Stuff happens -- meaning of life in two words

I'm not sure what I'd make of me if that wasn't who I am: me. But isn't that true of everyone, you included? (Who is the "me" to yourself, whereas I'm your "you.")

By which I mean, if I saw myself from the outside rather than the inside, I'd likely think, "Wow, that dude is weird." That indeed is how I often look upon people, both dudes and dudettes. Yet to them, they're normal and it's other folks such as me who are strange.

Today I sent off an email to a neighbor. I added some lines that had little or nothing to do with my subject. They just were on my mind after some pondering during my morning meditation time.

I've spent most of my life trying to figure out the meaning of life. Currently my theory is pretty simple: stuff happens. Then other stuff happens. Until we die. Then, maybe, or maybe not, other stuff happens. I really don't think we can control that "stuff." Just deal with it the best we can.

Now, those words make a lot of sense to me. Yet if I put myself in the shoes (or better, mind) of the person who got that email message, I'd view me as having a pretty damn depressing nihilistic philosophy of life.

That isn't true, though I do have a nihilism wristband that I wear occasionally.

I don't see "stuff happens" as negative. Rather, it is an affirmation of reality and the mystery that looms when we try to understand its depths (notwithstanding how the most famous popularizer of that phrase used it).

I'm not sure why what has already happened to me, did. I'm not sure why what lies in the future for me, will be. I'm not sure why this present moment, is.

The chains of causes and effects -- including what appears to be randomness -- linked to even the simplest event are breathtakingly beyond the complete comprehension of even the smartest people in the world, or the most advanced computers. 

Yesterday I picked up some pants from a seamstress who had shortened the hems. Chatting with her as she got the bill ready, she said "You have an accent. Where did you come from?" I told her that I was born in Massachusetts, but moved to Texas early on, so maybe when I learned to talk I was influenced by accents of both east and west.

However, there's other possibilities to consider. I dimly recall speaking Spanish with a Mexican housekeeper when I was little. Perhaps my long-forgotten foray into another language affected how I talk now. Who knows?

The point is, stuff happens.

When pressed by ourselves or others to explain it, we provide stories that make greater or lesser sense depending upon the situation. If I've got a bandage around my finger and someone asks what happened, I can reasonably say "I hit myself with a hammer."

But I'll leave out "...while thinking about something other than the nail." Because once I start down the route of why's and wherefores, there's no stopping until I get to the big bang and the beginning of the universe 13.7 billion years ago.

Recently I finished reading Susan Blackmore's Ten Zen Questions. I enjoyed how seriously and energetically she dives into first-person experiencing of those queries, including "How does thought arise?", "What am I doing?", and "What happens next?"

I don't think I could ever enjoy full-blown Zen retreats such as the ones Blackmore decribes, though. Way too much ritual, rules, restrictions, and bowing before the Zen master for me. I like Zen philosophy, but Zen practitioners tend to look upon life as a koan to be solved rather than a joy to be embraced, or a mystery to be marveled at.

Nothing wrong with solutions, satori'ish or otherwise. I just have come to doubt that the meaning of life is a puzzle meant to be solved.

Which isn't much different, though, from how Blackmore sees things. Here's some quotes from the end of her book.

Things just are the way they are. Whether they could have been different I do not know, but I suspect that even asking this question does not make sense. Stuff just happens.

Indeed the fingers are typing here right now. No one is acting. I am not doing anything.

What, then, is the point of it all? What's the point in doing anything?

No point.

...Experiences and their experiencers will arise wherever and whenever there is a body capable of sensing things, and a brain capable of analyzing them, and they will last some time and disappear again.

They are now here, now there, now coming and going. I seem to be here now; but then I'm not. Something else is, and has been for some time.

...When this body dies there may be a lot of pain, a horrible last illness, the sadness of not having said all those things I wanted to say to people I loved, projects not completed, a fantasized future not to be.

But will I be snuffed out like a candle?

Yes, just as I have been a thousand, million times before. Just the same. Being born and dying again is how all life is. Birth and death are not a problem; the cycle of illusion is broken; they are just how it is.

Comments

[Star]

Oh the horror! An accent born in Massachusetts, developed in Texas! (says she of Duxbury, living in Texas).

The point of "there is no point" is that we get to make our own point. How cool is that?

[Winston Riley]

Sorry for the weird way I'm leaving this message, but at least I did read the post and enjoyed it alot. Hello Brian! I'm a new fan, but that is not why I'm writing. I tried to click on the links to sending you an email but they all lead to an internal email program that won't open for me on my wife's computer. So I'll used this moderated forum to send the message. Please excuse my stow away method. But at least I'll get to write it, even though it probably won't be read and less likely to be appreciated.

