This is a lengthy academic essay in response to the question or statement: What is the MEANING ot life? My first is to say through imitation of Christ; then I considered world religions I had also studied. I walked in the woods and sat by the pond down from my house and just watched. I later read through, get this, three sets of encyclopedias when this was knowledge hunt not dyadic hunts through an irrational yet fully rational set up access to knowledge. It just took time to absorb. Free yourself. Stop. Your Meaning of Life is the meaning of life. Want a universal? GOD. Godhead. A thousand names of God leading to the Trinity or one God. Break apart all you have learned and put it back together again, and I mean tear your mind and emotions, your desires and subject of your desires, solace in silent mind but beware the temptation of the veils you cannot clear away, they will appear, and move forward through them, stop and I mean do not Question an absurdity such and the meaning of life. whistle back to a mockingbird at 3am. Dig peace and find substance in what it is that interests you. Stop copying and pasting nonsense. There are badly framed questions when we are not asking from No mind. East and West, as is pointed out in a famous Tennyson poem “I saw a flower in a wall, I plucked and wept” compared to “see the bodhi tree. see the earth. Breath. I touch the earth.” The students to Gautama waited, hushed, as they had learned to silence the racket of their inner voice always offering jabber and otherness not nowness, so they waited. Gautama said simple nothing. He placed his finger upon the ground, thus without words expressed the cycle of life and death and rebirth until we found out way to enlightenment and suffered no more the crushing Shouts of Mara to create a scatterbrained mass of a. world who were and are unable to Be. Be Love Now, and sink you’re cut and past pasteboard concepts of What is the meaning of Life or Is knowledge power. This moves us into post structuralism and the miasma of searching for meaning in secondary and tertiary definitions in order a simple act of peace. Hermeneutics is for Biblical studies and finding the many meanings within poetics. Speaking of poetics we can go Zen for a Monet moment and say: I see the lotus floating by, the river flows and the waters rest, I let them be. Why let them be? Why to encourage cause and effect as expressed in the expense of water and plants so that the seed may mature and drop or be eaten by a bird and pooped upon fertile places. Let things be and yet also know when those things must be messed with as in organic farming, you have to protect your garden without dousing it with chemicals. Chemicals are that noise in the brain preventing the blessed and yearned for to become something that occurs throughout our meditations and being now and new in each month without being stupid. To let it be with the outcome being stupidity or wiping away what we have learned through counting breaths, chanting blessed mantras, listening to the sound of holy bowls hum and ting, bong and still keep that lower D hum and hum as it is the sound df the spheres holding us all together. The meaning of life is that we do not destroy life by overthinking it to the point that it is rendered infertile. As the great molder of mind and thought Alan Watts said, we must sometimes be cloud hidden known only by our presence in the clouds. Being. The miracle is not birth. The miracle is that we live. We did a great job destroying this magnificent earth with our end set to 2030. What will one do? I seek deeper meditation, I want to read more and more new translations of the Buddha talks and his students discussing while the 500 gathered in a a cave and developed a way, the way of Buddhism divided into Theravada, Mahayana and Zen. Most do end up in Zen land. Too much Zen in the wrong minds brings us the WWII in the Pacific. The rape of Korea, Taiwan, Southeast Asia down the peninsula to Singapore and over into the vast islands of Indonesia an dup into the Philippines. There is a limit to the meaning of life when that meaning becomes a subject object reaction of dominance and destruction of personhood, the individual. We must look upon our modern age, what is left of it. Consider the mocking bird at 3 am. Watch an osprey hunt. Watch tomatoes and broccoli blossom and fertilize the earth while you gather what is needed to eat. Tonight the meaning of my life is lotus, rose buds, tulsi leaves and honey. I will sleep and dream of conversations with my heroes, those whose life and words I place upon my pedestal of life.that place at the head of the table or not even at the table but with me in my thoughts, guiding me, being that voice of consciousness to be aware in each moment. as much as I wish.My truths of my wild life get friends in trouble by their friends or employers who bring it up of how can they be trusted if they are friends with me. I said send them to me. My life is to teach and show ways into doors where those doors ought not to be. Bu they are there, and those doors are also called layers of an onion or the many veils of mind and world keeping us from what is. What is it that keeps us from what is? Preconceptions, that formidable but hard to move aside, enemy to our evolving into the dust from which we emerged after a few 100,000 years from two legged mammals to the destructive enemies to ALL life we have become. I cannot lie. I want to lie. To lie is to fail in the 8 fold path. I often fail in the 8 fold path. I want to blame it upon others, but it is me. It is me conjuring spirts when those spirits either become as good people or must beg exorcised as if a Taoist monk were dividing women from power and pushing men into play acting games such as Will to Power derived from is Power Knowledge or is Knowledge Power. Why, dear one, why create what does not require creation yet does require obliteration. We must Rise. We must act up. We must be breakers of rules. Do not the me