Aug 2020
Dear ...
Yours is a post PhD thesis and sets us thinking about what life is but definitions are relative and subjective as philosophy and morality is not science--more by way of speculation and hypothesising. Truth is sui generis--we de-sanctify it by claiming we know it but it stands askance.
I would look at life in awe and in recognition of the limits of my own understanding, also in acknowledgement of my lack of maturity and perspicacity ---I shall not pre-empt bur rather live a day at a time-if lucky enough, I might learn to know a bit, just a tiny bit more ,of myself and my relation to life.
I do not need to have an answer to life's mysteries, complexities, nuances or its contradictions as my happiness and wellbeing does not rest on knowledge--I would deem myself lucky to have some oblique insight--to be able to see a moment in its intrinsic state is quite enough--though it is not enlightenment, a new consciousness would have dawned upon me as what was reflected by Blake in his AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE.
Whether life has meaning or not is definable only by personal experience, stripped of external influences or the ranting of writers and philosophers---it is the perennial 'I' and 'Life' that is the crux.
Existentialism is but a lonely and isolated way of looking at life and might be better suited for Western thinking in its vague and dubious search for answers to living unlike the Eastern which seeks to live in harmony with the self and the universe. As such, the West is Yang and the Eastern, Yin--the former involves struggle of the self, the latter is strife-free in its benign acceptance, acquiesce, humility, compassion and subjugation of the ego and not over-doing or over-achieving. That the West is bending more and more towards Zen, Taoism and Buddhism clearly shows a sharp shifting of thinking in espousal of Eastern wisdom.
Love is more real than life as it impinges upon me in my relation to those whom I love and also in my knowing I am loved in return.
It is not an abstraction like life or truth.
What shall save me at the end is not understanding nor knowledge
but rather in recognising I am but a ripple in the limitless vastness of the sea of life and my acceptance of such.
Do I make sense, dear Master?
My IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ZEN--THE PATH TO A CALMER AND HAPPIER LIFE (published by Brolga Publishing, Melbourne) is on sale in 14 countries under Lim-- for rating vide Lim Sing AbeBooks, et al.
It mentions, inter alia, existentialism, Camus and Sartre
with my deep esteem.
Yours is a post PhD thesis and sets us thinking about what life is but definitions are relative and subjective as philosophy and morality is not science--more by way of speculation and hypothesising. Truth is sui generis--we de-sanctify it by claiming we know it but it stands askance.
I would look at life in awe and in recognition of the limits of my own understanding, also in acknowledgement of my lack of maturity and perspicacity ---I shall not pre-empt bur rather live a day at a time-if lucky enough, I might learn to know a bit, just a tiny bit more ,of myself and my relation to life.
I do not need to have an answer to life's mysteries, complexities, nuances or its contradictions as my happiness and wellbeing does not rest on knowledge--I would deem myself lucky to have some oblique insight--to be able to see a moment in its intrinsic state is quite enough--though it is not enlightenment, a new consciousness would have dawned upon me as what was reflected by Blake in his AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE.
Whether life has meaning or not is definable only by personal experience, stripped of external influences or the ranting of writers and philosophers---it is the perennial 'I' and 'Life' that is the crux.
Existentialism is but a lonely and isolated way of looking at life and might be better suited for Western thinking in its vague and dubious search for answers to living unlike the Eastern which seeks to live in harmony with the self and the universe. As such, the West is Yang and the Eastern, Yin--the former involves struggle of the self, the latter is strife-free in its benign acceptance, acquiesce, humility, compassion and subjugation of the ego and not over-doing or over-achieving. That the West is bending more and more towards Zen, Taoism and Buddhism clearly shows a sharp shifting of thinking in espousal of Eastern wisdom.
Love is more real than life as it impinges upon me in my relation to those whom I love and also in my knowing I am loved in return.
It is not an abstraction like life or truth.
What shall save me at the end is not understanding nor knowledge
but rather in recognising I am but a ripple in the limitless vastness of the sea of life and my acceptance of such.
Do I make sense, dear Master?
My IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ZEN--THE PATH TO A CALMER AND HAPPIER LIFE (published by Brolga Publishing, Melbourne) is on sale in 14 countries under Lim-- for rating vide Lim Sing AbeBooks, et al.
It mentions, inter alia, existentialism, Camus and Sartre
with my deep esteem.
