What is the meaning of life?

Answer 1

"What is the meaning of life?" is a question many people ask themselves at some point during their lives. Some people believe that the meaning of life is one or more of the following:

Survival and temporal success

* ...to accumulate wealth and increase social status
* ...to compete or co-operate with others
* ...to destroy others who harm you, or to practice nonviolence and nonresistance
* ...to die having succeeded in your purpose
* ...to live
* ...to protect one's family
* ...to gain and exercise power
* ...to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book
* ...to produce offspring through sexual reproduction or asexual reproduction
* ...to seek freedom, either physically, mentally or financially
* ...to seek happiness and flourish, experience pleasure or celebrate
* ...to survive, including the pursuit of immortality through scientific means (see life extension)

Wisdom and knowledge

* ...to be without question, or to keep asking questions
* ...to explore, to expand beyond our frontiers
* ...to learn from one's own and others' mistakes
* ...to seek truth, knowledge, understanding, or wisdom
* ...to try to discover and understand the meaning of life
* ...to expand one's perception of the world

Ethical

* ...to express compassion
* ...to live in peace with each other, and in harmony with our natural environment (see utopia)
* ...to give and receive love
* ...to seek and acquire virtue, to live a virtuous life
* ...to serve others, or do good deeds
* ...to work for justice and democracy

Religious, spiritual and esoteric

* ...to turn fear into joy at a constant rate achieving on literal and metaphorical levels: immortality, enlightenment and atonement
* ...to achieve a supernatural connection within the natural context
* ...to achieve enlightenment and inner peace
* ...to become God, or God-like
* ...to experience existence from an infinite number of perspectives in order to expand the consciousness of all there is (i.e. God)
* ...to follow the "Golden Rule"
* ...to produce useful structure in the universe over and above consumption (see net creativity)
* ...to reach Heaven in the afterlife
* ...to understand and follow the "Word of God"
* ...to worship, serve, or achieve union with God
* ...to achieve rebirth in the Pure Land

Other

* ...to advance natural human evolution, or to contribute to the gene pool of the human race
* ...to advance technological evolution, or to actively develop the future human
* ...to contribute to collective meaning ("we" or "us") without having individual meaning ("I" or "me")
* ...to die, or become a martyr
* ...to find a purpose, a "reason" for living that hopefully raises the quality of one's experience of life, or even life in general
* ...to live, and enjoy the passage of time
* ...to have fun
* ...to protect humanity, or more generally the environment
* ...to pursue a dream, vision, or destiny
* ...to relate, connect, or achieve unity with others
* ...to seek and find beauty
* ...to simply live until one dies (there is no universal or celestial purpose)
* ...to participate in the chain of events which has led from the creation of the universe until its possible end (either freely chosen or determined, this is a subject widely debated amongst philosophers)
* ...to resolve all problems that one faces, or to ignore them and attempt to fully continue life without them, or to detach oneself from all problems faced (see Buddhism)
* ...still some do not even think there is any purpose whatsoever (see nihilism)
* ...as there is no intrinsic meaning to life, to each individual, the "meaning of life" is whatever he/she decides it is. In that sense, every point above is potentially valid.
* ...There is no meaning.

Answer 2

80% of humanity, the religious folks, don't need to ask the meaning of life, the church tells them....the supernatural explanation. But the rest of us can't swallow religious dogma, because there's no evidence. Nobody can prove that there life after death, that people are tortured or rewarded after life or that there's invisible spirits running around.

I've come to two conclusions recently:

1. Life has no meaning
2. Life has a million meanings.

First, there's a certainty that death and annihilation awaits not only you, but the Earth in general. It's an astonomical certainty that our sun will supernova and leave the earth a burnt crisp, not to mention all the other extinction level events around the corner.

Second, the million things that give us meaning are the pleasable experiences we can conjure up during the short period we are here on the earth, in the form of the relationships we have with our kids and other people, and the 'housekeeping' types of purposes. What i mean by that are the curing disease, ending hunger, improving literacy, reducing crime, preventing war, helping others, and other pleasurable 'feel good' pursuits.

Answer 3

A Zen Master once answered that question by saying Mu.Being Asian he was not mimicking a cow, Mu means nothingness.

Another Zen Master responded by asking the student had he eaten his daily meal, and when the student said yes the master continued: then wash your bowl.

I could go on but the jest is that life has no particular meaning, and to attempt to confine it's wonders to mere mortal words can only demean or belittle it's true essence. What is life? Perhaps no more than the matter at hand!

Answer 4

You got a lot different and interesting answers. I think I liked the shorter ones the best. Because actually...it is rather simple. The "meaning of life" is to "GIVE life meaning". I think that is our best shot at being happy...and probably making a lot of other people happier as well. It's up to us and the choices we make. Do we try to buy as many "things" as we can. Or do we try to make a difference, no matter how small, in someone else's life?

Answer 5

Watch, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Or read Acts 17 (Paul & the Stoic Philosophers in Athens).

Answer 6

To use your life to put good back into the world, and have it come back to you. Experience all that you can, open your mind to new things, and live every day as though you don't have any left.

Answer 7

To live,
no really I've put a great deal of thought in this.
The purpose in life is to live it and leave something good behind.

Answer 8

"Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence...Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient." -Aristotle

"Life must be lived as play." -Plato

Answer 9

it totally depends on how u look at it. if u wanna laugh no one can make u cry and if u see it as misery even god cant help u to smile

Answer 10

it's what distiguishes as from the dead. so live life to the fullest and heck live it like an undead.. *wink*

Answer 11

It's Christmas in Heaven...