The Purpose of Life

by Ven. Thubten Gyatso

An Australian Prime Minister once got himself into trouble by saying, "Life was not meant to be easy." It appeared that he was avoiding responsibility for his government's failure to deal with social problems, and the people's reaction to this innocent statement probably cost him his job.

From the Buddhist point of view, life was not "meant" to be anything. There is a reason for life, but no divine purpose because there is no divine person with power over life and death; it is beyond all logic to postulate a first creation of life by Brahma, God, or any other being. Conscious life has existed in the universe since time without beginning, and the reason we continue to be reborn is within our own minds.

We all have our own purpose in life. Animals, such as my cat who is still asleep on the windowsill, have a simple purpose - to experience pleasure and avoid discomfort. Humans are born with either an ordinary purpose or a spiritual purpose that was established when they were dying in their previous life.

To be born as a human with ordinary aspirations, we die with the realisation of the uselessness of continuing to seek pleasure in that life, and we look forward to happiness in the next life - pleasure of the senses, of wealth, of family and friends, and of praise and honour. Thus the life-purpose of ordinary people is an instinctive urge for pleasure that comes from the past life. The present life becomes a relentless pursuit of happiness, and when, like all humans of the past, we find dissatisfaction and failure in these pursuits, we blame the Prime Minister. Having forgotten our previous understanding of the folly in the pursuit of mundane happiness, we are in great danger of creating the cause for rebirth as a cat on a windowsill.

If we died in a spiritual state of mind, we would have had one of two goals. The simplest is the wish to free oneself from the wheel of life and death. The purpose of life for such a person is to abandon forever their mental afflictions of selfishness, anger, and attachment. These people turn away from ordinary life and live in monasteries or isolated retreats to complete their mental purification.

The person who dies with the supreme spiritual state of mind is completely moved by love and compassion. With no desire for personal happiness, they live amongst the people with the pure intention to rescue others from suffering and bring them every happiness. The purpose of life for people with this supreme spiritual attitude is to achieve their full human potential - the perfect union of wisdom and compassion - in order to be fully qualified to free others from suffering. In this life, they have the instinctive urge to help others in one of three ways: like a shepherd who pushes the flock before him; like an oarsman who takes his passengers with him; or like a king who leads the people by walking ahead.

Most of us cannot remember how we died in our past life, but our current behaviour is a good indication of our state of mind at that time. Of course, people born with an ordinary attitude to life can acquire one of the two spiritual purposes and change direction. And people born with a spiritual direction in life can lose it and follow an ordinary path. There is a level of wisdom on the spiritual path after which one can never change direction, but until that level is reached there is always the danger of losing one's spiritual direction.

Before meeting Buddhism, I worked as a medical officer in a psychiatric hospital. One of my patients was a Christian minister, well known for his good work amongst the Australian aborigines. Despite the countless times the psychiatrists sent him into convulsions with shock therapy, and the great variety of chemical cocktails they mixed up for him, he was severely depressed. I can still picture him sitting immobile at the end of a bench, neat and tidy, exquisitely polite. Whenever I asked him what was wrong, he could only say, "Doctor, I have lost my faith."

Being a very ordinary person, my rejection of religion could hardly have been stronger, and I had nothing to offer this poor man. In defending our selfish pursuit of happiness, we ordinary people accuse those who take on a spiritual path as being failures in life: "Religion is the opium of the people." That was my attitude, but I now understand that the real failures in life are those with no courage to oppose their own selfishness, pride, anger, and attachment.

If people use religion as a means to attain happiness in this life, and have no feeling for either of the two spiritual goals, they are no different to ordinary people. On the other hand, the object of faith must be valid, otherwise the path will be a blind alley and not a spiritual path. Even if our object of faith is valid, if we have an incorrect understanding of it we can make serious mistakes. It is essential that we use our intelligence to investigate whatever spiritual paths are on offer, and make a firm decision on how to best live our life.

Gyatso

This teaching is by the Venerable Thubten Gyatso (previously Dr Adrian Feldmann), an Australian monk and old friend now working in Mongolia. One of the senior students of Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa Rinpoche (and also Geshe Roach) he is currently teaching at the FPMT centre in Ulaan Baatar. These teachings originally appeared in his local English language newspaper in Ulaan Baatar and arereproduced with his permission.

Thanks to Diane Olander (pelmo@got.net), these teachings first appeared on the Internet on the website (www.gepeling.org) of
The Jangchub Gepel Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies,
6960 Highway 9, Felton, CA 95018, Tel: 01 (831) 335 1217
where you can find many more teachings and other interesting material.