"What is the meaning of life, or for that matter, of the life of any creature?"
As I have said before on this thread, from the vantage point of my Teacher, Adi Da, life becomes "meaningful"
when the person (in the case of humans):
-- realizes that there is nothing but the Divine
-- realizes that their "personal" experience is as a
result of their contraction against the Divine energy
that is living them (i.e. beating their heart)
-- surrenders into, cooperates with, and is lived by that
energy
Virtually every religion has a CORE communication that
approximates this message in some way. I imagine that Islam has.
The instruction in any religion relative to this core process is called its ESOTERIC teaching. It very often is NOT found in the "mass-market" Holy Book.
Set against that are the "life-discipline" instructions.
A good example of that in the Christian tradition would be
the Ten Commandments. These sorts of instructions could be called "social-wisdom", because they focus on the necessary behavior of people if they are to live with each other in
benign and/or supportive ways. These social-wisdom Teachings are generally described as the EXOTERIC Teachings of any particular path. This is the central content of the
"mass-market" Holy Book, generally.
What DIVIDES people of various religions is "dogma" that suggests:
-- we have the ONLY Truth
-- everybody else is an unbeliever
-- unbelievers need to be converted to the ONLY Truth
and some religions go on to add:
-- if we can't convert by suasion, we will do it by the
sword
Generally these ADDITIONS to the religion are made hundreds or even thousands of years after the original "dispensation"
by the founder of the religion. They are the "contribution", for the most part, of the priest class.
Ultimately they result in either the reformation of the religion, or its destruction.
Most people assume that the "great beings" lived in the
ancient past only. Not true! There have always been
Divinely-inspired Teachers in the world at any given time.
It is just that they do not all appear in the same tradition!
Adi Da is an example of such a LIVING Teacher at this time.
There may be others, also.
Namaste!
Jim |
