What Is Life According To You? + What is the meaning of life (compiled)

[IkuTube]

Let me start.

 

I used to tell my friends that if I could just be living somewhere in a woods, somewhere in a place with a weather that has positive effects on human fundamental needs (physical, mental, and emotional) and spend hours with my dog, Cavalier King Charles Spaniel .. I would be most delighted.  Some of my friends feel that I am an escapist, that I am running away from life.  Perhaps, I am.

 

Life, to me, is one long journey of experiences and there are no limits to what one is able to achieve.  Just like a baby who learns to crawl, walk and then run, life is an experience for humans to try everything.  "Everything" that we like along with what we don't.  It is said that when we take the time to experience these "Everything", what happens is that we become more aware of what is going on.  Not only that we "know" what is going on with the world but also in the minds of people.  These "Everything" provide the opportunity to relate and connect.

 

I have this motto - "I am born alone and I shall leave this world alone but what I do while I am alive makes the difference".  I believe that we are all designed to interact.  We are all designed to share knowledge.  That we are all equals and each one of us is blessed and we share the same blessings and hardships.  No one, including myself, is better than anyone else.

 

While some babies learn to run faster, life is about how the fact is interpreted.  Communication is a two street - as you speak, I learn; as I speak, another person is collecting additional knowledge.  Expectations and judgement, while in communication, are constants and when they are breached, the chain is broken.

 

The process of life will come to a stage when one shall sit on a plateau where death awaits.  When this happens, it shall be about recollection.  It shall be about how much can we be grateful to all the things we have experienced, collected, learned and shared.

 

And what is yours?

 

 

[iamziz]

I am sharing this article from Channel News Asia. Somehow it reminds us we will die but let us make our own decision how we would live before we die. Perhaps some relevance to what you wrote above.

 

Deciding your death date will impact how you live your life: Satish Modi

 

Channel NewsAsia's Dawn Karen Tan chats with philanthropist Satish Modi about his book In Love With Death and why he feels it is important to estimate when your time will be up. 

 

SINGAPORE: When it comes to how you live your life, you are not killing time - time is killing you. No matter how you fill the minutes and hours in your life - like Woody Allen's character in the iconic Annie Hall - do you ever wonder if you have spent them the best way you could?

 

Billionaire businessman and philanthropist Mr Satish Modi may be one of the world's richest men, but he says there is plenty money cannot buy, such as comfort, direction and food for thought.

 

But to make full use of life, he says you need to first write down the expected date of your death.

 

“Life is on a lease,” he said. “Death is a great equaliser. At birth you may be a prince - you may be born in a very rich family, but in the end you become three and a half kilos of dust. Death is positive. It's not negative. As the shadow of time falls on your body and your body becomes more and more frail, death allows us an exit.

 

"Nobody wants to die.”

 

But die we must, from one cause or another.

 

A 2014 global study published in The Lancet medical journal compared causes of death and burden of disease in 188 countries between 1990 and 2013. It found suicide and heart attack were the top causes of deaths among 15- to 49-year-olds in Singapore. For those aged 70 and older, it was pneumonia.

 

When asked about what he hopes readers will draw from his book, In Love With Death, Mr Modi said: “Once you make a finite life, then you can enjoy life. Like you can enjoy a piece of cake, because it’s finite. If I were to give you two full cakes and say eat it, you might land up in the hospital.

 

"So similarly, if you say you have 40 or 30 years - whatever is the age of the person - then he can prepare his bucket list, he can prepare the charity he wants to do, the philanthropy he wants to do. He can plan.”

 

But talk of one's death is not typically dinner conversation. While bookstores are full of helpful advice about living a better life, there are few about coming to terms with one's date of expiration. For many, the subject is simply taboo. It is either too morbid, or too soon. And like death itself, we would rather deal with it at a later, much later, date.

 

"PHILANTHROPY CAN CHANGE LIVES"

 

To Mr Modi, the chase for materialistic wealth is ultimately empty. He said:  “Money is such a big spoiler. I've yet to find a man who sits back and relaxes and says I have enough. You don't feel satisfied with what you have, you want more."

 

Mr Modi added that materialism will not help you make a change in the world.

 

“If you can change somebody's life - and we always try to do it through education - that’s philanthropy,” he said. “Because if someone is hungry and you just give him some food, what will he eat tomorrow? So you must educate the person. Put a career in front of the person, so the person's life changes.

 

“You should be aware of these things. Not just go for buying the latest car, or latest house, or latest jewels. That doesn't mean anything.

 

“The Dalai Lama also said ‘the rich have the money and the poor have the blessings', so there you are!”

 

Source: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/deciding-your-death-date/1858720.html

[Chan Chee Wai]

LIFE is short!

Love every moment that you have now.

Do what you like to do, eat what you like to eat.

Enjoy....and have fun in your life.

[gummibear]

http://weruletheinternet.com/2011/05/24/a-dogs-purpose-according-to-a-6-year-old/

 

"Being a veterinarian, I had been called to examine a ten-year-old Irish wolfhound named Belker. The dog’s owners, Ron, his wife, Lisa, and their little boy, Shane, were all very attached to Belker, and they were hoping for a miracle.

