The Myth of Sisyphus or The Meaning of Life
Updated: Dec 1, 2022
By Murali Raman
Why do we never give up hope?The eternal race to find the meaning of life
The beaten path to search far and wide;
and then, after all else fails…
Explore the way shown by so many others
to search closer home, to look within
You are the World
Tat Twam Asi.
What then is the meaning of our lives?
Why has man's life span been created so short
Too short to be able to be leveraged
to comprehensively understand what is ultimately made out to be so obvious?
Is the World really a Stage
All set to play the Theatre of the Absurd over and over again ad infinitum?
Is that kind of strange meaninglessness the meaning of life?
But.
If only life were that black & white?
That simple to understand?
Humanity's experience says no.
It cannot be.
It has never been easy to comprehend.
There seems to be empirical proof to point to the contrary.
And this is actually the way the human mind has it ingrained in itself
To never ever give up hope, to keep looking.
To be positive in the face of all odds.
To believe in it's own capabilities.
To 'know' instinctively that
If you believe in something passionately enough, you will achieve it.
And to find a simple soul-lifting bliss in the joys of everyday living?
A new job. A new love. A blooming flower.
A great sunset.
In spite of this revelation,
Life goes on. It is still a journey. To where?
The logically contradictory positions postulated are confusing.
Do your duty without regard to the fruits thereof.
Destiny leads you.
Fate rules you.
Maya, illusion, is the only Reality.
But.
Do your duty.
That leads to a vicious circle.
What is your duty?
Are you wasting your precious time on earth?
Why are you hammered down so repeatedly?
By the same issues, over and over again?
By the same people over and over again?
By the same situations over and over again?
Are they not satisfied?
Are you not smart enough to learn?
But.
Why is the human mind so much more evolved than say, the sheep's?
And since it is so evolved, why then has a longevity gene not been built in?
For look at the meaningless repetivity of all these cumulative life stories over the millennia.
The wheel has been reinvented a million times.
The myth of Sisyphus is a reality, in all our mundane lives, every day.
Just imagine if we did not have to relearn everything in every life?
Generation after generation?
In different parts of the world, severally.
Just imagine building on cumulative experience, rather than on fragmented,
Re-learnt lessons and incomplete understandings of referred knowledge?
But then,
the Theatre of the Absurd cannot have a purpose, can it?
Back to square one then.
Why is the human mind so positive?
Why do we keep striving?
There surely is
a Grand Design.
Can this be logical?
Or is it a component of the Design, that the same problem is presented in different, similar ways, so that …
So that different intelligences can look at it from different angles and perspectives, to enrich the understanding, to contribute to a corpus of knowledge that will be useful to some intelligence in the far distant future?
Are we still rudimentary forms of that desired minimum level of intelligence that can usefully comprehend the meaning of life and leverage all this experience of the millennia to achieve that mysterious end, which we, as so-called highest intelligence on earth today, cannot even begin to have an inkling of?
Are we but glorified sheep?
Is this the Grand Design?
Or is this a presumption of understanding, and for all we know, way, way off the mark?
Is our fulfillment, our personal 'enlightenment' to be found in and to be satisfied in our own understanding and interpretation of the meaning of life, today? Like Modern Abstract Art, each to his own interpretation?
Is the eternal brightness in our eyes, every man's hope and indulgence in the simple joys of life, his life force - to reach out, to participate in the race, to want to surpass, to win, to triumph – is this meant to be our own personal meaning of life?
Sounds logical enough.
Gives me joy to think so.
Intimations of immortality, wisps
and very often, strong memories of lives gone by,
of joys and sorrows lived through…
in another time, another age, another place…
in another life in another body.
A chain of deja vu experiences
threading together a composite consciousness.
Often subliminal, many lives subtly altered,
course-corrected,
directed
by events that were apparently lost
in the mists of time.
But live on.
Through a collective consciousness.
By Murali Raman
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