The Purpose of Life - Updated

Yang Chu said: "The longest life is but a hundred years and not one man in a thousand lives to that age. Suppose there is one who does. Half of that time is occupied with infancy and senility. Of the other half, almost half is wasted in sleeping at night and naps during the day time. And almost half is lost in pain, illness, sorrow, grief, death, and deaths in the family. I would estimate that in the ten years or more (that is left to him), a man has hardly an hour in which he is quite content and free from constant worry. Then what is the purpose of life?

Life is only for the enjoyment of beauty and wealth, sound and color. But beauty and wealth cannot always be indulged in...Fame causes us to advance and the law forces us to retreat. Nervously we struggle for the hollow praise of the moment and try to arrange things so as to extend our glory after our death. In gingerly fashion we exercise the utmost caution over what we hear with our ears and what we see with our eyes. We grieve over the right and wrong of our body and mind. Thus we do but miss the perfect happiness of the years as they go by and cannot give ourselves free rein even for an hour. What is the difference between this and being doubly chained inside an inner prison?"

Damn good question.

And as a result, I'm reading up on Taoism and Buddhism.

I'm also reading The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell, and in that reading, I have found a quote which also addresses this 'purpose of life' question:

"If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are - if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time."

So perhaps if your bliss is living the outward life - going to work, spending time with family, doing the dishes, eating dinner, etc. - then you are not trapped in that prison the Taoist section refers to.

A story in the Upanishads tells the story of Indra, a god who saved the world and felt, as a result, that he deserved a palace built on the central mountain of the world. He always wanted it bigger and better than it was, and this angred the carpenter who felt that the project would never end. The carpenter tells the story to Brahma, sitting nicely on a lotus which grows from the navel of Vishnu, the god who sleeps and dreams the universe. Vishnu comes up with a plan.

The next morning a beautiful boy, described as being blue-black, comes to Indra and asks him about the palace in these words: "I have been told that you are building such a palace as no Indra before you has ever built."

Indra was confused by this. Indras before him? So Indra asks the boy what he is talking about and is told that Brahma opens his eyes and a world comes into being governed by an Indra, closes his eyes and the world goes out of being. The life of a Brahma is 432,000 years and when he dies, a new Brahma comes into being. Also, there are galaxies upon galaxies in infinite space each with a different Brahma opening and closing his eyes. The beautiful boy also tells Indra that the ants which are crawling along the floor are all former Indras who through many lifetimes rise from the lowest conditions to highest illumination. Then they save the world, and they go down again.

A yogi enters the conversation at this point. He is wearing only a loincloth and on his chest is a disk of hair with half of the hairs in the center missing. The boy asks the yogi about the hairs and his family and possessions. The yogi replies: My name is Hairy. I don't have a house. Life is too short for that. I just have this parasol. I don't have a family. I just meditate on Vishnu's feet, and think of eternity, and how passing time is. You know, every time an Indra dies, a world disappears - these things just flash by like that. Every time an Indra dies, one hair drops out of this circle on my chest. Half the hairs are gone now. Pretty soon they will all be gone. Life is short. Why build a house?

Both the boy and the yogi disappear, Vishnu and Shiva respectively. Indra decides to stop building his house and is determined to be a yogi and just meditate upon the feet of Vishnu. His wife, Indrani, isn't thrilled with this idea and complains to a priest. The priest tells Indra: You are in the position of the king of the gods. You are a manifestation of the mystery of Brahma in the field of time. This is a high privilege. Appreciate it, honor it, and deal with life as though you were what you really are. Of course, Indra does just this.

And it is that second to last line that is necessary for what I want to say here: Perhaps the purpose of life is to be exactly what we are and live accordingly, whether that means turning inward and living a life of contemplation or turning outward and living a life of food and air and family and bills and vacation.

Each of us is an Indra of our own life, according to Campbell. "You can make a choice, either to throw it all off and go into the forest to meditate, or to stay in the world, both in the life of your job, which is the kingly job of politics and achievement, and in the love life with your wife and family."