Life means?

Question

laxman, Vizag, INDIA

Answer 1

Hi Laxman ela unuva.

Answer 2

Life means: getting up at seven-thirty, taking your breakfast at eight, at eight-thirty catching the train to the town; back again at five-thirty, taking your tea, reading your newspaper, watching tv, then having supper, making love to your wife without any love, and going to bed. Again the same thing starts the next day. Everything is settled and there is no surprise: the future will be nothing but the past repeated again and again. Naturally there is no fear. You have done these things so many times, you have become skilful. You can do them again.



With the new is fear because one never knows whether one will be able to do it. One is doing always for the first time, so one is always shaky, uncertain about whether one is going to make it or not. But in that very thrill, in that adventure is life -- aliveness, let us say, rather than life, because life has also become a dull and dead word -- aliveness, the flow.

No-body is going to give you the answer about who you are... what your life means. Nobody is going to give you the answer -- nobody can. The answer has to be found deep in the recesses of your own being. The answer has to come from exactly the same source as from where the question is coming.

So the question is tremendously significant, because the question shows the way from where you have to seek the answer. In the East we have never paid any attention to answers, because all answers are childish; only questions are alive.

Life can have meaning only when it is real, and a real life means that you are not worried about what others say. You are simply working out what you can be, not what they expect or will approve of.

Simply forget others, as if you are alone. Move in the crowd, but never become part of it. Why should they be concerned about you? They are neurotic, and your being concerned about them is again a neurosis, a reflected neurosis. A healthy person is not worried about others; he has no judgement about them. If they want to be creative, good. If they want to be crazy, that too is good. That is their life, and finally they are responsible for it. So a healthy man never judges anybody, and never asks anybody's opinion. The very asking shows that you are wavering inside, that you don't have a hold on your being and you need props.

Just today I was reading an anecdote. A man enters a train which has written on it that it is going to London, but he asks a person in his carriage, 'Is this train going to London?' The person says that it is, but he is interested in reading his newspaper, so the answer sounds rather indifferent, not certain, so the man is not convinced. He asks again of the same person, 'Sir, is it really going to London?' The other man replies, 'Yes, it is really going to London,' but now he is angry because he has been disturbed.

Another person asks the questioner if he can read or not, because it is written everywhere that the train is going to London! Finally the questioner is convinced. Just then they stop at a station, and another passenger enters the compartment and asks the first man, 'Is this train going to London?' He replies, 'My God, you have made me uncertain again!'

This is what you are doing with yourself, mm? Anybody can make you uncertain whether you are good or beautiful. This is not a true being; it is a false one that you have gathered from other people's opinion.

My own understanding of life is:

Life means relationship. The ego means remaining confined to oneself. Life means moving, melting. The ego is an imprisonment. Life is a merger.

So if you really want to live, you will have to drop the ego -- and the sooner, the better. Once you become attuned with the ways of the ego, it will become more and more difficult.

Life means share, life means express, life means give and take: give and allow somebody to give to you.

Without love, a man is almost dead, a corpse which breathes but is not alive. Life means overflowing love; only then do you bloom in thousand-and-one flowers. It is only love that will make you aware of what life is.

To know life is not to know about life. To know life is to live life in intensity, with passion, with totality; that's the only way to know life. By being more alive one knows life, and by being more alive one becomes more divine.

People live at the minimum, hence they go on missing life. Life is found only when you live at the optimum, when the torch of your life is afire, from both ends together. In a total intensity of love, a single moment is enough to know life, because in total intensity a single moment becomes eternity. Otherwise one can go on dragging for lives and lives. And that's what we have been doing -- dragging and dragging. Life seems to be a great load, a burden to be carried somehow. Life should be a dance; it can be a dance, it is meant to be a dance.

Life means love, when love is missing and you are just living day by day, day to day, you are just living at the minimum, you don't have any reservoir, if anything accidental comes up you are shattered; you don't have energy to face it.

The more you know, the less you wonder, and the less you wonder, the less life means to you. You are not exhilarated with life. You are not surprised -- you start taking things for granted.

The innocent heart is continuously in wonder like a small child collecting seashells on the sea beach or coloured stones, or just running hither and thither in a garden after butterflies... and is surprised by everything. That's why children ask so many questions.

If you go for a morning walk with a child you start feeling exhausted because he goes on asking about this and that, and questions which cannot be answered: 'Why are the trees green?' and 'Why is the rose red?'questions which cannot be answered. But why is the child asking? He is intrigued. He is interested in everything. The word 'interest' comes from a root which means: to be involved in -- 'inter-esse'. The child is involved in everything that is happening: the dog that is passing by the side and the cow that is just sitting on the road and the car that passes by and the bird that is on the wing.... A child is involved with everything that is surrounding him.

The more you become knowledgeable, the less and less you remain involved in life. You simply pass by -- you are not concerned with the cow and the dog and the rose bush and the sun and the bird; you are not concerned. Your mind has become very narrow; you are just going to your office or back to your home. You are just running after money more and more, that's all. or after power, but you are no more related to life in its multi-dimensionality.

