I wonder many a times....what is it that makes us what we are today....At times I feel that Life is an Empty book and we get all the freedom to scribble what we want in its pages. In other words, we are given the freedom of choice. And we are the sole reason behind where we are today.At the same time, I contradict myself by saying that we are here with a purpose and a reason, which has been predefined. The purpose of life would here be to be able to successfully fulfil the objective or reason. But here again blessed are the ones who manage to identify the purpose! However what about those who fail to do so.
Going back to my first point of view...... one could define his purpose on his own. Maybe we have the choice to do that as well. But here again, I fail to understand if everyone has a choice, then why isnt everyone at the same level or the same platform.Why are some people so gifted and some not so lucky? Why is it that we have so much of poverty which has reached a stage and state wherein there are just idealistic talks about eradicating it and no concrete action....and even if there is action, no concrete outcome. Why is it that there are small children, who have horrible things like leprosy, cancer, AIDs as their perpetual companion, when all they have is a clean soul coupled with genuine innocence. Moreover, why is it that people who have managed to commit horredous crimes, are still living as if they rule the world!
People from different religions haveing different faith would have different justifications to give me. But here is where I face a dilema as to the purpose of one's life. Choice here no doubt works well. But then if choice was it, then it would imply that God has been unfair ( which I cannot believe). So I am half heartedly forced to agree to the fact that there is a purpose for each and everyone and the best that I could make it out to be is to serve mankind........
23 comments:
"God has been unfair ( which I cannot believe)"
Whatever points you made should make you question the whole concept of God, instead you have fallen in the trap of blind faith and justifying the problems by saying we have a purpose.
hey! thou a very common topic, was nice to read aftr a long time.. well to be frnk its too much a philosophy fr me.. but im sure each one of us have had asked the same questions to themselves n got thr answers..n its these answers whch gave birth to all scriptures, philosophies n religion..
i dont knw if i m doing what i m supposed to do.. bt i dont blame myslf as im yet to find out or told wat i m supposed to do. i dont believe in god coz an honest creator wud never be partial to ne of his creations.. all i believe is that if anyday im made the arbitrator btw my gud n bad sides, i should able to give an impartial judgment abt all my actions..
@ Harsha, I do not profess to fully believe in the concept humanly defined as God (we can discuss that in detail if you want to), BUT God would never be partial to any of his creations... given that all his creations choose to be good people. What goes around comes around, and to me, that is an explanation of the suffering in the world. I also firmly believe in reincarnation, which explains why young children with innocence suffer. I pay and receive for what I have done this life till now, and my past life, both the good and the bad.
@ Rohan Singh (and to some extent Gayatri), I have questioned the concept of God, and I have come to understand this. People are lucky, gifted, on the brighter side of life, however you want to phrase it, because of their past deeds.
God, to me, is a spark or a force, shaping fate. I therefore think that we have a broad path defined for us, and we must choose what to make of that path. I believe that an individual was destined to be a ruler, but how good a ruler he chose to be is up to him, and thus the dilemma between choice and fate is married. If this ruler abused the power, then he will get whats due to him without his having much of a say in it and his/ her destiny thereafter will be shaped accordingly.
The intensity and the nature of these consequences are decided by the nature of the actions the individual engaged in, as well as 'God'/ the spark/ luck/ fate.
Having provided an explanation thus, I do not think its fair, let alone right, for you to accuse anyone here of falling into the trap of blind faith.
Fate and choice can co-exist, and I suggest you take a step back and take a broader view for you are the one who has fallen into the trap of blind faith of atheism.
I might not have a statistic to prove this, but I believe that among atheists, a majority of people are those with a lot of prior experiences leading them to stop believing ...Ironically, such an atheist is one who needs to put history behind and get back to well "faith" from his so-called "trap of blind faith"
This post has surprisingly a lot of takers! :-P.
One thing that I would want to clarify is that this post was never to question the existence of GOD.I know that God exists and is the driving force of every aspect.
But I definitely do question the purpose of life.
Quamy - Interesting thought. But I really do not agree with or rather have not yet been convinced about the reincarnation part of what you have to say. I believe that Life is one precious gift and there is a D day - wherein you would be praised for every good deed and would have to provide a justification for every small mistake.
Harsha - there is no doubt about the fact that you would have to be your own arbitrator, and I am sure that day would be a day when you would have no choice but to come to terms with what you have done or not done. but as regards God....all I can say is have a look around the more beautiful things around you. maybe that should do the trick!
