts about it all, I just have to put something by Mozart on. It always seems to pull everythiong together, and say there is an unspoken point to it all.

[Kazak]

4. Simple, the meaning of life is...

to give life meaning.

:shrug:

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. So true. And the point of suffering is to learn something from it,

otherwise it was in vain.

[havocmom]

5. 'to suffer and die' is the lie told by abusers

who want victims to accept their abuse! There are people who profit by convincing others that is the truth and then exploiting them. Getting the masses to give up hope makes much possible for the ruling class.

To arrive at such a philosophy on one's own, and truly without influence of others, is probably the result of chemical imbalances in the nervous system. Those conditions can be corrected. Once the correction is made, a person is less likely to accept the notion that they don't deserve to enjoy life.

Been there, done that. ;)

[Ron Green]

8. All of these wonderful things mean nothing, though, without

their contrast to the conscious suffering that we must endure. That's why the bored middle class, after experiencing the joys you list, are still unsatisfied and striving for more.

They don't want to participate in the irony of being human, which is that we must avoid pleasure and seek pain, to some extent, that we might grow.

[KurtNYC]

12. My friend died of cancer at age 23

both of his parents had died in the years just prior. They had lived near 3-mile Island Ohio. He considered himself somewhat lucky that he got a warning of sorts, that he would pass. He said most people live their lives, thinking there are things they would like to do but there is always tomorrow. There is always "some day." And that is a mistake. Plenty of people go to an early grave with no warning at all. His doctors told him he would do chemo, feel reasonably okay for a period of months and then decline quickly. We packed all joy would could into about 3 months and it taught me an indelible lesson: "Don't postpone joy."

I think I get what you are saying but I don't usually have to go looking for pain. Life is full of tests and suffering and moments of real happiness and satisfaction are fleeting. Perhaps that is why we value those moments so much.

[Ron Green]

21. And the moments of real happiness, as you note, are mostly the simple ones

Your friend learned an important lesson very suddenly and sadly, but I think about how many "moments of happiness" are being marketed to us non-stop, promising the satisfying experiences of your list but mostly delivering empty pleasures and a credit-card bill. The important thing about your list is to really enjoy the essence of the experience, and detach from the wanting. And that's what I think suffering can teach us, if we do it consciously.

[baby_mouse]

18. Grow into what? NT.

[Ron Green]

22. Grow into whoever you're becoming. I guess Maslow would call it

a "self-actualized human being."

[baby_mouse]

25. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

And Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Personally, I have learned to take the supposition that "the tears of suffering water the flowers of the soul" with several kilos of salt.

It's just that that idea has all sorts of exciting and surprising brothers and shadows that creep in with it when you let it in. It's a SerLIPPery old slope.

Were I to go back and count the number of unpleasant experiences I've had that could be said to have improved me or my experience of life....Um.

I just wish some of the people who cling to this ideology would wake up sometimes and realise that some things are just plain evil. I think we have pain receptors and emotions like fear and suspicion for a very good reason and I don't think that reason is related to how we programme ourselves... The supposition that it's all tied together into one wonderful system that all works out in the end is all terribly....CLEVER-SOUNDING.

[baby_mouse]

26. dupe posted in wrong part of thread, damn. nt.

[Bellamia]

11. I thought suffering was optional............

as it is purely a response to what may be conceived of as "pain".....disappointment, frustration, seeming in justice, etc. etc. etc. Life is what you make of it, thoughts become things, so to quote Mike Dooley, "Choose the good ones."

[AnnInLa]

15. Peggy Lee: "Is that all there is?"

Is that all there is, my friend?
Then let's keep dancin'
Let's break out the booze
And have a ball
If that's all
There is.



I have several friends who have complained that they are never "happy." They wonder when they will find happiness, like it is a place out there that you have to search out and find, rather than recognizing it is a place or many little places in one's self that one has to find. There is no "big happy" out there.....and we can only recognize all the "little happies" like the ones you list above if we have something to contrast them to...IMHO.

[Dr. Jones]

16. Thanks for that.

Normally I shy away from these kind of "inspirational" moments, but that was actually very well written.

If we look at the life of Jesus it is clear that suffering is an inevitable part of life. Loss of health, life, loved ones, all factor into a life that has its ups, and has its downs. Nobody is exempt from suffering, but perhaps that isn't the PURPOSE of life but merely a by-product of an imperfect world.

Jesus suffered greatly because he was carrying a message that was far greater than Himself, far greater than anything on this earth. Many of us carry similiar burdens, fighting against the evil of this world, engaging in battle that is greater than ourselves that expands beyond the boundaries of our ordinary, tangible existence. Perhaps it is this constant battle can be called suffering.

[SoCalDem]

17. In a purely biological sense

It is to mature, reproduce, launch the young offspring...and then "exit stage left"..

If there is an grander theme, it is one that WE have ascribed to life, because we think..:)

[Dr. Jones]

19. I love that friendly winking bird!

:)

[SoCalDem]

20. Poor little guy, he's coughing..he's got the bird-flu...but

he's getting better :)

[The Straight Story]

23. Sex!

Oh wait, this isn't the lounge is it....

[anarch]

24. purpose?

Sounds like someone could benefit from studying an ant farm:

Ant Farm Teaches Children About Toil, Death, from the Onion.

"Your little ones will have a front-row seat as worker ants labor, day in and day out, until they inevitably die of exhaustion, their futile efforts all for naught," Wonderco spokeswoman Joan Kedzie said. "A Playscovery Cove Ant Village, complete with stackable tiny ant barns, see-through 'Antway' travel tubes, and connecting 'Antports,' is your children's window into the years of thankless, grueling labor that await them as worker drones in our post-industrial society."

Billed as "the fun way to teach your kids to accept their miserable fate stoically," the ant farm retails for $14.95.

[baby_mouse]

28. Life is the context within which humanity invented the concept of purpose

There's no reason to suppose that the entire context is analysable in terms of one of it's sub-contexts. Any more than the entire study of mathemetics can be said, taking its fundamental assumptions as a kind of whole theory, to be in some sense "true" or "false".

Note - I'm not saying maths isn't true, or that Life has no purpose, more that there's no particularly obvious reason to *suppose* that maths is true, or that life has a purpose, however much we may wish these things to be the case.

In the absence of an over-riding purpose, we could, of course, simply invent one. If there were no conflicting attenuation, it would become literally true as soon as we defined it.

Hows that for freedom? :7