to extremes on breaking of curls. What my words mean is that we must, we ought to break the rules the ensnare us in silly questions which remove our thoughts from what is most important for the body and soul. I want this to be my last cycle of life and death but I have no idea if I will make it. Meditation is not a means to an end, nor is the end to any means. Meditation and yogi physical practice, in my case the Kundalini, and for many Hatha, and for many more just to site 20 minutes with sandalwood Inscense burning and counting breaths going back to 0 each tie a new thought holler thought the room of breathing and gentle should seeking forgiveness and to make us the dessert. Writing is meditation for me in many ways because I am emptying my mind of clutter, even if it is as beautiful poem I have ever published, a great book, columns in food and world cuisine, philosophical papers or just to write, to follow Yeats and let the pen do my speaking while my mind is silenced. Amazing things take place on the page. But the meaning of life never does anything at all. It is a wind into and through me. Dust spirals, dust cones through sunlight in my dawn windows before this now tropical Georgia lights up with death dealing heat. Watching and listening as new pines collapsing takes place. This roar and burst that in every aspect is an attack upon the order of things. I am that thing. I am the pine falling. I argued with devoted Hare Krishnas once about this One-ness that Westerners learn to find and flee the crowd so as to think and meditate on this world we have set about to kill us off. Life will go on. Waters will flow and oceans will again rise to cover the High Desert to the desperate for attention hills of Texas going down Kings Hiway and just going down in a David Lynch movie night made real by my being in the right place in the right time. I respect the words of Gautama, I chant the Amithaba chant to life as I hold power that many a time ha me cussing out the power to shut up already. Then I know I need to hum and vibrations to take a little longer. When I have been hit in the face with a bottle or knives pulled on me in attempts to destroy me I fight back hard. I usher up the years on a Judo competition team in college and am able to disarm and flatten an of pent in th time it takes to say “hey man, I need something, come here….” I see the pocket bulge. Action saves my life. Knives out and ready to take me down for looking like an easy attack because I tired after 15 hours work nonstop as an Executive Chef with 3 degrees and a minor, paying my way though University and M. A. by work. I put my hands to work so that I could quiet the childish squeaks and cries actin on behalf of my soul; to move far from the path. Many paths to One God. I come back to the path not of extremes but of acceptance of my journey. Knowing each precognition is to be followed, and if it feels like success in business is occurring hen I am at ease for my actions have brought happiness to people who need a smile and a Mel unknot. I love. We must Love. We must love now as when nature takes us down I want to go with the word ‘Love’ upon my lips. 35 years meditation and visits to monasteries of Zen, Mahayana and of Theravada, even into forbidden waters and woods. My M.A. was in Philosophy of Hope and Expectation, the references were to the great monk philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. He leads as Alan Watts did lead, and even had one philosophy which changed 20th century academic thought with his discourse on cause and effect or symbolic logic. He then spent the next 30 years arguing against the thought of his youth. Philosophy of Psychology and Psychoanalysis. B. A. Modern American Literature, B.A. Philosophy of Religion with a minor in Humanistic Psychology; these titles are meaningless alone, but as part of an intellectual and spiritual passage through the sunlit Bardo I am given language and was taught to think. You know how hard it is to learn to think? Watts and his gang of enlightened rogues changed how the think today in academic and spiritual circles. There are those who will defunct him and Fritz Pearl for being hedonistic when it comes around to sex and sexuality. I see no wrong it in because they wanted to Live! To Be. To seek. To silence the twisting of thought before offered up for debate and discourse. The meaning of life is the moment of silencing the mind, what comes after is up to the student. Please free your mind of these trappings of fuzzy mind, which leads to a corrupted soul Interact with love and attention to the flow of needs for those around you. Be empathic and compassionate. Do not distance yourself, be in the moment and the vibrations and eventual flow of things in this ‘great chain of being’ which we seek to break yet to break without harm to others and basically with attention awakening our own soul in return. We are here because we Seek, but we do not seek aphorism veiled in plaster board statements or versed in the interrogative. Now, I still think the meaning of life is to laugh and to spread love, humanity, justice, right thought, vision and action. Do not be victim to the whispers of darkness. The meaning of life is to be here now. I was at a Ram Dass lecture where he talked on and on from his journey, an amazing journey rising and mellowing out like focaccia built with starter fought from the 1970s, he talked for so long people just started to leave. I at my spot. My place before the great yogi. Eventually he ceased and it was close to 4 hours. I was awakened before him. I spoke with Rolling Thunder when was in health enough to travel to universities and speak to us in our positions as part of the listening life of this world. We met in private in the woods and he spoke with those holdouts who just wanted to hold his hands, look into his eyes and way. My question? How can I become a better man. His answer: Never to be spoken as it was a private meeting with an enlightened warrior