Post by Reefs on Jul 10, 2020 11:50:31 GMT -5
full transcript here:
isha.sadhguru.org/global/en/wisdom/video/what-is-the-purpose-of-life
partial transcript:
Question: What is the purpose of life?
Sadhguru: Isn't it fantastic that if there is no purpose, you have nothing to fulfill, you can just live. No, but you want a purpose and not a simple purpose, you want a "God-given" purpose. It's very dangerous. People who think they have a God-given purpose are doing the cruelest things on the planet…They are doing the most horrible things and they’ve always been doing the most horrible things because when you have a God-given purpose, life here becomes less important than your purpose.
Life is important - when I say "life," I am not talking about your family, your work, what you do, what you do not do, your party - I am not talking about that as life. This is life (referring to the self), isn't it? Life is within you or around you? You’re mistaking the ambiance of life for life. Your home, your family, your workspace, your party - this is all ambiance of life. This is not life, isn't it?
You’re mistaking the ambiance for the real thing. Life is important because it's the only thing you know, you don't know anything else. Do you know something else? The rest is all imagined stuff. The only thing is that this is beating and alive and that's all there is.
It is of paramount importance. Not you as a person, that’s not important, but you as a piece of life - it’s very important because that is the basis of everything. When I say that is the basis of everything, the universe exists for you only because you are. The world exists for you only because you are, otherwise it won't exist in your experience. So, in every way this is important.
So, what is the purpose for this?… The greatest thing about life is that there is no meaning to it. This is the greatest aspect of life - that it has no meaning to it and there is no need for it to have a meaning. It is the pettiness of one’s mind that it’ll seek a meaning because psychologically you will feel kind of unconnected with life if you don’t have a purpose and a meaning.
People are constantly trying to create these false purposes…What if [God] doesn’t have a plan for you?...The thing is, the creation is made in such a way that Creation and Creator cannot be separated. Here you are a piece of creation. At the same time, the source of creation is throbbing within you. If you pay a little attention to this process of life, you would not need any purpose. It’ll keep you engaged for a million years if you want. There is so much happening - so much means so much unbelievable things are happening right here. If you pay enough attention, a million years of existence, it will keep you busy or more.
Right now, the need for purpose has come because you’re trapped in your psychological structure, not in your life process. Your psychological structure functions from the limited data that it has gathered. Within that it rolls and right now, your thought and emotion has become far more important than your life. So, because of this you’re seeking a purpose as an escape from the trap that you have set for yourself. It is a trap set by you. You can easily come out of it. If the trap was set for you by somebody else, difficult to come out because they’ll set the trap in such a way that you cannot come out.
So, the psychological wall that you’ve built, which gives you some sense of identity, which gives you some sense of being an individual person and which gives you security, beginning to experience it like a trap; somewhere you want to break it. So, one way of not breaking it is to find a purpose. Those who find a purpose in their life, they become so conceited. They will live within their own trap forever thinking that they’re doing the most fantastic thing. And now you said I’ve found a purpose.
It is wonderful to exist here without any purpose. It takes a certain freedom from your psychological structure to be here without any purpose. If you’re trapped in your psychological structure you need a purpose. Otherwise, your psychological structure will lose its integrity. That’s why the girl who was asking at that time, I said, “First thing you need is balance. If you have balance, then you can climb. If you don’t have balance, it's better you stay on the ground.” It's not safe for somebody who is not balanced to climb high. It's best you stay close to the ground. You should not climb.
So, first thing is to establish a balance, then you loosen your psychological structure, then it's a wonderful thing. If you are loosening your psychological structure without balance, which lot of people are doing today. See, why does somebody want to drink alcohol or take a drug? Because it loosens your psychological structure and makes you feel liberated for a moment but without the necessary balance. You have not worked for the balance, but you got freedom. Freedom without balance is destruction, anarchy, isn't it?
So, first thing is to work for balance, an enormous sense of balance where even if you dismantle your psychological structure, you can simply live here. Dismantling your psychological structure is an important process because that is your trap, that is your security, that is your stability. At the same time, that’s your trap. Because the walls are set, you feel secured, but that’s also your trap. If you dismantle your trap, you also dismantle your security. You also dismantle your sense of purpose. You also dismantle everything that matters to you. So, that will need balance. Without balance, if you dismantle you’ll go crazy.
Don’t think I only teach the program with intensity and vigor, I live my life like that with everything, I eat like that also. I will do everything with intensity and vigor, that’s how you’re supposed do your life.
There’s no other purpose. The purpose of life is to live and to live totally. To live totally does not mean party every night. To live totally means - before you fall dead, every aspect of life has been explored, nothing has been left unexplored. Before you fall dead, even if you do not explore the cosmos, at least this piece of life (Referring to oneself) you must know it in its entirety… That’s living totally, that you experience the whole of this, all dimensions of what this is. You did not live anything untouched. You just do that. That will take a long time. That’s good enough purpose for you.
So what Sadhguru is saying here is basically what some of us here have been saying as well: The question about the purpose of life
makes only sense in a certain context, but ultimately the question as well as the entire context of that question is misconceived. Remove that psychological structure (SVP) and the (existential) question disappears with it.
He also makes a good point about spiritual practice. Sometimes people think the point of spiritual practice is to create enlightened beings. I don't think that's the goal of spiritual practice. I rather think the goal of spiritual practice is to create balanced beings with a stable foundation. I remember Niz once making a similar point, basically saying that it wouldn't be a good idea to present his teachings to mentally unstable individuals because it wouldn't end well.
And this may also tie into the traditional advaita vs. neo-advaita discussion. In traditional advaita practice is essential, because they see a solid foundation as essential. But neo-advaita doesn't seem to care about a solid foundation (for whom anyway?). As a result we have teachers who undoubtedly have had profound realizations, but at the same time are still stuck in the same unhealthy behavioral patters as the people they are trying to teach.
