The potential for meaningful life evaporates with dreams,
Consciousness faced only with the drudgery of embodiment.
What can nourish this dead flesh alive?

There is no meaning, although fancy acolytes in unusual garb preaching exotic philosophy give away the secrets to total happiness and immortality. The purpose of life is to erect structures of meaning from the abysmal void of existential aloneness. To use meaninglessness to create meaning. To care about something other than one’s self, to take the mind away from the only truth: total bleak emptiness.

A more apt term than any I self apply – herbalist, technician, educator, meditator, homesteader, hipster – is seeker. My only real interest in the world is to find deep meaning, the rich nutritive substance of life and existence. I have sought it largely from spiritual teachings, which through subtlety and precision strive to describe the heart of our life.  I studied Taoist healing and meditation, Buddhist philosophy on causality, yogic techniques for dissolution of the self, and while I am certainly no expert, I have strived to get to the heart of the teachings and apply them in my life.  Other people who are close to me might say they see an improvement in my attitude, but my internal experience does not corroborate.  Perhaps I have become more skilled at presenting a kind face to the people I interact with.  Karma teaches that we should treat others the way we want to be treated or better, and that will ripen (someday) as all my dreams coming true.  It’s a very fantastical and magical presentation, and very inspiring when one swallows it part and parcel.

Same answer for everything: no point. Just making up value and meaning as we go along.  Stuck in my body, stuck in my mind, stuck in life.  Then just meaningless actions to fill the total void.  No value in relationships unless they keep me entertained and distracted.  But I’ve become very bored with other people’s ideas, mostly half-formed or less, and aimed at being smarter or cuter than others.  No value in work except it brings in the money to keep a miserable life moderately comfortable.  Home, travel, entertainment – all serve only the same small function, to supplant the meaninglessness with some distraction.

Quick solutions don’t work – if only you exercised more and ate right! Long term solutions don’t work – meditate on emptiness for thirty years and maybe you too can have a direct perception of ultimate reality! Everyone’s got a sales pitch to buy their product – which is actually a world view, and the cost is my attention, and the product is my validating someone else’s half-assed theory.  Nothing works.  There is no working for something else to do. Suicide is so tragic to the survivors because they beat themselves up about it, as if they could have done things differently, which of course is true, no one ever really gives enough attention to the people they love. But suicide is motivated by something much deeper – all the love in the world adds up to a teaspoonful in the face of total meaninglessness of existence. Would I prefer to blip out, lose consciousness forever, forgo this exciting opportunity for life in exchange for non-existence?  Do I not care to see the next 50 or 60 years? Nothing of value exists, and so there is nothing to pursue?  If these spiritual teachings actually did something would it have produced some result? But it seems the only function is to provide a magical worldview to distract from the totally meaningless reality of cosmic indifference.

Time to get out of bed, go to work. Lots of important stuff to do today.