for place and soul, here and No mind. Parliament Funkadelic: Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow. I think that sums it up well. I know there will be opposing and hopefully well thought out debate or a new view into what has been a new view into Life, while understanding cause and effect. Please read as many of the Books of Alan Watts as you can, his autobiography is a Joseph Campbell directed to speak of what he wished and had thought he did but once it hit the typewriter hammer and rod into the a coherence we gladly understand to day that the Books of Alan Watts were explorations of his own thought at the time. As a poet, author, restauranteur and Executive lucky enough to afford University and Masters Studies. The treasures offered and shared with me along eh way are without measuring and without the sentence “what is the meaning of life” or “does life have a meaning:, set after “The truth is not the truth” by Rudolph Guilliani, who had his minutes of fame come and go many years in revers, and to please keep him off the air Is it not enough that we caught in the side winds of a hurricane the like so which destroyed the Panhandle, parts of Alabama, and nonsense what was this Buffon shouting in imitation of Mussolini not in Imitation of Gautama Buddha or Imitation of Christ, both of his are overrunning with knowledge, wisdom and eternal confessions, answers and the Will itself unveiled and standing cleansed, just turn off the tweets. Change channels or do not listen until we are resolved. I see the flower and admire its isolate gorgeous existence where none ought to grow, then I smelled the flower without touching it. I was absorbed by the flower and dared, dared not to be sought or move this Sweet William away from the packet of soil, yet not moving it in distance from itself bty into one of my yard areas devoted to Sweet William with other Sweet William, being wild flowers and rye grass ,it was an easy and short move. Good on ya flowers!and then came the bones, the deaths of loved, the loss of beloved; but admit I did. I meditated upon this flower out of place (it was where it ought ot have been) a while it appeared as living and breathing as I in that extended moment. This king of snakes was my protector as I later was deceived he would have passed away from loneliness t. Who am I to take what is not mine to take? I was a hunter and avid fly fisherman not using barbed hooks because I was able to release them in the nicest fashion without disturbing its life beyond our moment. I rarely hunt or fish anymore. I walk my beautiful old gal dog, Daisy. I sing to her. I joyfully and without worry sing to my dog as we go out for her several walks per day. Doing so I find the meaning of my life becoming another sublime way o being both love and now in the same breath. This is a prime example of being in the right place, doing the right thing, right thought, right protection and bringing happiness to boxer rescue. The meaning of life This is where we find our self in the moment Now. I beg you all who read this to forgive me and understand I am thinking on the page, seeking my self and if that self is an illusion, is a veil thrown down by upon me by my actions on the page. Sing out! Laugh! Dig a garden and flower them before planting. Best vegetables come from placing a seed or baby plant on top of a lake fish such as bluegill bream, crappie, cod chopped up, the seed and planting will grow strong and delicious. This is the mind, the soul and eventually the spiritual dasein of the flower or vegetable will be realized and nourish out bodies.. Dasein fits in to the philosophy of compassion in cause and effect, the animal and I spoke with our eyes and body muscle flexing, please consider Dasein as the collective consciousness. This is the meaning of a life born of dirt, fertilizer by the fish, warmth and will teach you therapeutic faith. I wish I could have presented this in paragraphs so the coherence would be more evident. In all humility I present my discourse on “the meaning of life” in complete sincerity and hope to learn. I cannot or will not move beyond hope and expectation as long as I allow their emanation from my soul and body on a daily basis. Hence Meditation and reading of the Vedas so that they are prepared, knowing ones religion and path I am able to help their thistle lined walk to what I is called “Home”. I have had it. I cannot live without it, but I felt such a need for contrition and repentance that I was dead for the Eternal light which called out to me, instead I drowned my self in drugs and alcohol. I was cleansed. I looked around and knew in that moment now, that I was changed for the better. Enlightenment is not forever if we become lazy. I know. I also know the seeking for the meaning of life is impossible to answer. Ask word from the Vedas, the Myths which were religions not myth at all, we find our way to the great and horny, wise and well learn’ed Teacher, our Yogi, Alan Watts. My wisdom derived from his essays and his own writing to find himself. I wish I knew the “meaning of lie” as precedent for in the rising in this moment I would die and be reborn, or dancing with the sofa a meaning to life of the Buddhas, dancing found on the 3rd level of Heaven known as Pure Land Heaven as described b the 11th Buddha, Amithaba. for the newcomer. OK. I beg your space, time and intelligence cycle in patience as I think on the page I am tired. I am the clay eyed sent down man. The night absorbs me in its mystery and I cling to this ever-student incarnation. As an acolyte to the Gautama and to the Holy 500 Buddhas who gathered in a cave the day after He demised and left his body as we do today for our farewell, and that choking feeling released and new air is beloved to our flash, and sudden tears of love fall, the Heavenly Host fell to help them rise above our evils. And then I died with Him, our Catholic Christian God, the Enlightened One, as I lived with Ateachings of Guan Shin Yi,