A response

"Enlightenment for a Wave in the Ocean is the Moment the wave Realises that it is Water."

I was browsing Tedy's blog today, and there was a post with the ever-salient question: What is the meaning of life? And I thought... Hmmm... well, I'm a philosophy student, perhaps I should give it a go. And I replied in his comments section... but then I thought, I'll modify it a little and see what people think?

I had this feeling I’ve coined “the omnipresent why” after yoga-class today. And it gets me really really depressed. It's not a materialistic why - like a "why do I not have more money?" or "Why is she prettier than me?". It's a metaphysical why - "Why do I bother? Why should I keep living? Why do I do what I do? Why don't I retire to a life of meditation?" As I was walking home, I tried to reason my way out of it. But that didn’t help. So I stopped thinking about it. And then I realised something - that I’d stopped feeling cold, that I didn’t feel that my steps were heavy...

So this was the key: Stop thinking. Stop analysing. Stop thinking “I want - I think - I wish - I feel” etc.

And then I realised how pointless it is to ask why... because questions of 'why' are questions generated from the self - and these questions become meaningless when one can see beyond the ego. I ask the question "Why?" because I want answers. So I must strive to let go of this ego.

... But it’s hard... and it can be fleeting. In fact, I think I’ve lost that feeling already, and trying to describe it in words to myself is like showing a desert nomad a drop of water and saying that the ocean consists in a lot of this stuff.

... Meaning of life? We spend a lot of time contemplating the meanings of a lot of things in Philosophy, but it still doesn’t answer the questions. Perhaps it’s the very fact that after all the contemplation, there will always be questions that keeps us all going. Would you want to live in a universe where you knew everything? If this is the case - that you wouldn't want to know everything, but keep learning, then is the meaning of life the pursuit of knowledge?