Introduction -

Searching for the meaning of life

Piercing the secret of reality towards contentment

Unity

The Universe as energy, Force.

Things and processes as entities.

Continuity

Dependent origination/conditioned arising of forms.

Birth/appearance and death/disaggregation.

Complexity

3+ eras.

Adaptation into niches.

Construal

My world as reality. Two universes.

Now. All passes through awareness, becoming my Universe, the whole Universe.

Contentment

Insatisfaction and its cessation.

Serenity replaces bliss and worry.

Extroduction -

Three errors of thinking

Exotica to disbelieve

Introduction

The existential question of the meaning of life has numerous answers, some explored in philosophies, others codified in religious belief, others yet simply passed on in the culture of the day. Man has always sought to transcend his often unsatisfactory worldly condition by seeking permanent happiness in this life and often thereafter.

This wild dream led to the creation of religions, for these offered an explanation of one’s current condition and a path to what was sought. Buddhism is the most intellectual of the religions and a good starting point for understanding our plight in the universe, even if we have to jettison some of its long-held beliefs as we go.

Eastern thought generally focuses on the nature of reality and of being. The belief is that piercing the secret of reality will enable one to transcend one’s existential condition and attain nirvana, a condition of fulfillment and unity with the universe. The five principles of being are meant to do just that.

The first three principles of being concern its nature, its functioning and its evolution, while the latter two deal with our human relationship to being. The first ones involve science, although seen from a less usual perspective, while the latter ones are more philosophical. The intent is to bring this all together in a cogent picture of what is and what can be done about it. From there, various sidetracks can be pursued in more depth.

The principle of construal may be the most difficult to grasp and accept, for it goes against the grain of our current cultural understanding of being. Yet it is a pivotal principle in breaking through towards contentment, the ultimate goal we can set ourselves.

These five principles of being do harsh justice to current common views of reality and to religious speculation going back millennia. So be it, for the quest is to go all the way in as rational a manner as possible to answer these two questions: what is the Universe and what am I doing here?

Unity

The Universe is one. Every entity in the Universe is composed of the same stuff, which is energy, better called Force in its generality. Not a good or a bad Force as in some legends and movies, just a basic physical force. Nor is it a conscious or spiritual Force, as some religions advance.

Force is what makes things happen, what makes the Universe evolve. The Universe is one total system that is gradually unfolding into a multitude of entities that we witness as currently composing it. All these entities are interrelated, not to all others but to some set of others. All together, they form an interrelated whole which is the Universe.

The unfolding of the Universe is a process engendering myriad entities comprising subprocesses and things. A volcano is a subprocess, a rock is a thing. Both, however, are energy in different forms. A volcano is a transformation of space where lava is expelled from the earth to solidify on the land. A process driven by energy. A rock is a material entity composed of molecules, atoms, particles, all the way down to energy. The energy is caught in the material structure, which can be likened to a sort of battery. All entities, both processes and things, are at base energy. The Universe is one big energy system, the Force, which plays out in myriad ways. All are united to others, which are united in turn to yet others, forming one total system, our Universe. Even in their separateness, entities remain connected.

Thus, even when we see around us a multitude of separate entities, we must realize that there is fundamental unity in the Universe. We can realize also that all entities are composed of the same stuff, Force (energy).

Continuity

The Force flows through all. Every entity arises out of other entities and will in turn birth further entities. A volcano comes about through increased pressure within the earth and will itself give rise to a mountain. The mountain, when in contact with clouds, will lead to rain, and so on, and on. All is energy coursing through various forms.

This is what Buddhism calls dependent origination or also the conditioned arising of forms. Entities do not arise haphazardly. Their arising depends on prior conditions being just right. Conversely, given a set of conditions, the arising of a certain form will take place. This is the principle of causality in physics, indeed in all phenomena.

And this implies that all is determined. All is causally related to a given situation. There is no chaos in the Universe, no chance events. What we label as such is merely due to our not knowing what the parameters of the given situation are in fact. Understandable since we are not omniscient.

Thus, entities appear and also disappear. When other conditions evolve, other effects will occur. When the moisture in the cloud is spent, the rain will stop, and as the cloud moves on, the sun will reappear. Our earlier rock, battered by the elements, will over a long period of time disintegrate into stones, which themselves will disintegrate into sand, and so on. All the doing of energy.

This is easily seen in life forms. They arise from prior life forms, grow and prosper, then decline and die, decomposing into other entities which are assimilated into the earth. And the process repeats itself, assuming the conditions are just right.

