disclaimer: The content of this post is an attempt to reproduce the ideas that came up in a discussion over drinks one evening. No research has been done in the area and they represent the purest form of thought in today's world of half baked knowledge and clarity and is a result of brainstorming only.
You might call it a total waste of time trying to go through a lengthy article which might rather be termed as a bar room discussion. But, think for a minute, who gives you the liberty to disregard it just because its some talk from drunk people. Aah.. I get it, 'Drunk people seldom talk sense'. This is what you are taught. The same as you are taught what is right and what is wrong. No, wonder at times you think about 'who you really are, why you have a certain obligation to your surroundings and the people living in it, or what your actual purpose in life is. And, more often than not you pacify yourself by running the tape in your head which plays "It's all happening randomly and one should not try to find answers to everything because there often are none." But do you wander back to this search for your life's purpose ?
You might call it a total waste of time trying to go through a lengthy article which might rather be termed as a bar room discussion. But, think for a minute, who gives you the liberty to disregard it just because its some talk from drunk people. Aah.. I get it, 'Drunk people seldom talk sense'. This is what you are taught. The same as you are taught what is right and what is wrong. No, wonder at times you think about 'who you really are, why you have a certain obligation to your surroundings and the people living in it, or what your actual purpose in life is. And, more often than not you pacify yourself by running the tape in your head which plays "It's all happening randomly and one should not try to find answers to everything because there often are none." But do you wander back to this search for your life's purpose ?
- The framework:
Let's pick it up from the question of what is right and what is wrong. A person decides to steal a car. He is termed as a thief as he has done something wrong. The law tries him for the crime he has committed. He may have to bow down in the end and accept that he is guilty. Look at it as high handedness of the law. The society which is the majority here is intimidating for him. Try to imagine if no matter what, he does not accept his guilt. He continues to justify in this manner:
Law: You have stolen and have done wrong. you will be put behind bars as punishment for your crimes.
Thief: No, I did nothing wrong.
Law: How do you say that you are right?
Thief: I needed the car.
Law: You did not ask him, and that is wrong.
Thief: Even if I would have asked him he would have refused. Moreover, I really needed it.
What did you need it for? I needed the money I could get by selling it. Why did you need the money? I wanted to use the money to buy the things that I do not have. Why did you want to buy these things? Well, I wanted to be happy, and I perceive others to be happy when they have wealth to possess anything that they desire. you should have earned the money yourself. Nobody Employed me no matter how much I tried. Why is that? Because I wasn't privileged enough to afford education. Education is free. But I was too busy surviving.
One can clearly see that the person accused is the victim here, being accused by the framework, for the actions that the framework has deemed to be wrong, the actions he performed trying to be a part of the framework. This is how we are trapped as a social being. Law, and for that matter Religion is just a set of statements living by which you are expected to live in a framework structured in such a way that every action has a predictable outcome. Call it faith, which again is plagued with the hope that a certain outcome is probable. This reflects the innate human nature trying to find logic and reason for everything happening around us. Even holding the supreme being's will responsible for all the in-explainable, reasoning that someone else is controlling the world is a means of pacifying oneself by finding logic.
"You must not steal from your neighbour" - Is an instruction. Something that is taught.
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" - Is a principle to live by. Something that is learnt.
- What is to be done:
In the short span of life that I have lived, I have not found any purpose. I have had brief periods where I have found that my efforts were channeled into one direction. I can say I have performed well during this time but there has still not been any realization of purpose. This search for purpose begins when there is a shaken belief. A belief that we have nurtured for long and have always stood by it.
Some might say that we are privileged enough to be born as humans, the superior beings. It is our responsibility to be working towards the good of all. But is there any good happening for China without any bad happening for Tibet?
Selfishness is the driving force behind most of our actions. One might want to argue that there is no selfishness in acts of selflessness - charity, philanthropy etc. I would like to say that even the most noble of causes are acts of selfishness because they are driven by the drive to gain self satisfaction, relief. Relief from guilt. Relief from pain. Relief from suffering. In pursuit of happiness
- Voluntary death and Samadhi:
By now if you are with me, you have detached yourself from the framework you now think nothing or nothing like what others are thinking about right or wrong, you have no religion or faith that you follow, you lived by some principles that you thought were your own, you have found no purpose in life for which you thought living would be worthwhile. You decide to die, not of old age or illness but as a result of a consciously taken decision.
Even wanting to end your own life is a selfish act, in want of getting riddance from the pain and misery one might be in. But the framework doesn't even let you do that, legally. My outlook of people requesting euthanasia would be to categorize them as people who are requesting their freedom from the framework that they have lived in and do not want to be associated with it in any way. And here lies the answer to how you can end your life. If you consciously do not wish to interact with your surroundings, you do exactly that, consciously. Stop tasting, stop listening, stop seeing, stop smelling, stop feeling. Attain Samadhi. Disconnect the mental being from the physical being.
- Our mind:
By now we can clearly distinguish between the physical being and the mental being. We know how the physical being comes into existence, but what about the mental being? So lets try to find out true identity and what makes it unique. Our mental being is our mind, our identity. Even two twins similar in appearance have distinct identities.
Our minds are analogous to a processor of a computer. That too, very complex ones. Our body is the interface between our minds and the world. In this analogy, how we react to the happenings to is based on the way our mind (the processors) is programmed. This programming manifests itself in the form of our DNA. The code which makes us unique. This theory seems to work, but so did the theory that the Earth is flat and that the sun revolves around the Earth, until there were theories which were much more sound in logic surfaced and were accepted.
Now since we are talking of theories we again come to the point made earlier that we are merely searching for answers in order to have some control in whatever aspect of life it may be.
So in the end we couldn't conclude anything more than what we did in the first section. We did brainstorm and establish the fact that the interactions of the mind with the world are distractions which do not help in any way to ascertain who we really are. And being isolated from everything, are we really anything? In that case should we be searching for our true self?
And for the lat time just come on this short journey with me starting from today going back in time. We start by seeing the humans of today as superior beings who seem to have everything in control. We meet the apes, then the fish that emerged from the sea and walked onto land. Then we go back and see micro organisms that live for just a few seconds. We come across unicellular organism that divide giving birth to offspring. And finally we come to the elements that made up the first living cells. What happened? When did the elements decide to live? Does the existence of life necessitate the existence of a mental being?