@Quamy::You and I disagree at the most fundamental level. I do not believe there is any particular path defined for us. We are here to define our own paths and write our own future. I haven't come across any evidence that proves the existence of a supreme being or reincarnation. Reincarnation is absolutely bovine manure for me so I won't even talk about it. Your belief system relies heavily on reincarnation. It's shocking how you justified suffering of innocent people. I do not see any reason to believe in such a concept. Believing in a "pre-defined path" is a potentially dangerous thing. Plus, if God really loved his creation then he wouldn't restrict him to a path.
P.S. I suppose it's fair and right for you to accuse people of falling into the trap of blind faith?
Rohan Singh - The points I made sure are not too pleasant, but then these not so pleasant things would probably form less than 1/100th of the nice things around you. Moreover, a lot of these not so good things are triggered by the doing of human beings and we definitely cannot blame God for it.
We do have a choice to live life the way we want. But then contrary to what you understand from the post, a purpose in life could be a way how one may contribute to the betterment and in no way is a justification of problems!
Varun - It could also be family circumstances or sheer upbringing.But I do agree to a great extent with what you have to say.
@Gayatri::
1. I think you mentioned in your post that we need to identify our purpose. So I assumed what you meant was purpose is already defined and we just have to identify it. What I feel is that we need to define our purpose and not discover it. This definition is very subjective but it is our definition and not something decided by a creator. Apologies for not being clear in the first post.
2. I agree. We shouldn't blame God for anything bad that happens to us. But at the same time, we shouldn't thank him for something good that happens to us. Whatever good that happens to us is due to our hard work and a bit of luck(which does not need divine intervention).
Blaming humans for the bad things and thanking God for all the good things seems really unfair. It undermines a human being
@varun: I dont think any experience has lead to anyone into 'believing' and 'not believing'. Most humans don't 'experience' such things. They just have opinions or notions. what i am saying is there is no particular experience after which anyone can say 'oh now i know god doesn't exist'. SO I guess there is no such history that you are talking about.
@gayatri: I cant understand your family circumstances and sheer upbringing stand. Bad experiences dont prove anything (god doesnt exist), if thats what you want to imply. Also u make a very powerful statement that 'I know that god exists and is the driving fofrce ...'. Knowledge about god: something i would love you to throw some light on. All i can und is ppl have 'faith' in god which is fundamentally different from knowledge. As Einstein puts it ' the only source of knowledge is experience'.
@above person:: You hit the nail on the head when you said that a bad experience doesn't prove whether God exists or not.
When a person starts deeply questioning the concept s/he realizes not all questions are answered.
Me - Good or bad experiences in correlation to God is something irrelevant as far as what I was trying to throw light on
Let me clarify - No where have I questioned the existence of God. All I question is the purpose of life - as to whether it is predefined or to be defined, whether it is a choice or an order/expectation! --- which is a thought which came by, which of course is open to discussion.
The term you mentioned - "Knowledge” is something which is extremely subjective and the same goes with experience too, so I choose to refrain from commenting on the same. But Einstein’s quote that you mentioned sure does have a lot of meaning to it and has provided me some food for thought! Thanks for that! :-) But having said that, I also feel that it is about a certain conviction, and you need not necessarily have any magnificent experience or knowledge of sorts to be a believer.
'I also feel that it is about a certain conviction, and you need not necessarily have any magnificent experience or knowledge of sorts to be a believer.'
exactly how one defines faith, where reason is no proof for anything. one starts believing in things which cant be backed up by facts, exp's or logic. once you leave the reason domain and enter faith there is hardly any logical backing up to ur beliefs. subjectivity ll always be there but its preferable if u comment in order to und basic premises of the belief system.
i believe purpose of life is a matter of choice, it just requires a deep understanding of oneself. as socrates says 'know thyself' and then its easy to und and decide what one is good at/(born to do)/ really enjoys doing. since most of us are not free enuf to give ourselves some time and unconciosuly are involved in some vicious cirle of fulfillin xyz expectations, we are moving as life takes us and hence these questions bother us. ltr to convince ourselves we happily concoct a theory correlating events and concluding i am here coz i was born to do xyz. (there obv might be a few coincidences). instead all it takes a concious thought abt ur self ur needs and ur happiness and its easy to figure this out. no one but you can make ur life meaningful by making the correct choice.
@above and Gayatri:: Exactly what I mean by blind faith and defining a purpose.
Most of us let society decide what our purpose is directly or indirectly.
Well... I have been reading this discussion since the 1st post and it has taken a very interesting direction:
Firstly, Two things that came to mind:
1) I believe we are here with a reason pre-assigned
2) I read this saying somewhere and it came to mind. A Violinist was asked why a lot of people couldnt play music. He said "A lot of people go to their graves with lot of music left in them".
Actually, point 2 above makes me wanna believe point 1 is true. If you think of it, point 2 is true not only in music but in a lot of other avenues in life.
