by Peter M.K. Chan

Created on: June 16, 2009   Last Updated: June 17, 2009

On the Meaning and Purpose of Life

As it has so very often been lamented, the lot of being human is really nothing more than a bed of thorns adorned by a few occasional roses. Its tenure is rather harsh for some, bitter for many, and short for all. To be a human being, in other words, is not altogether that privileged an affair. For the few comforts sometimes enjoyed, one must slave for one's needs, live with anxieties, struggle against external threats and so on and so forth. What also seems regrettable is that as one become less sensitised to all these adversities, one is also programmed to slide toward Sunset Avenue, and eventually die. The apparent pointlessness of it all could only make one wonder: Why are we here? What is the meaning and purpose of it all? Is death really the end of one's existence? In the history of the human kind, it is questions such as these that have given rise to answers of the religious kind. <b>

As to the wherewithal of human toil and suffering, religious deliberations have by and large come down to this. They all say that it is due to the sinful (unlawful) tendencies of the human kind. According to monotheistic religions, the original source of trouble is traceable to the disobedience of the First Couple vis a vis the command of God. With Christianity, this opinion was further crystallized into the doctrine of original sin. For non-theistic religions such as Buddhism, however, suffering is deemed rather as the consequence of natural retributive justice as dictated by the iron law of cause and effect (that every effect must have its like cause, and conversely, every cause must have its like effect). In terms of this understanding, one is bound to reap what one has sown. That is to say, what one suffers now is but the consequence of one's evil deeds and intentions either committed or entertained in the past; and how one performs now is also indicative of what is to come in this life as well as in the next. It should thus be seen that despite doctrinal differences, the message is actually one and the same. No one should blame Heaven or Deity for what one has to endure as a human being. The culprit is actually oneself. <b>

As to having to die so quickly and the purpose of it all, it is also generally agreed that bodily death is really not the end of one's existence. It should be seen rather as the gateway for one's soul into the next - to become another incarnated being in the flesh (as in the case of Buddhism) or

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