Purpose of Life

What is the purpose of life? This question, what sir Philip Gibbs called “The eternal quest of mankind,” has been haunting generations after generations. Since the dawn of human history. There has been intellectual, scientific, psychological, religious and spiritual pursuits to answer this question. But a satisfactory and holistic answer is found in the works of the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 BC). He declares, “More than anything else, men and women seek happiness”. While happiness is sought for its own sake, every other goal-health, beauty, money, or power-is valued only because we expect that they will bring us happiness.

There are many schools of philosophy that have tried to explain the main purpose of human life. Cyremaics, an ancient Greek school of philosophy of the 4th century B.C., was a hedonist school of thought. They believed that the only real goal in life is the pursuit of pleasure and people should do everything that makes them the happiest in a given moment as the future is unknown and uncertain. They felt that the physical pleasures were the most important ones and all measures should be taken to maximize the amount of pleasure. This view was a very self–centred one. Overall wellbeing of other members of the community / country had no priority in this school of thought.

Mohism, another school of thought, was developed in China at about the same time of the cyremaics in Greece. According to its doctrines, the meaning of life could be realized only when every individual person shows the same amount of care and attention to every other person, putting no one’s needs above anyone else’s, there by propagating equality through achieving the same degree of happiness to one and all.

Later on, Seneca, an Ancient Roman Philosopher of 4 BC, had said, “A happy man is content with that he has, whatever it be – without wishing for what he has not”

Epictetus, a humble Greek slave in Nero’s Rome, lame and poor but serenely content, wrote, “If a man is unhappy, remember that his unhappiness is his own fault, for God has made all men to be happy”.

But, Is there anything to be called the absolute happiness without any tinge of suffering? In answering this question, the Tibetan philosophy preaches one major goal of life: ‘to end the world’s suffering’. They believe that a “person of small ability” is mostly concerned with himself and “A person of great ability” takes away the suffering from others by suffering himself.

Further, the studies in pure science made advancements from the times of the European Renaissance in the 16th century and in 1859 Charles Darwin came out with his theory of Evolution, where the significance of human life was not at al

considered due to the over emphasis laid on the scientific explanations through facts and figures.

Darwin’s theory: Purposelessness of life in Evolution:

Why are we here? The question was answered by Charles Darwin in 1859 just in six words. “We are here because we evolved” and he said that evolution works neither with a plan nor with a purpose and it is random and undirected.

The theory also explained that evolution is not only purposeless but also heartless; a process in which Nature ruthlessly eliminates the unfit. The human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons according to this theory. Humans came from the same evolutionary process just like any other species and there was no special significance to man’s existence, nor was there any divine plan to guide us. It is the natural selection of selfish genes that has given us our bodies and our brains. However scientific it may be Darwin’s theory failed to acknowledge the human dignity and hence was faraway from any philanthropic significance.

Though most of the ancient philosophiers and the present day philosophers like the Dalai lama say, “the purpose of our lives is to be happy”, people like Rolph Waldo Emerson would add that, “the purpose of life is not only to be happy but also to be compassionate”. Welson Henderson’s, words also indicate the same. He says, “The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit”. All these propositions talk about the pure happiness that could be derived by serving the needy and others.

Einstein’s belief in creativity of the highest degree and the resultant happiness:

Albert Einstein, the most brilliant mind the mankind has ever witnessed, while replying to question in a letter about his belief in the meaning of life, said that it was “to create satisfaction for ourselves and for other people”. Once, he told his son that he believed in “the highest state of consciousness as the highest ideal,” and in “mankind’s ability to think and create something from nothing”. He says that it is the creative ability that allows us to experience the true happiness. He also emphasizes that it is necessary to create something, not out of desire to be remembered but for the love of the new thing you are bringing into this world.

Here, at this juncture science appears to be reaching the highest ideal of ‘Service to mankind’ as the true source of happiness.

