What is the Purpose of Life?

This is a humorous question to one who lives totally in the moment. You must ask yourself why you would ask such a question? What is the state of a mind that is inquiring into purpose? Does not the question presuppose an answer based on opinion and conclusion. All answers only create more questions. It is very subtle, the mind seeks to find a solution to a problem that is the result of the illusion of knowing. The known is the past. Then can life as purpose be known as something that is relegated to definition as an image? The defined is the image of self, of the content of ones consciousness. One could only logically say that the purpose of life is the self. But if the self is the illusion of thoughts movement then the purpose of life however defined is also illusion.


If you are seeking purpose in life then you are trapped by the mind that is absorbed with the idea of its own mortality. If life has purpose then perhaps one will believe in a continuance of life as the defined projection of self. This creates within the conditioned consciousness the idea of an after life as an extension of the self. One searches for meaning and purpose so that an imagined presence as the ego/self will exist for an eternity. It is often defined as the higher self, the spirit, essence, or any of a number of other labels that contain the characteristics of ones particular beliefs. But if it is possible to look at the moment and what actually is then it may be apparent that such beliefs are in reality a projection of a mind that is seeking its own continuity.

We think of life in terms of a beginning and an ending, so we naturally assume there must be some meaning or purpose, otherwise why go on, why exist at all. It requires a very deep understanding of existence, to realize that there is in reality no beginning or ending, that it is simply the duality of thought that creates the sensation of a self that is a separated individuality in time/space. If there is a fusion of thinker and thought, which is the dissipation of self, then one may realize a consciousness that is not the result of the conditioned self. There is no magic formula or secret doctrine, one needs only to have passion for understanding the true self.