CPE Reflection 2

CPE Reflection 2, Due February 6, 2012

“...as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theater before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like condemned prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means.”"

(Arthur Schopenhauer, German Philosopher 1788-1860)

The last words I read before turning to this assignment were in a book by Thomas Nagel called What Does It All Mean.  The book is a brief narrative of how philosophy approaches several key questions, building up to “What is the meaning of life?”  (Alas, the answer is not Adams’ “42”.)  Nagel is dissatisfied with a religious answer to the question (i.e., that we can’t know beyond the fact that it is God’s will or purpose) because it precludes our asking and being able to get a satisfactory answer to “Why” or “What is that purpose.”   “Can there really be something which gives point to everything else by encompassing it, bit which couldn’t have, or need, any point itself?  Something whose point can’t be questioned from outside because there is no outside?”  

Nagel appears to lead to a conclusion that life may be fundamentally meaningless, but since we as individuals determine to care about our lives and each other, that’s gonna have to be meaning enough.  He notes that some are troubled by this and ascribe it to a tendency toward taking ourselves too seriously, needing some larger sense of purpose or importance to energize our actions.  To give this up a larger/higher purpose would be to acknowledge the ridiculousness of taking ourselves so seriously.  “..if we can’t help taking ourselves so seriously, perhaps we just have to put up with being ridiculous.  Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.”  


Let’s take the above as true - that life does not have inherent meaning and may indeed be absurd.  Then indeed the children are “condemned” to a meaningless existence.  But it is their existence and their opportunity to explore its breadth and depth.  

The children in the relatively affluent United States (even those comfortably swaying in Mitt Romney’s imaginatively well-woven safety net) as well as those in nations from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe have the opportunity to not just discover an answer to the question of the meaning of life, but to create one.  It is an opportunity, not a destiny. Many things are stacked up against such discovery, from being able to rise one's head above subsistence to developing the capacity for reasoned exploration. And then there is how little introspection most bring to the project of their lives.  It often seems that only in the moments of crisis - illness and death - the question of meaning surfaces strongly enough to be considered if not addressed. But then, those moments eventually come to us all.

There is a Buddhist parable of the burning house from the Lotus Sutra that is relevant to this reflection in that it captures why I think of the children not as condemned but as having a real chance to realize if not create meaning.  The story goes like this:

One day, a fire broke out in the house of a wealthy man who had many children. The wealthy man shouted at his children inside the burning house to flee. But, the children were absorbed in their games and did not heed his warning, though the house was being consumed by flames.

Then the wealthy man devised a practical way to lure the children from the burning house. Knowing that the children were fond of interesting playthings, he called out to them, "Listen! Outside the gate are the carts that you have always wanted: carts pulled by goats, carts pulled by deer, and carts pulled by oxen. Why don't you come out and play with them?" The wealthy man knew that these things would be irresistible to his children.

The children, eager to play with these new toys rushed out of the house but, instead of the carts that he had promised, the father gave them a cart much better than any he has described - a cart draped with precious stones and pulled by white bullocks. The important thing being that the children were saved from the dangers of the house on fire.

The father represents the Buddha (aka the awakened one, a perspective and realization available to each of us) and we are the ones trapped in the burning house. The burning house is the life we are “condemned” to, which inherently includes the “fires” of sickness, old age and death.  The father/Buddha is calling the children out of the house - out of the delusion that the house is not on fire (the spectacle we will see on stage) - and into the possibility of awakening to a larger truth - and meaning.  (The strategy the father uses is referred to as skillful means, i.e., means appropriate to the understanding of the children, so yeah - it was fine to lure them out of the house with treats;  but this has limits - it wouldn’t be okay to say come out or I’ll kill your sister.)

Is it condemnation to know that the play will end or that it will have tears as well as joys? Knowing that the curtain will eventually come down is one thing. Not having an opportunity to influence the quality of the play, or to dream up an alternative plot, is another. It is a “blessing” that we do not know what is really going to happen in so far as it allows us to discover for ourselves. In Zen this is expressed as “beginners mind.” This idea is part of a key line in a Zen koan: “not knowing is most intimate”, i.e., it makes it possible to meet life without preconceived ideas, interpretations, or judgments. We can then discover what will happen for ourselves; that discovery may in fact be the “larger sense of purpose” that animates my activities. 

Guess I get to own my ridiculousness!