To be in wonder is to relate with everything, and to be constantly receptive. That is the meaning of 'nirmalo'; to be utterly innocent like a child. And when one is like a child.... And remember, I say 'like a child' -- not a child, because all children have to grow; sooner or later they will become burdened by knowledge. That's why I say 'like a child'. Physically you are not a child but spiritually you remain a child. You don't collect the past, you don't collect reminiscences of the past, you don't collect memory. You remain fresh and young. You die moment to moment to everything that has passed so that you can remain fresh.

Fall into deeper loves, greater loves, whatsoever the risk. Life means risk, and those who are afraid to risk, remain dead. Only those who are ready to risk all attain to all.

Life means abundance, richness, in every possible dimension. Just look at existence. Do you think it is poor? Look at the millions of flowers, their fragrance; look at the millions of stars. Man has not been able yet to count them, and I don't think he is ever going to be able to count them. With your bare, naked eye you only see, at the most, three thousand stars -- and that's nothing. And these stars are expanding. Just as a flower opens up and the petals start going away from the center, the universe is continuously flowering, blossoming, opening -- and with a tremendous speed. The stars are going farther away from the center. We don't know exactly where the center is; but one thing is certain, that the whole universe is running fast, moving, alive.

Many people don't know what life is for. They have never lived. Yes, they have been born; but just to be born is not enough to be alive. They will vegetate and think they are living. And one day they will die, without ever having lived at all. These are the miracles that go on happening all around the world; people who have never lived, die -- such an impossibility! But it happens every day. And many have recognized it at the moment of death, and have said it is so, that "it is strange; for the first time I am realizing that I missed life."

If you live, for what? To love, to enjoy, to be ecstatic -- otherwise why live at all?

And what is 'richness'? -- just making life more and more enjoyable, more and more lovable, more and more comfortable, more and more luxurious.

The man who knows nothing of the great world of music is poor; he is missing one of the greatest luxuries of life. The man who does not know how to enjoy Picasso, van Gogh, does not know anything about the colors. If he cannot enjoy Leonardo da Vinci, how can he enjoy a sunrise, a sunset? Millions of people go on living, never recognizing a sunrise, never stopping for a moment to look at a sunset and all the colors that the sunset leaves behind in the sky. Millions of people never raise their eyes towards the sky and the splendor of it.

Living can only mean one thing: living life multidimensionally -- the music, the poetry, the painting, the sculpture... but it is all luxury. I am not a worshipper of poverty; I worship luxury. And existence is luxurious, abundantly luxurious. Where one flower will do, millions of flowers blossom.  Have you ever felt that existence is miserly? What is the need of so many stars?

If these fools who ask you the question, if they meet the creator they believe in, they will ask, "What is the need of so many stars? Why this luxury? A few less won't do? What is the need of so many birds, animals, human beings?"

And do you know, now the scientists have recognized the fact that on at least fifty thousand planets life is existent. We don't know what colors it has taken there -- what shape, what beauty, what kind of beings have evolved there -- but one thing is certain, that existence is overflowing. With everything it is luxurious. It is not a poor existence, no. Poverty is man's creation.

Life means intensity of life. You live in such a diluted way, so unconcentrated, so spread over, that you never come to know what it is that you call life. Then you will do one thing continuously and that will be to misunderstand -- all your understandings will be misunderstandings.

Life means energy functioning, and death means energy nonfunctioning. Life means energy awake; death means energy gone again into sleep.

You are ordinarily only partially alive. The part of your energy that has become actualized is your life. The remaining part is so asleep that it is as if it were not.

Death means separation. Life means no separation. Hence the ego is bound to die because that is your idea of separation. To think of one's self in terms of ego is the only cause of death.

Only those live who choose the new. Life means readiness to go into the uncalculated, unscheduled. Life means to be ready always to listen to the challenge that comes from the unknown source. It is dangerous, but to live is dangerous. The most secure and safe place in the world is the grave -- there, nothing ever happens.

In a small village where Mulla Nasrudin lives, the Municipal Committee was thinking of creating a wall around the graveyard. Mulla Nasrudin was also a member of the Committee. He stood up, and he said, 'There is no need.'

The whole Committee looked puzzled, because everybody was in favour of making a wall around the graveyard. People don't want to see graves and people don't want to see death. People don't want to become aware that death is. That's why graveyards are made outside the town, far away. When you have to go there, only then do you go there; otherwise it is better to avoid.

The village had grown bigger and the graveyard that used to be outside the town was no longer outside the town -- the town had grown and spread. So the whole Committee was agreeing. But Mulla said, 'There is no need.'

And the president asked, 'Why do you say that there is no need?'

He said, 'For two reasons. One: those who are outside -- they don't want to go in so they don't need any wall to prevent them. And, two: those who are inside -- they cannot come out. So what is the point of making a wall? The wall is needed only to prevent either those who are in from coming out or to prevent those who are out from coming in. Those who are out, they don't want to go in; they go only in utter helplessness. When they have to go, when they have to be carried by four persons, then they go. And once they are in they cannot come out -- nobody has ever heard of anybody coming out. It is pointless!'