We do not pursue so many things we may be good at. We end up pursuing things which are not our cup of tea. Now, how does one explain "being good"or "not being good" in something? The only plausible explanation I can think of is a pre-detemined reason.
I have a feeling that there is a GOD up there. He is like this Managing Director of a very large company called the Universe. We are all his team. He has done a Competency Mapping of each individual while creating him/her. Now, he does not want to spoon-feed you so he sends u down to Earth (well, could be other planets but for simplicity sake, lets assume this is his most productive market ;-)). Interestingly, he has only given u a very broad objective in life, something like a Mission statement. Now, he expects that you will go down, recognize various problem areas in the avenue of life you chose out of the competencies built into u and try to find to find solutions.
On the face of it, this model seems to have major shortcomings. Some people struggle & suffer while some others prosper and excel. This is where I think the beauty of the model is. Each of them, in playing their role, is learning from others as well as teaching others.
I believe that, one his/her death-bed, when u see the Angel that God has sent to pick u up, u WILL reflect and realize that:
1) You had a purpose for coming down
2) In fulfilling or not fulfilling ur purpose, u were an example to others (which in itself was part of the purpose)
3) The balance of the company that God created is maintained which will probably also reflect in ur own life's Balance sheet
Cheers
Interesting....a different school of thought! with some truth in it........but I found a lot of truth in some things that 'Me' had to share with regard to pursuit of materialistic things to fulfill needs and expectations!
It probably could be ....the ones who are able to discover themselves more easily and quickly, are able to either define/discover their purpose quickly. A few others just choose to move as life takes them and eventually discover/define their purpose. And there are also a few...to whom life is just a path along which they tread and encountering the good and not so good things.
So probably there is a pre-defined purpose - and the individual has a choice to either discover it.....or if not he may simply choose to define his purpose!
@Legolas:: I understand your point.
Firstly, let me loosely quote Christopher Hitchens, 'The statement that 'God gives us the freedom of free will' contradicts the whole concept of free will'.
Secondly, I would like to ask you a few questions (to other believers as well).
Your theory is restricted to humans. What about animals and plants? What is their purpose? Is it just to balance nature so that humans can survive? Why is that 99.99% of all species since the beginning of time have become extinct? If there is a creator then he is very poor at his job.( Again loosely quoted Hitchens)
@Gayatri:: What you are good at depends on how your brain has developed (psyche, intellect etc etc). This depends on various factors, ranging from genes to development through growth. I'm no scientist but I'm sure if you do some research you'll find this. Now it's upto you to realise what you are good at and what your dis/likes(important for happiness) are and accordingly make your decision i.e. define your purpose.
@Gayatri::
"Let me clarify - No where have I questioned the existence of God."
I know you haven't questioned God's existence in your post.
I said you should start questioning God's existence. If you are satisfied with the 'creator' concept and get your questions answered then such thoughts viz. purpose of life will never occur to you because you are very clear about the whole concept.
If God is above petty human emotions then s/he won't get angry if you question his existence.
@legolas: i see ur tryin to make a point which is tht ur wwriting skills re good. i dnt see anything 'new' tht u have said frm whr we have strtd just explainin the whole thing in comapny context.
@ gayatri: the main flaw y u conlcude that way is because u start of with an assumption that god exists and has creatd us and hence he has given the purpose which we have to discover. just think abt the problem 'is it predefined' with a neutral mind(knwin being baisd as to whether he is or he is not) and see if you can conclude that he actually has then its cool. else if u begin with that assumption then we should have no discussion as we can attribute anything happenin to him, i repeat literally anything. also wtv skills we have r genetic and few othr scientific factors factors influencing them.
@ rohan: intersting questions... i feel they should be a food for thought for gayatri. :P
@me:
Firstly, Thank you for the compliment you make on my writing skilss. I take it as a genuine compliment and appreciate.
Secondly, in my last paragraph, I have tried to give a conclusive belief of mine to the issues that Gayatri has posed in the blog( I wouldnt call it an answer because there is no right or wrong in this entire discussion). Ofcourse, I do apologize in case my final message dint go thru to u coz of a lack in clarity in the way i wrote it.
Cheers
I hope somebody replies to my post.
Nice way of presenting your thoughts gayatri
it seems like you are a deep thinker and have a social heart,life is unfair but there will be no life if it will be fair to all, life is a name of uncertinites,awakens you any time and its true that everyone has a certain amount of luck in his or her succeses, poor are pooreres and richs are more richers its a philosophy coming from our anccestrol kings,
Only one thing we can do like some of our great kings did we can help the poors or people in needs by distributing ourselfs we cant go and ask some of our big industrilists that why are you not willing to develop the nation with the living standard of every person living in the country but surly we can distibute some of ours and teach them some tips if that are helpful to them to live happily..
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