There is an underlying continuity in the unfolding of the Universe. Entities do not appear from nothing, nor do they disappear into nothing. Nothing does. All has an origination and all has a termination. The Universe is a flow. And nothing will last forever.

This is the important notion of impermanence in eastern philosophy. All is impermanent and will end some day. All entities. Religions tend to make exceptions to this when talking about heaven, nirvana, Brahman, and so on. Yet impermanence, as part of continuity within the Universe, is fundamental.

Complexity

The Universe is currently increasing in complexity as it unfolds. It started with the Big Bang, an immense release of energy, and has been unfolding into myriad entities, both processes and material forms, ever since.

It is convenient to discuss this unfolding as going through 3+ eras: the physical era, the biological era, the mental era, and some as yet undetermined future era. Each era is characterized by the emergence of a radical new type of form (matter, life, consciousness).

Initially there was just energy. The Universe was cold and dark and empty of entities, even though the timeframe we are talking about is extremely short. As energy radiated out from the Big Bang, heat appeared and created the conditions for the appearance of subatomic particles (first matter, as we know of it today), which in turn soon structured themselves, given the proper conditions, into atoms of hydrogen. As radiation continued spreading and cooling occurred, some atoms of hydrogen coalesced into atoms of helium.

Later on, as the unfolding continued, vast densities of hydrogen and helium gases formed stars. These in turn provided not only light, but the inner furnaces which turned out all the other elements that are known to us. And on and on, until our own planet Earth came into being in orbit around the Sun.

Thus the physical era saw the emergence of physical processes (our physical laws) and of physical matter (the elements and the structures comprised of them).

Later on, the second era dawned when a combination of conditions was just right for the emergence of life, a new type of structure with internal autonomy and the ability to reproduce. Evolution is what we call the process by which different life forms flourish and perish according to the ambient conditions within which they find themselves, this being an instance of conditioned arising within the continuity principle.

Of particular importance for us humans is the emergence later on of pain and pleasure and their own evolution into our current emotions.

Later on yet, we witness the emergence of consciousness and thus the start of the mind era. As the brain grew in size and complexity, it produced the mind, a set of energy processes based in structured material entities, but themselves beyond matter. The science of this relationship is still embryonic.

We are currently living in this era. From the mind flowed imagination and rational thought and knowledge and speculation. From these flowed our cultures and the world around us as we know it today.

Of particular importance in this era was the emergence of the Self, an entity in each of us that is thought by many to cause havoc in the world. The Self is a psychological entity that enables us to identify with a body and mind and view the world from within that perspective. More on that later.

We can presume that the process of complexification will continue, even though there may be serious setbacks at times. What the coming fourth era might be is just speculation. My own take on it goes towards a type of disembodied thought that will have autonomy of its own, but your guess is as good as mine.

Thus, complexification takes place within the unfolding occurring in continuity along the lines of evolutionary fit within emerging conditions, that is, conditioned arising.

Construal

Biological evolution has provided us humans with senses through which to perceive the world around us and with a mind to make sense of it all. Each growing child goes through the process of taking in the world and putting it all together in a coherent picture.

In effect, the child builds an internal picture of what is perceived through the senses and further thought about it in interaction with others, a process that goes on for a lifetime. What this means is that we do not simply register the world as it is, but rather, we construe the world, that is, we build it in our imagination. There are bumps along the way, but we end up with a pretty coherent picture of the world and one that generally agrees with that of others.

The crucial point here is that this is a human view of the world. A kangaroo has a different one, and so does a bat, a fish, or an ant. We have the further advantage of thought and culture, and so we construe a rather more complex world view.

To see how it works, consider an ocean. When I bring to mind, say, the Pacific Ocean, what entity in the Universe am I considering? In fact, there is no such material entity, no such ocean. There is merely a large expanse of water between the Americas and Asia, which we call the Pacific Ocean for the sake of communicating among ourselves. It is a construal, a label in the mind. The same for the Americas and for Asia, all construals, mind entities.

This is not to say they do not exist. They exist as mind entities, as thoughts. Still, out there in the Pacific is a very large quantity of water, a material entity that can be seen, tasted, felt as wet and so on. So what is water? It is an agglomeration of molecules composed of hydrogen and oxygen, which in turn are atomic structures made up of particles, which themselves are believed to be vibrating string-like affairs consisting of energy. In the end, water is a mass of energy which has taken on a particular form which we perceive as blue, wet, fluid, salty and so on. That form is a bundle of energy in a certain configuration, but what we sense is a construal, a product of the mind.

