The Meaning Of Life by Venerable Shravasti Dhammika

From the biological perspective the purpose of life is to acquire the necessities for continued existence, to reproduce and to survive. But what about the purpose of life from the religious point of view? If life has a single and specific purpose, as some religions and philosophies claim, then one would expect everybody, sooner or later, to naturally gravitate towards it, discover it and then strive to achieve it. In actual fact, we see that the various religions posit quite different and sometimes contradictory purposes of life. We also notice that many people manage to get through life alright without ever asking or thinking about whether or not life has a meaning. Others take one path, then another, according to circumstance, embrace each one, and manage to get through. We see yet others who claim that what they believe has ‘given their life meaning’ but later we here they have abandoned it for something else. This suggests very strongly that beyond the biological, life does not have any innate purpose or meaning.

From the Buddhist point of view, this is a good thing - it means that we have the freedom and the possibility to give our life the meaning that we want. If we decide to make the accumulation of wealth or power the purpose of our life, then it will become so. If we decide to make the pursuit of pleasure, dedication to our family or the contemplation of the divine the purpose of our life, then it will become so. Whenever one of his disciples attained enlightenment and became an arahat, the Buddha would always say that he or she had `done what had to be done' (S.III,68). From this we can deduce that for the Buddha, the meaning, the purpose and the fulfillment of life is to attain the joy and freedom of enlightenment.