For more than 10 years now, I have been trying to get some understanding on a few deep topics like meaning and purpose of life, happiness and success. They have been haunting me for long now. I almost had my bets on the true purpose of life as “To exhaust it all (whatever lies within) to create the best you can!”
Then recently I read something on Buddhism and The Noble Truths leading into concept of control over feelings and got introduced to one very interesting concept. Fusion of Buddhism philosophy with Theory of Natural Selection. We (human beings and other living organisms) are wired to do things so as to improve our chances of survival. The origin of our feelings could be attributed to Natural Selection: ‘Fear’ when we feel threatened, ‘Love’ coz we ultimately want to pass on the genes to next generation and hence to improve our chances of survival, etc. We have evolved so much over last thousands of years that these feelings now come natural to us. That could be one of the reason we seek out material and worldly success – to prove our superiority over billions of other people > to be one of the promising candidate to pass on our genes and our legacy.
Assuming that all this is true and say Theory of Natural Selection is a Universal Principle. That means Universe is constantly trying to improve and evolve towards a better and more efficient form. Human life being one very small component of this ever evolving multi-verse. If this is true, purpose of any thing (living, non-living, micro-organisms or humans) should be to become more and more efficient and for us (human beings) it might boil down to improve chances of survival through any possible means – passing on the best genes, programming human genes, improving life span, exploring the outer space and settle humans in parallel worlds, etc.
All this is possible only if we acknowledge our desires/feelings and feed them – desire to do more, desire to achieve, desire to prove ourselves, etc. Till this point it still makes a some sense. Now the tricky part. With such desires come all kind of feelings – pain, disappointment, etc. And so the saints say that to be really happy we need to break away from these feelings through discipline, cessation, mindfulness, etc.
So, building further on above thoughts, two possible ways of living life could be:
1) To closely listen and feed your feelings – so as to do the best you can to improve chances of survival – do big things and make a dent. This is aligned completely to supposedly Universal Principle – Theory of Natural Selection.
2) To control your feelings, be mindful, be happy and break out of this whole cycle. No desire, no sadness, no disappointments. But I think it would be super hard to work against a Universal Principle. That’s why only few can actually follow this path.
Something inside me tells me that there is a third path as well:
3) Life of Excellence: Discover what lies within and use all your talents & resources to create whatever best you can. Think fine artists, sportsmen, etc.
I am torn as one part of me wants to be a super achiever and another part of me wants a reclusive life somewhere in a countryside.
At this point, I am not sure what the truth is. I have got a hunch that it lies somewhere in between the three triads, but have no clue how to triangulate them to find the only truth.
Any help (suggestions on books, people, articles, etc.) to push me towards The way of Life is more than welcome.
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