What is out there all around us are bundles of energy taking on various forms which our mind categorizes and labels. These collections of energy are real. The bundle I call a dog is different than the bundle I call a cat. Each, however, is just an energetic entity in a certain form, a walking, living energy process. Which came into being in line with the three principles introduced above.

We humans, of course, do not see them as mere bundles of energy. We see them as forms, which we label as dog or cat. A mouse cannot label them and sees them very differently than we do. Our mind in fact construes dog and cat. Even my own dog Rover is fully construed by my mind.

Around us are bundles of energy, some of them similar to others, some of them quite particular, all interacting with other bundles of energy around them in this unified and connected universe. Thus, all our perceptions are in fact construals created by the mind to help us communicate and interact with the world. All the entities in the world, all we can know about the world, are construed by the mind. All.

This is a philosophically-merged idealist-realist view of mind. Realist in that real bundles of energy do course through the world; idealist in that our perceptions of these entities are fully fabricated by the mind.

The greatest construal of all has been hotly debated in religious circles: the Self. Frogs do not have a concept of self; they just react to the world as it impinges upon them. Humans, on the other hand, develop their self-concept as children and refine and nurture it throughout life. Many religions extend it to an eternal soul, Buddhism works to get rid of it, atheists make it the center of their world. The next principle deals with this issue.

The limitations of our human condition lead us to consider the existence of two universes: the Greater Universe which is that of energy processes that play out their unfolding in the large scheme of things; and the Aware Universe, circumscribed to our individual sphere of awareness at any single moment.

We know pure idealism is not an option, that is, we know of the reality of the Greater Universe by the historical account of evolution. Humans, and before them, mountains and oceans and many other things, did not suddenly pop up in the Universe. There is a known history underlying their appearance. We were preceded in the Universe by non-conscious, non-construing entities.

The Aware Universe comes about through our limited awareness in the Now. All past events we think of and all future plans take place in the present. They join our current perceptions and thoughts as now-events. My consciousness is only aware of what my senses and thoughts of the moment direct me to, which is a tiny subset of the Greater Universe. My awareness creates My Universe and all else at that moment is non-existent to me. We each of us thus operate in a bubble.

My universe of course is constantly shifting, as my attention wanders on to something else. My universe of the moment, composed of all the construals I am aware of, is entire. All else might as well be considered non-existent.

Thus, there is an energy-based Universe and there is an awareness-based Universe. Both are real. Both impinge on our human condition.

Contentment

Reaching a state of contentment with oneself and with the world follows the Buddha’s great insights into the human condition, which became Buddhism’s four noble truths. These are interpreted here in a modern framework.

The first insight is that man’s basic goal of lasting happiness is thwarted by pain and suffering. The second is that most suffering is the result of clinging to our own mental desires. The third is that contentment is within reach. And the fourth is that this can be reached through a simple wisdom-oriented lifestyle.

The search for happiness is the basic driver of human action. Animal evolution led to the emergence of pain and its counterpart, pleasure. These are drivers that keep an animal out of harm’s way and have it seek out entities in its environment that will be good for survival. These two feelings direct the actions of all animals with a brain, including us.

In our case, a whole complex of emotions has evolved out of these fundamental feelings, but basically it comes down to being satisfied and avoiding unsatisfactory events. Achieving happiness and avoiding unhappiness.

The trouble is that we are greedy and would like ever-lasting happiness and no unhappiness at all. Which is for most of us impossible, since like all else, this entity called happiness is also impermanent. It comes and goes according to the state of the Universe. The arising of happiness is conditional, like all else. And as conditions change, so does it.

The first insight is thus this: we need to accept life as it is, with warts (pain) and all. The dream of a permanently happy life with no pain or suffering, whether in this life or some further life, is illusory. Get real, reject the illusion, accept a stoic life.

This is not to say life will be all miserable. There are pleasures as well as pains. Enjoy the pleasures and be brave with the pains. Both are unavoidable, both are impermanent.

The second insight is that the cause of suffering is very often of our own making. If I develop rabies after being bitten by a rabid animal, I have not caused the event to come about. Conditions were present outside of myself that led that event to arise, with its eventual pain and suffering. But if I suffer greatly from my jealousy of a neighbor’s wealth, the ensuing suffering is caused by my own greed, by my unsatiated desire for wealth, by my thwarted goal to become as wealthy as he is.

This mind-generated suffering goes back to our construal principle. For we generate not only a picture of the world, but also a picture of how we would like that world to be in ideal terms. In terms of lasting happiness. We create an agenda, a plan of action for all of our life time-frames. The basic trouble is that we do not control the world; it has its own unfolding, with constantly changing conditions and resulting pleasures and pains. The end result of our oft-unhappy condition can usually be traced back to our mind-generated unrealistic desires for pleasures that cannot be achieved. Hence deception and suffering.