The grave is the most safe and secure place in the world, because nothing new will ever happen there.

Remember it: don't become a grave.

You have to know one thing: that life means evolution, growth, life means going higher and higher -- to new platitudes, to new planes of being. There is no need to feel guilty for what you are, but there is every need to have a tremendous longing to rise higher, because you are a seed, a potential, and you can become God. If you accept yourself as you are and you settle with it, you will remain a seed. You will never become a tree and you will never be able to have a dialogue with the stars. You will not be able to play with the wind and the rain and the sun. You will remain shrunk into a seed. But there is no need to feel guilty. A seed is a seed -- there is no need to feel guilty -- but the seed has to become a tree. There is really a great need to inquire into one's potential. Never feel guilty, never feel proud. Just feel tremendously happy that a great opportunity has been given to you to grow.

Life means tension, effort. Only death is relaxed. So whenever a person becomes absolutely relaxed, he is both - alive outwardly and dead within.

Life is not relaxation. You relax in the night when you are asleep. That is why the old traditions say that death and sleep are similar. Sleep is a temporary death and death is permanent sleep. That is why night relaxes you, it is the outgoing breath. The morning is the incoming breath.

The day makes you tense and the night relaxes you. Light makes you tense, darkness relaxes you. That is why you cannot sleep when there is light, it is difficult to relax because light is similar to life: it is anti-death. Darkness is similar to death: it is pro-death.

So darkness has deep relaxation in it, and those who are afraid of darkness cannot relax... impossible, because every relaxation is dark. And darkness surrounds your life on both the sides. Before you are born you are in darkness; when life ceases you are again in darkness. Darkness is infinite, and this light and this life is just a moment in it, just a wave arising and then falling back. If you can remember the darkness that surrounds both the ends, you will be relaxed here and now.

Life, death - they both are two sides of existence. The incoming breath is life, the outgoing breath is death. So it is not that you die someday, you are dying with every breath. That is why the Hindus have been counting life in breaths, they do not count life in years.

All the old Indian systems, they count life in breaths: how many breaths you are going to live. So they say if you breathe very fast, with too much breathing in a short time, you will die very soon. If you breathe very slowly and your breaths are less in an interval, you will live very long. And this is so.

If you go and observe animals, those animals whose breathing is very slow live long. Take the elephant: the elephant lives long; the breath is very slow. Then there is the dog: the dog dies soon; the breath is very fast. Whenever you find an animal in which the breath is fast, any animal, the animal will not have a long life. A long life is always with slow breath.

Really, with every breath you are born and with every breath you are dying.

Life means something only if it is a constant movement towards height, a welcome to the challenge that is coming from the height, and a daring spirit to accept the abyss.

It is almost like walking on a tightrope -- the excitement is tremendous. Those who arrive at the peak, their ecstasy is immeasurable. Only they have lived their lives; others have only passed their time.

Life means togetherness with existence, with the trees, with the rivers, with the rocks, with people. with animals, with all that is. To relate with it multi-dimensionally that's the only way to make your life rich. The more you relate. the more multi-dimensional you are. the rich you are, the more you grow, the more you blossom.

Drop the stupid idea of being aloof separated and isolated. That you can do after you die! Then you will have more than enough time.

Life means that something is happening, and between two lives, there is nothing happening.

Between two lives there is a gap. If something is happening, then again it is another life. Nothing happens in the gap. You can remember it only as a gap, not filled by anything.

When we say that someone is alive we mean that something is happening in him. Life is the realm of happenings. Without a body, nothing happens: the body is the medium for things to happen. The moment you are beyond the body, or not in the body, nothing happens.

Answer 3

hey.. gud question... well... for me, life means only one chance which is given to us by the almighty, we should alwayz try to live and enjoy each and every moment of our life as it is the most precIous gift given by god..... so, alwayz KEEP SMILING and KEEP SPREADING SMILES  bcoz 'LYFE'S BEAUTIFUL.............'!!!!

Answer 4

Endless journey

Answer 5

Meaning and purpose and worth are all related concepts. Our lives have meaning when we live for a real purpose.  We also must have purpose for our lives to have worth because we know through experience that things that have no purpose also have no worth.  Therefore meaning and worth essentially are the same.

Purpose requires God:

“Unless you assume a God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless.” –Bertrand Russell

And our human nature demands that our lives have worth:

"There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that." Camus 1942

If we reject God, we also reject purpose and our lives have no worth.

I think our purpose is to seek God we  find our worth though a relationship with God.

Answer 6

Life is what you make it! Please read this quote and hopefully you'll find an answer to your question...

DO IT ANYWAY..... "People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank; people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; give the world the best you've got anyway. You see, in the final analysis, .....it is between you and God,..... it was never between you and them anyway." ~~(Mother Theresa)

Smile life is good...