I examined Belker and found he was dying of cancer. I told the family we couldn’t do anything for Belker, and offered to perform the euthanasia procedure for the old dog in their home.

As we made arrangements, Ron and Lisa told me they thought it would be good for six-year-old Shane to observe the procedure. They felt as though Shane might learn something from the experience.

The next day, I felt the familiar catch in my throat as Belker’s family surrounded him. Shane seemed so calm, petting the old dog for the last time, that I wondered if he understood what was going on. Within a few minutes, Belker slipped peacefully away.

The little boy seemed to accept Belker’s transition without any difficulty or confusion. We sat together for a while after Belker’s death, wondering aloud about the sad fact that animal lives are shorter than human lives.

Shane, who had been listening quietly, piped up, “I know why.”

Startled, we all turned to him. What came out of his mouth next stunned me.  I’d never heard a more comforting explanation.  He said, “People are born so that they can learn how to live a good life – like loving everybody all the time and being nice, right?”

The six-year-old continued, “Well, dogs already know how to do that, so they don’t have to stay as long.”"

 

:oops:

[Guest Guest]

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/03/a-flawless-explanation-for-the-meaning-of-life/

"I can recall so often hearing questions around the meaning of life.

I have to remind myself that there was a time when I didn’t know.

In all areas of my spiritual evolution, there was a time that I was too far from the truth to see it. When the understanding comes, or returns, it’s so penetrating that you forget that you were once lost. This concept itself is a huge part of the meaning of life: remembering.

Life is suffering.

As has been so often pointed out by my teachers: you suffer over what you want and you suffer over what you don’t want. When we get what we want, we suffer when it changes—which is inevitable. When we don’t get what we want, we suffer due to our craving. When we get what we don’t want, we suffer due to our aversion to what is.

All of this suffering stems from our relationship to what is occurring in our lives. We create the suffering because we attach ourselves to externals that are guaranteed to change.

My previous article touched on the absurdity in our practice of creating our identities out of externals that are, by nature, impermanent. Nature has seasons: life and death. And everything on this plane of existence is subject to the laws of nature.

We choose to sign up for suffering when we cling to what must—by nature—change.

The meaning of life is in dancing with this suffering. We cannot avoid it, so we must learn to engage with it in a manner that evolves us as beings. Only in the human existence do we get the privilege to consciously work through these episodes of suffering.

And yes, it is a privilege.

Every bit of suffering that comes (or that we create) in our lives, is there for a reason. We are to work with it. And how well we work with it determines the meaning of this life.

There is no external puppet master determining what the meaning of our lives is; we are the creators. We design our own heaven or hell based on how well we dance with our suffering. If we teach ourselves to dance with suffering with the grace of love and compassion, we create heaven. If we choose instead to dance with the darkness of fear and anger, we create hell. These are not places we are sent to based on the accumulated behaviors of this lifetime, these are places we create within every second of every day.

The meaning and purpose of life is love.

We are to spend our human existence learning how to better love ourselves, and then to love others (as ourselves). While this may sound like a romantic notion, it is exponentially greater than romance could ever be. It is not a sappy, surface-level concept, it is truth. This realm of love is not tied to the humanization of the term, as God is not what our limited minds have conjured. They are one-in-the-same. You want to get to God? Learn to love. You want to learn to love? Be God.

We’ve been given the music of love to dance to, we only have to get quiet enough to hear it. We know all the steps, we simply have to look deep enough inside to remember them.

The meaning of life isn’t something we must find, we are already it.

We must experience the body for what it is-an accumulation of sensory perceptions and a mind that has created an ego-concept that it is separate. This body and mind are not who we are. We are love. And the meaning of life is to find our way back to love, to God, to ourselves

[answer]

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/03/a-flawless-explanation-for-the-meaning-of-life/

"I can recall so often hearing questions around the meaning of life.

I have to remind myself that there was a time when I didn’t know.

In all areas of my spiritual evolution, there was a time that I was too far from the truth to see it. When the understanding comes, or returns, it’s so penetrating that you forget that you were once lost. This concept itself is a huge part of the meaning of life: remembering.

Life is suffering.

 

Thanks for sharing.  Nice article....

 

I like the writer's view of learning to dance with the suffering of life... not to avoid suffering; but engage it....

[doncoin]

Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone...

 

 

 

 

I hear you call my name and it feels like home. 

[Guest Guest]

Simply suffering

[upshot]

Life is not the destination but the journey you make in life. With the diversities around you and the length of life span you rach have, it would be a big mistake to just sit everyday staring into a smartphone or computer. Good or bad, everyday existence up live it as a single entity and as one collective beig a human specie. Within what you are in control of, you have the power to be happy or angry. I look at that in context to where we are in Singapore compared to say war torn Iraq where even if you want to be happy you might still not be able to.

 

Sometime I feel most people lucky to be where we are and that we take so much of what we enjoy conveniently for granted and even with so much we are still not satisfy at the very least for what we still manage to have.

 

Yes life can always be better but it could have been way worst.

