13 Sept 2006

At Sea with no Purpose

If I can just express this thing fully and clearly, that is running through my mind, that will be enough. Will it bring me happiness or satisfaction? I don't know, and it's not important. will anyone read it with care and understanding? It would be nice to think so, but that is not the purpose. A thought worth thinking, or a life worth living, is like a universe worth creating - it can't depend on something else, it has to contain its own value and be its own purpose. When God did the creation thing, He 'saw that it was good.' Only the devil would ask Him, 'Good for what? It's a question with no end, because any answer can be subjected to the same question again. It is tempting to make a barrier of the self; my happiness as good for me. Philosophers and religionists are fond of this answer, and it does seem to end the question, because no one can argue with me about my personal happiness, but what a small, mean world it confines me to! Nothing that is beyond my experience or beyond my comprehension can have any value to me - and that is almost everything. Besides, the fact is that by and large, I am not happy, and in such a small world how could I be?
This morning in the woods, amongst the undergrowth dying back at the end of the summer, I came across a little clump of flowers standing bright purple in the greens and browns. And if I hadn't been that way, if no one had seen them? Well I did see them and the seeing was a joy; but they did not need me to see them to justify their existence, and that too was a joy.
We should not call them suicide bombers; they are martyrdom bombers. Their purpose is their own happiness in paradise by means of doing God a big favour. Apparently, God wants us all to be Muslims, and He needs the help of the faithful to destroy the infidel. It's hard work, but the pay is excellent. Well, my faith is that each thing and each person is their own justification; this limited, confused and often unhappy person who is writing, and that limited and confused person who is blowing himself up - God sees that we are good; not good because He sees, not good because we do his will or fulfill his purpose, nor our own purposes, not good for anything, just good.
Dying is part of life. Things that don't die, like stones, are not alive. The two things are inseparable parts of one process. Birth and death are the limits of myself and myself is a limit on what exists. My skin separates me from, and joins me to the world, as my death separates me from and joins me to the life of the world; it is the limit of the limitation called me. And after, so we are told by those that heard it and misunderstood, comes paradise. But paradise comes first not last, and it is paradise and eternal precisely because there is no self, no me in it; it consists of the end of that limitation.
And that is the end of this line of thought; but the world continues...