How did We Happen?-1 What is the purpose of human life?

How did We Happen?-1

What is the purpose of human life? 

I received an interesting email the other day. If you bypass the general tone of the message, you'll find the questions worthy.

Despite my scepticism, I can't help but hope...That maybe you've got some answers which nobody has. So tell me without indulging in cryptic mystic hyperbole if you could(please!) How did we happen? What's the purpose of all this? What happens after we die? Please don't be shy to admit if you don't know the answers...It's ok...I will continue to search...Can u reply fast?

Before I share with you what I wrote back to her, I'm reminded of an anecdote. A Zen monk was sitting under a banyan tree. Coincidentally, he was pondering over exactly the same questions of birth, death and more. His master's answers couldn't satisfy him, the scriptural thought didn't appeal to him, the teachings of Buddha couldn't douse his curiosity.

Just when he thought there were no answers to his questions, a mighty gust of wind blew and the leaves started fluttering. One of the leaves could cling to the tree no longer and got detached. The wind raised it high up in the air and tossed it around before thumping it on the ground. It was as if caught up in a tornado.

"My life is like the leaf," he realized. "No matter what I want or how much I want to hold on to the tree of life, one day I'll be disconnected. This severance is not the death, but the beginning of another life. And like the leaf, I'll be flung around. The tornado of desires will pitch me around. There is no sense in resistance. I must go with the flow before ending up on the ground. And even then, this is not the death but the start of another life still. As I'll decompose, I'll become part of earth, I'll continue to live in millions of other organisms. The cycle is eternal."

This was his realization, not necessarily mine or yours. Moving on to what I wrote to the reader:

"Even if someone gave you the most accurate answer you might still not accept it because there's often no way of verifying its validity. Everything on our origin, death and afterlife is a theory with one difference at the most — some sound more plausible than others.

There is no heaven or hell. There is no supernatural creator. There is no universal purpose applicable to all individuals. There may even be no individual purpose because the quest for purpose is a craving of the conscious mind. Why does a sense of purpose disappear in sleep, or when one is unconscious, or in an infant? As we grow, a sense of ego, of individuality, makes us feel that life can't be meaningless. This notion of meaning is simply a pointless ramble of the conscious mind.

The brutal truth is that every being, every single entity, if anything, is merely an insignificant, dispensable and disposable aspect of Nature, whose self-fulfilling purpose is to sustain itself.

The theory of evolution is the most sensible response to the question of how did we happen. But, it doesn't give us the complete picture either because it misses out on the basis of evolution — it tries to explain how we happened and not why. Why do we even take birth, or why do we evolve? We do so, because, in my view, Nature recycles.

If you observe closely, everything in Nature is recycled. Absolutely everything. The five elements of earth, water, fire, air, ether, and the innumerable compounds thereof, all entities ­— living or non-living, animate or inanimate — they are all subject to recycling. Everything, including our body is salvaged by Nature. So does our consciousness as it finds a new home after death. Nature's only goal is survival; and it accomplishes it through the eternal cycle of transformation. That's how and why we happen(ed)."

Om Namah Shivay