Fiddler's Green Magazine - Vol 1, Num 4 - June 2017 - On the Meaning of Life by Chögyam Trungpa

Fiddler's Green Peculiar Parish Magazine is an independently run print based zine by Clint Marsh. In this article, we explore the article "On the Meaning of Life" by Chögyam Trungpa published in the Volume 1, Number 4 - June 2017 edition of the magazine. The article is transcribed from a talk Trungpa gave on July 25, 1972 at Goddard College.

Trungpa was a controversial Tibetan Buddhist guru, writer, and teacher. He died at only the age 47 due to health complications involving an auto accident, chronic alcoholism, and other issues.

In the article, Trungpa challengers us: why do people think there is a preordained meaning to life? Why do we believe we are God's children or believe that the universe was built for us, rather than facing reality? Life is experience—immediate and raw, consisting of: eating, sleeping, loving, fighting, suffering, shitting, killing, and everything in between. We just live. On top of living, we create abstractions to explain things, to explain life. But there is no meaning here.

Trungpa goes further to discuss how most people die of the remedy rather than the illness. Whether that remedy is medicine or religion, we devour it in the hopes of being saved. So much so, that it becomes madness; and if we over do it (and we always do), these remedies become poisons. And through those "cures," we become lifeless zombies living meaningless lives.

So, what do we conclude? Want to know the meaning of life? Live life.

#nihilism #religion #livinginthemoment