[darkflame]

Life, to me, is just a simple dark room upon youe birth.

As you explore around the room, the path you leave behind gets lit up until the whole room is lit up at the end of it.

In a way, life is a project in the progress to me.

[fab]

Life is a school.

Humans come here to take exams. Those who pass need not come back. Those who dont will ve to come back till they pass.

Most come back as students while few who pass will volunteer to come back as teachers.

The subject is kindness.

[azimuth]

Life is not about myself. It is what kind of positive impact or change you manage to instil in your life time that really matters. At the end of the day, we are all reduced to a pile of dust no matter what our gender, race, nationality and sexual preference.

[vaio]

Life is a game. Every step you take changes the game play. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. When you lose, there is always a replay. Don't give up! However, there are times when you need to take risk too, be it a success or failure

[hape]

For me life is the matter of choice and gambling to receive our goal and happiness

We must choice our own path to reach our target, its different with each individual, and that make diversity in every individual human beings, what your choice is made who you are, live it proud and be happy with your choice....

[Guest life]

What do you do to find the meaning or purpose in life?  We work, eat, sleep, sex, watch movie, and work again until we die. how to find the purpose of life? Why the god never tell us directly and we have to blindly lead our lives? Just like when we are hired for a job, the boss will tell us specifically what to do to complete our job. and then come the appraisal to evaluate our performance. How the god going to evaluate our performance without telling us directly. we only listen based on other's mouth/writing that has been passed down thru many generations which we cannot confirm and so many ppl still confuse which one is the true one. When we are having problem in our job, we have counsellor to advise us but god never provide us a channel for us to seek clarification. 

[fab]

2 hours ago, Guest life said:

What do you do to find the meaning or purpose in life?  We work, eat, sleep, sex, watch movie, and work again until we die. how to find the purpose of life? Why the god never tell us directly and we have to blindly lead our lives? Just like when we are hired for a job, the boss will tell us specifically what to do to complete our job. and then come the appraisal to evaluate our performance. How the god going to evaluate our performance without telling us directly. we only listen based on other's mouth/writing that has been passed down thru many generations which we cannot confirm and so many ppl still confuse which one is the true one. When we are having problem in our job, we have counsellor to advise us but god never provide us a channel for us to seek clarification. 

 

The purpose of life is to not to have a life again by passing the Test.

 

The enlightened one had come back to teach us but alas most ignorant ones R unable to have the wisdom to learn.

Edited March 23, 2019 by fab

[Guest life]

2 minutes ago, fab said:

 

The purpose of life is to not to have a life again by passing the rest.

 

The enlightened one had come back to taught us but alas most ignorant ones R unable to have the wisdom to learn.

Where is he the enlightened one? How do we know he is the one? How do we not having a life again?

[fab]

2 hours ago, Guest life said:

Where is he the enlightened one? How do we know he is the one? How do we not having a life again?

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_in_Buddhism

 

[Steve5380]

8 hours ago, fab said:

 

The purpose of life is to not to have a life again by passing the Test.

 

The enlightened one had come back to teach us but alas most ignorant ones R unable to have the wisdom to learn.

 

8 hours ago, Guest life said:

Where is he the enlightened one? How do we know he is the one? How do we not having a life again?

 

How can we reason that... that the purpose of life is not to have lives by passing a test?

Who gives the test?  What is its purpose?  

Cannot we just not have a life to begin with, and then there is no need to pass any test?

How is living successive lives until passing a test and then existing in a nirvana ... a PURPOSE?

.

Edited March 23, 2019 by Steve5380

[Guest Hot Swimmer]

Life is one chance given by god for one to achieve remarkable things for yourself, your family, your country, your planet and this world. One may choose to pass life and left unknown after years. One may choose to leave behind a great legacy for years.

[Steve5380]

I used to have a more spiritual concept of life.

These days, I choose the utilitarian idea. 

Through evolution or whatever, there are complex animals that roam the earth and reproduce.  We don't know their origin, purpose, destiny.

These complex animals need also a complex system of control, that is part of them and looks out for survival and advancement.

Humans are a species of these animals, and we recognize in the control this sensation of identity, the "me" that takes over the status of "alive".

In reality it is our body that is alive, and we are just part of it, and identify ourselves as the "soul".  

Our soul appears when the body appears. Our soul disappears when the body disappears (dies).

Our function, our purpose as souls is to control and seek the best for the body we are part of. 

This is all what we need to know and care for.

[Guest Devorat]

Life has four stages and you have to pass each stage through reincarnation until you attain enlightenment.

[Steve5380]

On 3/23/2019 at 11:11 AM, Guest Hot Swimmer said:

Life is one chance given by god for one to achieve remarkable things for yourself, your family, your country, your planet and this world. One may choose to pass life and left unknown after years. One may choose to leave behind a great legacy for years.

 

This sounds so romantic... 

 

But...  a god that gives chances?  We Humans are born with all kinds of deficiencies, defects, problems.  Is this "giving a chance"?   Why doesn't your god produce PERFECT humans? what a perfect being produces should be perfect.  The whole doctrines of the Abrahamic religions falls apart for lack of logic.