The second insight is thus this: beware of grasping, for it will lead to misery. Pleasures will come, enjoy them while you can (for they are impermanent), and do not cling to them. Let them go on their own, lest you suffer from the loss. Life is constantly changing, jump on the bandwagon, do not get stuck in unachievable desire.

The third insight is that contentment is within reach. Reducing our expectations and their attendant desires will naturally increase contentment. The state of contentment is not ever-lasting happiness, not bliss. There will be pain and some suffering, those are inevitable for the animal and human we are. But these will be much reduced, for there will be fewer disappointments, fewer reasons to be unsatisfied.

Becoming un-driven is key to contentment. The idea is to sit back and stop attempting to always better one’s situation or the situation of the world. The Universe will continue unfolding in its own way. Let it happen. Be content with what is, not with what should be.

This is a crucial insight and has led Buddhism to the aim of nirvana. Other religions have an equivalent transcendent goal for one to reach. Transcendence should not be counted on, however. Contentment is a form of serenity that can be reached in this lifetime (and there is only one lifetime, no more).

Becoming un-driven means letting go of trying: trying to be someone special, trying to become ever better, trying to have more. Some traditions suggest one has to renounce one’s personhood, one’s very self, to attain perfect and everlasting serenity. That is not possible.

Each of us construes a Self, an image of who one is, with this body, this mind, this character, this set of memories, and so on. Concluding, as some spiritualists do, that the Self does not exist just because it is impermanent, disappearing with death, seeks to support the road to nirvana, while nevertheless erring in not considering the Self on par with any other construed mental entity. The Self construal is dangerous as a seat for desire and greed, but simply eliminating it overlooks its human usefulness. One cannot long survive without it.

The third insight is thus this: one can achieve contentment within one’s lifetime by a deliberate letting go of agendas and simply flowing with the Universe. Desires decrease and thereby so does suffering, leading not to lasting bliss, but to serenity.

The fourth insight is that a simple wisdom-oriented lifestyle is the way to get there. Contentment comes from the wisdom of realizing the three insights just described. This is feasible but certainly not easy, since much of it goes against our cultural conditioning and our cultural environment. Hence a lifestyle that is calm and collected will favor us not just in accepting the insights, but in living them.

The Buddha proposed three orientations to pursue. The first is to keep sight of the insights by focusing on the laws of reality, conditioned arising, impermanence and so on, and by keeping a mind uncluttered by constant desire. The second is to relate harmoniously with others and the world around us, in an ethically sound manner. The third is to cultivate the mind through meditation, so as to develop the potential of awareness to the present, as well as concentration without the mind constantly wandering.

The notion of voluntary simplicity in lifestyle captures well the spirit behind this. Remaining engaged in an overly active lifestyle full of attractions and distractions is hardly conducive to serenity. That is why the second half of life, rather than the first half, has been said to be particularly receptive to contemplation of the principles of being and maturation of contentment. Not that early age is a disqualifier.

The fourth insight is thus this: a calm and honest life is most appropriate to develop right understanding of reality, especially if bolstered through meditative practice.

Extroduction

The five principles of being offer a coherent picture of reality, including how we humans fit in. Certainly, they do not answer all questions, nor are they firm in certainty. Each of us has to delve into the topic of being in his or her own way and come up with what makes most sense. Each of us has a mind with which to do that.

In considering the cultural context of humanity, it is surprising to note how much religious-based magical thinking still largely occurs today. This is because we are prone to three errors in thinking about our human condition: the anthropocentric error, the transcendent error, and the fatherly error.

The anthropocentric error is that of thinking that we are the center of the Universe. It is best illustrated by the persecution of Galileo who suggested replacing the earth-centric view of the solar system by a helio-centric one. Suddenly, we were not at the center any more. Darwin did likewise in biology: suddenly, we were just an animal much like the others, and in fact derived from them.

The anthropocentric error is a tendency to see ourselves as always special, the measure of all things, so to speak. The principles of being should thoroughly dispel such a view.

The transcendent error, derived from our inability to come up with answers to our existential condition, is to create a mythology that provides such answers. We construe super-human entities such as gods and heavenly states that are outside of our direct experience, but which give us hope of salvation from our woes. This mythology is not rational and thus does not provide satisfactory answers, but it pushes away the issues into some supra-universe beyond our understanding, and we find that satisfying.

