Once upon a time I was so fascinated by teachings of Buddha. I often say that I am a frustrated nihilist. I became a nihilist against my will, when I lost my belief in everything in life, all values propagated by the society, and every moral teachings. Yes, I have gone through a time like that. It was in those days I read so much, seeking a foundation of thoughts and values for me. Buddhism was the one of the most important teaching that grabbed my attention and admiration. Here, I would like to talk a little bit of Buddhism and ponder over it, for no particular reason. All the opinions expressed below are personal, and I claim no scholarly value for them. Before beginning, I would like to complete the story of my nihilism by saying that I could never be satisfied by any set of values or teachings. The more I read, the more I sought, the bigger a nihilist I became. Was it my fault? Incapacity to believe -- Is this my fault? Finally, I was bored of my own nihilism. I could no longer bear it. One day, I realized that my nihilism itself had started to become frustrating. Ever since, I considered myself "a frustrated nihilist". And ever since I became free of the need "to seek a foundation of values and thoughts for me". Probably, ever since, I started "to live", freely, without conceptions.
Now, coming back to Buddha's teachings, I would liketo look at the heart of the problem Buddha tried to analyze. There is a whole story and speculations surrounding Buddha. However, my objective is not to tell or re-tell those stories but actually to look at Buddha's problem and try to understand it from my time and perspective. Understanding Buddha's problem from his own time is an impossible task for me, and can possibly be done only by specialists in Buddhism and its history.
Probably, I have to begin by asking what is the objective or meaning of human life, though I consider it as the most absurd question in heaven and earth to ask (I have not seen hell; therefore, I leave the possibility of asking this question there). Distancing myself from all the available scriptures and previous knowledge, I begin by looking at a more functional level -- the level at which life actually unfolds. I would like to look at how everyone lives in the world. From an animal's perspective, life is all about eating and breeding. When it does not eat or breed, it either takes rest or just play around aimlessly with its fellow animals. These statements about animals may be incomplete, but I am comfortable in handling incompleteness. I rather continue to look at humans who differ from animals in their superior intelligence. In the case of humans, the first two points I said about animals are valid, with a slight modification in the second -- eating and mating (more often for pleasure than for breeding). Regarding the third aspect, the modern humans have almost forgotten to play around with their pals. Except the children, they are "settled" and spend most of their leisure time "resting" in front of television. Apart from these, their other leisure activities or entertainments in general are transitory and have no particular objective. So, let us try to learn from the modern humans what their objective is by looking at how they spend most of their time. Majority of the time is dedicated to "some" job, which they are not particularly interested in but do solely for earning money (a more decent way of putting it is "to make a living") and for the joy of upholding it as a status symbol (In a charming voice she introduced herself, "Well, I work as a ******".). Of course, I am mistaken if I oversimplify the objective of job or work in the modern human life as money-making and attaining an identity. More than that modern humans work so that they can secure the future, marry off their girls decently, meet urgent situations like sickness etc. (Does it again it boil down to money?) I think that we can safely say that the objective of modern life is to lead a safe, comfortable life without much troubles. Money is considered as the means by which these objectives can be achieved. Since humans have not evolved enough, they quite often forget this and pursue money-making as their sole objective. (When one tries to achieve this in little time, one tries to do things like "3G scam", and, if unlucky, ends up in the Tihar jail.) There are exceptions, though. There are people who are more lazy and do not even try to lead safe and comfortable life. They just booze and kill each other in the street. On the other extreme, there are people who work for more (they say) noble objectives like fame, service of the poor, building up own nation, etc. There are more selfish people who aspire to become a movie director, actor, television anchorman, painter, novelist, model, engineer, etc. There are other fools who aspire for academic excellence, like obtaining a Ph.D. from a well-known institute, or for achieving technical competence, like struggling to be an excellent engineer!
Having understood more or less the meaning and objective of modern life, I would like to look at the next aspect in this realm, which comes for sure but uninvited. Summarizing the above paragraph, the objective of life is mostly to "achieve" something. This "something" changes for person to person, country to country (maybe), and time to time. But a major difficulty is "to achieve something permanently". This seems to be (I say "seems to be" because I am still skeptic -- my weakness) impossible. To understand this impossibility, I must have to ask another stupid, age old question: "who am I?". However, because I cannot surpass my own skepticism, I am rather tempted to ask "what am I?". Again, without resorting to all the metaphysical stories written in the sacred text books, I would say, "I am my body, my thoughts, my feelings, my knowledge, my surroundings, my family, my education, my fantasies and so on". Put in one sentence, "I am a bunch of abstract and material elements, which are impermanent and, by and large, irreconcilable". The irreconcilability of the elements which constitute the "I" is an interesting topic for further discussion. But I am interested in the other "fact": the impermanence of every element that makes up "I"! This means that whatever I think, whatever I do, whatever I plan (no matter how diligently I plan), my life and my action and "I" are impermanent. However well I live, however devoted I am towards my life, however noble my pursuits are, I am not permanent... my power will slowly decay and, finally, one day, I have to die. I will be gone, my time will be gone, my work will be gone, my family will be gone, and my world will be gone. This impermanence causes an unsolvable uneasiness in every human being. Knowledge of this very fact makes one to be aware of the futility of everything one strongly attaches oneself to. This weakness of oneself causes eternal suffering -- "dukkha". Is there any solution? Is there any possibilities of salvation? How can I end my suffering? This is the heart of Buddha's teachings.
I admired Buddhism mostly because the way Buddha arrived at his problem, which he considered as the only problem on earth worth solving! While other ancient thoughts start with the solution (faith and salvation), Buddha starts with the problem! And for Buddha, every other metaphysical questions were only sub-problems or no-problems.