I feel, all the above gathered information are but the echoes of Great Wisdom of the Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism which has bestow mankind with the prescription of four fold ritualistic duties called the Purusharthas. The ancient sages have articulated them as goals for humankind. In the word Purushartha, Purusha: means an individual or person, and Artha means objective, meaning, or pursuit. The four Purusharthas are: Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha

According to the Bhagavadgeeta, the nectar of Vendantha philosophy, the ultimate purpose of life is only to achieve the purusharthas thereby attaining the state of mind called ‘Purushothama’ or ‘Sachidananda’, a compound word of three root words “SAT – CHIT – ANANDAM”; ‘Sat’ means Pure existence, ‘Chit’ means pure knowledge, ‘Ananadam’ means bliss or unlimited happiness and this state of mind could be attained through the disinterested work i.e. selfless service, ‘Nishkama karma’.

Incidentally, positive psychology, a recent branch of psychology, acknowledges human happiness as a product of three factors.

Happiness = Pleasure (P) + Engagement (E) + Meaning (M)

H = P+E+M

We can roughly map these three factors to the Vedantic Purusharthas: Kama, Artha, Dharma.

Kama = Pleasure (sensuous)

Artha = Engagement (operational aspect)

Dharma = Morality, Benevolence (Meaning) wherein the degree of sensuous pleasure is much lesser than the other two factors in the derivation of true happiness. In this connection a curious experiment was conducted by a prof. Seligman to gauge the degree of happiness and satisfaction level in human beings.

He took his students to a cinema and after watching that movie, he gave them a questionnaire to rate their satisfaction levels on a scale of 0 to 5.

After few days, the same group was taken to an orphanage where they were instructed to serve the orphans with food, clothes and other physical needs and to celebrate some of their birthdays which filled the orphans with emotional satisfaction.

After this event also, the prof. asked his students to rate their satisfaction level on a scale of 0 to 5.

After six months, the prof. asked the students to recall the two visits and the respective level of satisfaction they had derived during that time and rate their satisfaction levels on the same 0 to 5 scale then.

Surprisingly, many of the students could not even recall the name of the movie they had watched 6 months before and nor could they recall the incidents in that movie and their marking on the scale of satisfaction differed entirely from those of their previous ratings. Whereas, when they were asked to rate the satisfaction level they had during their visit and activities in the orphanage, almost all of their ratings came out similar to those of their earlier ratings because all of them had vividly remembered their service to the orphans.

This experiment clearly supports what Beran says, “Happiness is not in having or in being; it is in doing”. He also wrote “No one can learn the meaning of living until he surrenders his ego to the service of his fellow men”.

Some might say happiness is health, or money, or relationship, friends, or possessions and positions, but you may have all these things and yet be unhappy. If you ask, what is happiness?, a sick man will say health, a poor man says the wealth, for an ambitious man it is power, for a scholar it is knowledge, and for a laborious man it is rest. But, happiness is not need based.

The Vedantha philosophy states that, the prime purpose of life is to attain Self-realization. It professes that the reality of the universe and our own reality are one and the same. And hence Upon this realization, ultimate meaning of life is to derive the pure happiness by living in harmony with nature, i.e. to imitate the salient features of nature Viz. to be simple, bountiful, all – inclusive, indomitable yet unselfish and humble. Upon this realization one can transcend all sorrows and sufferings (atyantikadukhanivritti) and attain the supreme bliss (paramanandaprapti) through inculcating the selfless service to mankind.

Mahatma Gandhi, the most recent practitioner of vendatha philosophy in human history, also told that the main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. When asked to sum up the meaning of life in three words or less, Gandhiji responded cheerfully, “That’s easy: Renounce and Enjoy”.

As the famous poet Thomas Carlyle says, that there is one great temple in the Universe i.e. “Human Body”. The human body is a temple of God. All beings are visible and moving temples of a living God. Therefore, we should have the desire to serve God through serving all living creatures. Let our life be filled with this ideal of doing good to others. This body has been given to us in order to benefit others, to do good to others believing that, God dwells in our heart. This brings us happiness of the highest order. These are again the echoes of the wise words of the Ancient sages, “Paropakarartham Idam Shareeram”.