7. Why Bother To Go And Look Around?
Someone asked what the purpose of life is. Almost everyone answered: in search of happiness.
But “what happiness is?” is not easy to answer.
Is happiness health, knowledge, wealth, fame, power, pleasure, passion, love…? Is there anything else to list?
All of the above, plus “eternal life or immortality”.
From time immemorial, very few people have met the above conditions, perhaps only King Solomon in history, who had been promised privileges by God. But he lived only about 80 years old and then died. No one is immortal.
So happiness as described above is just an illusion.
- Restless sorrow:
Not today, but long ago, when people’s minds were starting to mature: recognizing the difference between good and evil, feeling ashamed, having freedom and responsibility, regretting the lost paradise, people have felt restless sorrow: where is the source and the destination for our short life?
If we have enjoyed Khanh Ly’s lyrical voice for long, most of us have movingly sympathized with Trinh Cong Son’s sorrowful mood about our human plight: Our life is continually sorrowful and changeable, illusory, confusing, dusty, dreamy and fragile.
Never mind, life is an indefinite playful journeys. Life is nothing, it’s all just “to be carried away by the wind”.
Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh is different. He is a monk, imbued with Buddhist thought, has inherited Eastern ideology of 2-3 thousand years ago and has been fostered, purified by many erudite sages from different times.
The book entitled “Old Path White Clouds” by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, with hundreds of valuable works and his whole life of teaching and practice, have demonstrated to everyone the profoundness and seriousness of what he called “Continuation”, the practice of “Mindfulness.”
In this world, nothing new is born and dies. Everything is just a continuation, from generation to generation, of what is already there. We have to contemplate, overcome appearances to see the truth of things and behave. Zen masters often use the example of a cloud and a corn kernel to illustrate the transformation and continuity of things, of nothingness.
For example, a cloud is just an accumulation of water vapor. Someday it will turn into rain, streams, lakes, rivers and seas, and then back into a cloud. People look at a corn plant, not knowing before that it only took the shape of a corn kernel.
We must treat and empathize with each other with love. That is happiness. Happiness is in the present, not far away and “there is no way to happiness, but happiness is the way”.
Can Zen Master Nhat Hanh really contemplate the truth of things, overcome ignorance and misperception, or does he step on a path without destination, and then just go around?
- People and limitations:
In my opinion, the so-called “plights” of man, with negative thoughts above, is actually the opposite, a sincere thank you for a favor, a wonderful gift from God to you.
There is nothing more precious than your life and mine. You will be overjoyed again; knowing that your body and life is not a coincidence of chance but a unique masterpiece of the Supreme Mind.
In the book “The language of God” (translated into Vietnamese, titled “Ngôn Ngữ Của Chúa” by Lao Dong Publishing House), Francis S. Collins proved with scientific evidence: “Faith and scientific beliefs can be reconciled in a worldview” (The language of God).
Francis S. Collins, medical doctor in molecular biology and doctorate in quantum mechanical physics, is in charge of leading the international project to sequence the human genome. He is one of the world’s leading DNA scientists.
At the White House, on the day the human genome map was released, June 26, 2000, standing next to Francis S. Collins, President Bill Clinton said: “There is no doubt that this is the most important and amazing map ever discovered by the mankind.”
According to biological probabilities, you are the outcome of one in a million chances of success. Just a small mistake and you will be zero.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, many people need oxygen tanks to breathe, and they are very happy for just a few minutes. While we have the sky to breathe for the rest of our lives. God caresses us, embraces us like a mother hen embraces her chicks under her wings. He gives us everything from air, water, to sunlight, to the rich nature and to our bodies and senses to enjoy life.
Seeing the sparrows chirping and calling each other to find food, Jesus said to his disciples: “Look at the birds of the sky, they do not sow, do not reap, do not gather in barns, yet the heavenly Father feeds them” (Mt. 6:26).
Why don’t we thank God but complain?
Are you not “happy”? Life gives you a lot of suffering, sickness, disease, poverty? Are you limited in many ways?
In my subjective opinion: much suffering comes from your free will and the force of your interactions with your fellow human beings.
Much dissatisfaction is because you did not fully understand the meaning. You are like a child who only knows what is interesting, beneficial in the short term, satisfying the senses.
There is stupidity caused by your ignorance and confusion; there are necessary stupidity but not yet compatible with progress, with the times. There are also things you shouldn’t know because it won’t be useful to you.
What will happen, when you have better eyes to see millions of cool bugs lying in your blanket, eating your excess skin and dropping feces that cause allergies to many, billions of germs and bacteria swarm in your rice bowl? Do you enjoy the stench all over the place when you have a dog-like sense of smell?
Many people practice hard in order to have the sixth sense. If you have this sense, you will have good communication, comfortable with people, when you understand to the very bottom of their feelings for you.
So limits aren’t always a bad thing. Immediately you will no longer have joy, nor enjoy happiness in your life, if you go beyond the so-called “human plight”.
- Go for the absolute:
When I went to school, my teacher said: two parallel lines meet at infinity. After all, infinity means “never”, how can there be infinity to meet? For the infinitely large world, this Euclidean postulate does not apply, it is a product of imagination, not reality.
With non-Euclidean geometry, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, this infinity exists and is scientifically proven to be true, in the study of space.
When drunk, Poet Li Bai mistakenly thought that the shadow of the moon under the water was real. He jumped into the river one moonlit night, hoping to hug the moon. If only the poet had raised his face to the sky and reached for the moon, which, although far away, was inaccessible, but still a little real and at least he would not drown.
CONCLUSION:
Dreams and illusions are rooted in reality. God is infinite, man can only experience Him as an indispensable clue to explain everything.
God is a reality.