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

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 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)
* ...still some do not even think there is any purpose whatsoever (see nihilism)
* ...(This is actually an extension of the point immediately above) There is no inherent meaning to life, existence, the universe, etc. They exist because they can. However, humans appear to inately give meaning, usually many, often conflicting, to what they are conscious of. So, to each individual, the "meaning of life" is whatever they decide it is. In that sense, every point above is potentially valid.

Answer 2

The purpose of life is to evolve to the highest state of consciousness as possible here on earth. That is what the prophets did. Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, Mohamed, Gandhi, etc.,achieved, after a period of deep reflection a 'connectedness' to all things. Let us not 'fight' over the differences but see the connectedness. It's a lot like matrix 1. This (points to all) is just so many atoms. Consciousness has been evolving along with the physical, all along. The purpose of all life is to achieve the final degree of consciousness where hatred and killing are no more and we will have achieved the inner directive to be completely aware.

Philosophy is itself the very nature of 'knowing' that mankind is 'not' in a state of real awareness of itself, but that with concentrated effort, one can awaken.

The best way to begin is to keep a journal of all your thoughts...then go back into it and study it and 'see where your fallacies lay'. Where your prejudices exist. Where you are only parroting what you have learned by peoples that were deep asleep and only parroting what others that came before sputtered.

Answer 3

This is not as difficult a question as it first seems. However, there is one mysterious part - - your soul. You have a soul, a type of quantum energy, and it is affected by everything you do, every thought, every word, everything you put in your brain. The meaning of life is found in the care and nurturing of your soul.

The care and nurturing of your soul is accomplished by; (1) seeking truth, continually filling your mind with knowledge, (2) practicing love, the giving and sharing of yourself to others, real self-sacrificing love, and (3) finding beauty everywhere, relish beauty, delight in it. The ones who are enlightened know to leave something beautiful behind every day. That's why we have music, art, gardens, colors, etc. That's why we teach children to plant flowers (flowers do nothing, but are beautiful).

So practice these simple three things and you will not only understand the meaning of life, but you will be an enlightened one.

Answer 4

If I had a nickel for every time this question has been posted on Yahoo! Answers, I'd be a very rich man. And that would make my life meaningful.

Answer 5

None. Why life should have a meaning ?

Answer 6

I guess everyone has a different opinion on that certain question. My answer for that question would have to be that God gives everyone a purpose and I think my purpose is to keep ppl alive happy and to give advice.

Answer 7

perhaps you should think that there is something wrong with the question instead of life itself, then there would be no life.

Answer 8

I really don't know and think that this question has been asked a million times. How about this:

THE ANSWER IS: WUGA BUGA CHUGGGGGA () @#

Answer 9

since when did it have any meaning?

Answer 10

live and die