And our suffering is transformed as it takes on new meaning! 1 None of that is relevant, because no one except a few astro-geeks cares about galaxies. These include logic, rationality, reason, habitual patterns of thought, feeling and action as well as reliance on unquestioned beliefs. When that is too emotionally difficult, we may nihilize it, more or less successfully. Some animal species hatch or bear young all at the same time, for the same reason. Once it happened that Nasruddin and his friend Sheikh Abdullah lost their way in a forest. The value of perspective is that it is a different and complementary view on your life, not that it is a better one. If it is inhabited, do you think the aliens there care anything about your vain ambitions, constant worries, and rapidly approaching death? All four men had essentially tragic outlooks, but Albee's was howlingly so; he alone saw humanity's struggle to understand itself as a cosmic joke. It could be good to reconsider them. Beyond Enlightenment. This one transports you to a miserable meaningless rock squintillions of miles from nowhere, and dumps you there. Now a part of you is reminding you who you truly are. That is the basis of social significance: you are valued enough that the clan chief will risk his life, and his warriors', to save you from cave hyenas.
That doesn't mean they will be understood, but I'm not sure Albee cared about that. He often told me, because I refused to believe him, that he did not so much write his plays as transcribe them from his imagination; he said he would find himself "knocked up" with an idea, which then, after a few months' or years' gestation, he would birth full-grown. The Perfect Master, Vol 1, 2. And recognizing that both science and religion are products of the "Magisteria of Our Human Mindscape. Life is about living in the moment and focusing on what is around. It's likely that our overgrown brains developed mainly to understand and exploit social relationships. And in the midst of the deepest darkness, may we never forget that the Passion of Christ concludes with His Resurrection – what appears to be the victory of evil and darkness and death is only a façade, a joke played on Satan.
I have two reluctant recommendations if you want to read some anyway. I don't just mean the way his reputation was revived in 1990 by Three Tall Women, which suddenly turned him into a great man of the theater as if he hadn't always been one. Also, it reveals that some life choices, which made sense at the time, were somewhat arbitrary in retrospect. Emotionally, the cosmos is an expanded, supernatural analog of the clan. You—as the nameless and formless, aware presence that you truly are—are the source and substance of all reality. Your chief ordered a charge, and the men ran in with their spears. So, find out what makes you happy and do it every day. 10 Opportunities to See Your Life with Spiritual Eyes. It was 2002, long sections of SR1 across empty parts of the country were still unpaved, CDs were still a thing, and the album had just come out. Abu, Rajasthan, India.
This does not mean that you cease to care or stop having relationships with these objects, pursuits or people, but only that you stop being invested in them as defining you. In fact, more and more people are getting their truthful news from comedians, like John Stewart. Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh explained: I laugh when I think how I once sought paradise as a realm outside of the world of birth. Now, couldn't he find a horse? Antonio Pigafetta was the proto-scientist on Magellan's disastrous 1519–1522 expedition, the first circumnavigation of the planet. Who knows what opening the door to the pansies (Williams, Albee) might presage? If you had a million followers on Instagram, that would make your life meaningful, right? You see that your identification with the reality of those roles is a choice and this awareness gives you the objectivity to see your investment as optional. And the devil and sin itself will not have the last say! Or had an experience where humor and laughter have helped you in some way? You do it best, here on Earth in this 3-dimensional dualistic construct of your mind in order to feel what it's like to have a body and be a living being. Discourse Series: Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi. We tell ourselves stories about them to explain them and make sense about them and we create theories to justify our beliefs about life and death.
This is where nihilism begins, in the failure of eternalism, at the end of world. Almost any dream, when viewed from the perspective of your waking identity will contain absurd elements. They're still going on about it: We are ephemeral beings on a tiny planet in one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe (or perhaps the multiverse)—a cosmos that is coldly indifferent to the insignificant specks that we are. Laughter is far more sacred than prayer, because prayer can be done by any one; it does not require much intelligence. The missing key is appreciating the fundamental "Magisteria of Physical Reality, " -. Fortunately, we aren't doing philosophy here. We look further and further.
For example, Paul Mic says, "We understand nothing! Comedians often point to the discrepancy between how we think things are and how they actually are: "The enlightened fool is the one who sees the ego trips of society and can still find joy and laughter in its midst. After all, how can we truly know something through words alone? We all have meanings for others that we can never know. Well, you are God, experiencing itself. The secrets of the mind-body connection. On the whole, on average, we have good intentions, and can reasonably expect to create a better future together. Only man can see the ridiculous, the absurd. We've already had one explanation: it provokes the evolved agoraphobia of early humans lost on an open plain, separated from the clan, and therefore vulnerable to cold, starvation, and predators. A psychonaut is a person who experiences intentionally induced altered states of consciousness and claims to use the experience to investigate his or her mind, and possibly address spiritual questions, through direct experience. Since then, I wavered in my faith in myself, in humanity, and in my ability to see the good shining through. Feeling lonely and worthless is a common cause of nihilism. Sometimes the lack is obscure, or even unnameable.
The next nearest star to the Earth after the Sun is Proxima Centauri. His cosmos passed with Him. Our ancestors did not. The oftimes mindless hippie exclamation "wow, cosmic, man! " Occasionally a few of them glom together to make a galaxy or something. I hope you noticed that this story is significantly similar to the nihilist sales pitch.
In English we have a word, God-fearing, for religious people.