The fatherly error rests on a psychological need for comfort and security, as a good father is able to provide to a child. We give our faith to certain beliefs that we find reconfirming, such as the childish Christian belief that each of us has a guardian angel that looks over us.

These three errors of thinking about our human condition derive from primitive thinking and remain present today for lack of a better understanding of the Universe along the lines of the five principles of being. While understandable, it is now time for humanity to jettison magical thinking altogether and get with it in achieving contentment.

The five principles of being, despite their inspiration from eastern thought, exclude a number of beliefs that course through that thought and which should be explicitly mentioned here. Not to disparage them as foolish, but just to say they are most implausible as facets of reality and to point out how they may have been cultivated in our cultural history in line with some of the errors of thinking introduced above. These beliefs are re-birth and soul, supernatural karma and free will, devotion, no-self and salvation.

When I die, my body will disintegrate and nourish the earth. The processes of my mind will simply stop and disappear. To believe that I have a soul or some form of mind entity that survives my death to reappear in a heaven or in some young child partakes of the transcendental error.

The Universe is in flux and impermanence is the rule. No entities we know of have permanence. Why should humans be immune to this? It is a simple anthropocentric error. Both reincarnation in physical form or in spiritual form within nirvana have no foundation in reality.

Karma is generally believed as some form of supernatural accounting of our good and bad deeds which will determine our future prospects after death. As nothing survives death, there is no need for belief in this accounting, for it suffers from the transcendental error.

While karma does apply in our lifetime, our actions bringing on reactions from our environment, religions have extended it to after-life as a basis for encouraging morality. Underlying it is free will, which suffers from anthropocentrism. Dogs have no free will and there is nothing in reality to suggest we do. Our lack of knowledge about the determinants underlying our actions creates a gap that we have conveniently filled with free will. But that goes against the principle of continuity in which conditioned arising applies across the board and does not spare humanity.

Devotion in spiritual practice is a clear example of the fatherly error. One believes in a godly figure that must be placated and that will look kindly on me if my devotion is strong enough. I will be taken care of, just like my father used to do. If I have a particular need, I can pray and ask that God to intercede.

Devotion often involves adoration and much merit-making through chanting, praying, giving offerings, etc. As well as great respect for officials of the religion. All to benefit karma and the after-life. These devotional beliefs are psychologically comforting, but their belief underpinnings have no basis in reality. They are construals of the same order as unicorns are.

One of the principal beliefs not grounded in reality and displaying the transcendence error is the belief in salvation from the woes of this world and entry into an eternal state of bliss in some other sphere. Heaven, unity with God, and nirvana are forms of this belief.

Nirvana is particularly interesting in that it is said to require a dissolution of the Self. Nirvana, also called awakening or enlightenment, is a psychological disposition to view the world in a non-usual way that involves overcoming both the “Me” factor and any concern one may have for bettering the state of the world. For the usual way we interact with the world is me-centered and action-oriented.

Enlightenment is not an on-off phenomenon like turning on a light might be. It is a gradual disposition. Many gurus and bodhisattvas are said to have attained full enlightenment and thus completely renounced their self, gone beyond all desire and suffering. This claim is not grounded in reality, for indeed it is said to be beyond reality as we know it, ineffable and thus indescribable in words.

It may well be that such states are not so much other-worldly as akin to exceptional psychological states on the fringe of normality, not unlike states experienced under the influence of psychedelics. Feelings of merging with the Universe and floods of intuition may well be the result of the brain states resulting from these psychological events.

It is quite possible that those spiritual seekers that experience enlightenment achieve that state of mind by convincing themselves that their persona (their Self) is a delusion and that their real being is pure consciousness melded with the Universe. One can legitimately wonder who is deluded, the beginning student who is said to unfortunately believe in the Self, or the enlightened person who believes he or she has seen the truth and is living beyond personhood?

Given the seeming fragile psychological constitution of a number of claimants to enlightenment, we may be dealing here more with exceptional brain states rather than spiritual attainments of a salvatory nature. Someday, we may have a better fix on this.

In conclusion, one should be skeptical of claims about reality unless one can build a coherent and rational picture of the Universe, such as do the five principles of being. These, however, are not simply to be believed; rather, they should be explored through scientific understanding and mindful analysis, and where appropriate, added to or modified. No one has a perfect understanding of reality.

Upon reflection, one can see that the Universe, despite the awe its grandeur engenders in us, is not so mysterious after all. Sure, there are many aspects we can say little about, such as its own origin, the role of time, the nature of Force, and so on, but yet, the five principles of being outline its functioning and how we humans fit into that functioning. In so doing, they provide a basis for a personal meaning of life.