This morning I started reading Margaret Fuller's essay, presently entitled The Great Lawsuit. I think in different times and when it was first published in the Dial it was called something else. It is very obtuse, if that is the right word, certainly esoteric and difficult for a slogger like me to understand, but I feel it is very important and I thought maybe someone at the Church of the Churchless may consider it.

Our times are perilous. Whether we're globally warmed, whether we're in or near the time of peak oil, whether we're doomed or not by Tea Partyers or runaway government, whether extinction of so many species matters, whether the fact that some silly percentage such as one or ten controls some crazy quantity of all wealth like 50% to 70% or whatever the true numbers are--matters, whether the US is the savior or the terrorist of world culture, whether we face a daunting depression or a continued recession which is not likely to go away soon. Whether or not all that stuff and more which is debatable, almost no one could argue that the times are NOT perilous.

One fact which seems very reasonable is that the female paradigm, as in Earth Goddess, Gaia, the nourishing instinct may offer some solutions to a troubled world, largely approached with a male or more violent aspect.

Many of us seem to be undergoing a "speeding up" of consciousness related to the urge to integrate this female perspective. Not as some "gay" approach or whatever negative term may be applied to it, but as a sacred channel as in yin and yang or the two snakes of the cadeuses, also which is the diagram of Kundalini.

I think Margaret Fuller, using the enlightened voice of the Dial and Emerson and others who woke to the third way of approaching mind (in her own words, one way would be by thinking, a second by action and a third by quietness and turning your attention to "within," is guiding us to understand that it may be through our daughters that we finally learn to be fully guided by the divine.

The other reason I'm writing was that the search this morning which brought me to Brian and the Church of the Churchless was to see what the state of Ken Wilber is. I was a big reader and somewhat on the fence as to whether or not he was a genius and possibly a guru of our time until I got further into he and Andrew Cohen. My own questions and doubts which arose by questioning the extreme flagrance of their apparent egos lead me to do research which lead me to the story of Andrew's mother, of abused followers and then also to the same sorts of stories with Ken.

I'm very happy to find Church of the Churchless and Brian. I don't know how loyal I'll be as I'm unable to stay up with all that exists and my own lack of skill at staying focussed long enough on one subject, to not quickly be diffused when other "stuff happens." But I hope I will return and read more.

Cheers

btw, if by some miracle anyone ever wants to reply my email is [email protected] and my name is Winston Dubby Riley on Facebook.

[william nelson]

Everyone "knows" that "shit happens". But now we have the more encompassing version from Brian (at least relative to his present state of mind) that the meaning of life is most economically expressed in the mantra "stuff happens".

I personally find most "meaningful" the state of "not knowing" that Peter Ralston describes brilliantly in his book "The book of not knowing".

This "not knowing state" was also eloquently described by the great physicist Richard Feynman as follows (see Wikiquotes):

"I have approximate answers and possible beliefs in different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and of many things I don't know anything about, but I don't have to know an answer I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose which is the way it really is as far as I can tell possibly. It doesn't frighten me."

No one "knew" this better than Socrates who said, "I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance".

Humility is the true source of action that leads to a better world (my response to Winston Riley's plea for finding "female-solutions" to a testosterone world gone mad).

[Suzanne]

"...Lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose..." FANTASTIC. The point is, there is no point. The point is, if the mind roves looking for a point, there's nothing wrong with that either; this is play. The point is there is no point but existence itself, which blows the mind all by itself.

[Blogger Brian]

Winston, I enjoyed your Church of the Churchless comment. Thanks for sharing your ideas. Being a big fan of Taoism and Tai Chi, I resonate with your call to embrace the "sacred feminine." We need to be balanced between yin and yang, for sure. Unfortunately, though, simply having more women leaders isn't enough, because many (or most) are as aggressive, divisive, and self-centered as the men.

I took a look at the Fuller piece and found it as you described: from another time, long, and rather difficult to read. But I can understand why you were attracted to it. Sometimes those "classic" writings convey a sense of wisdom than our modern writings lack.

Regarding Wilber, I too used to admire him. I've read many of his books and used to respect his point of view. Now, though, he seems obnoxiously egotistical, overly intellectual, and too obsessed with marketing his approach to understanding the cosmos. And his relationship with super-jerk Andrew Cohen is disturbing. I used to subscribe to EnlightenNext until their "Pandit and the Guru" mutual admiration society made me want to barf.