What is life "for" - it it to be happy - which implies a continual "timeless" state of bliss.
If happiness is rooted-in the elimination of all suffering (which is the emphasis in some major religions); then there can be no needs, no desire, no "wanting"*.
All Just Is, and what is, is good.
Or else is life rooted in purpose? Purpose is dynamic, includes time; and purpose entails and some degree of dissatisfaction, yearning, wanting, desiring.
(Because if here-and-now was wholly satisfactory and sufficient, then there would be no reason to change it - no purpose.)
Happiness (and the elimination of suffering) is in ultimate conflict with a life of purpose: one or other, but not both, can be the aim of spiritual life. They can't simultaneously be the aim. If we tried to conflate both in a unity, then one or other will - in actuality - be dominant over the other.
So purpose is in-conflict-with the desire for a state of perfect happiness; and with the desire to eliminate all suffering - because purpose entails some degree of suffering.
To live (always) with purpose, is always to experience some degree of dissatisfaction with here-and-now; in order to desire some, somewhat-different future state.
Therefore the desire for happiness (including the elimination of suffering) is incompatible with purpose.
This is part-of the incompatibility of, on the one hand, the many forms of oneness spirituality - of "Eastern" religion so-styled, yet actually far more widespread that the East, including being strongly, and from early, within Christianity) -- with, on the other hand, Christianity (properly understood).
Christianity is about purpose, ultimately. Therefore, not ultimately about happiness, nor about the elimination of suffering.
What Christianity is about, is dynamic, purposive, taking place in-and through-time: it is about Love as the basis of creation.
**
(But because Love has so often been defined in terms of a static state of perfect happiness, the dynamic purposive nature of Love - hence of creation - has become confused and/or occluded. To put is the other way about; there are two distinct ways of considering "Love" as the goal of existence: one is as a timeless, perfect-in-itself, blissful - and essentially impersonal - state; the other is as dynamic, purposive, creative - and essentially inter-personal.)
*Note added: It could be said that Love (understood as participation in divine creation) is itself the ultimate happiness; and in a sense that would be correct - for those who choose to follow Jesus Christ. But it is not the ultimate happiness for everybody. It seems that for many people the highest happiness entails a changeless bliss. And there are others for whom the greatest gratification (if not exactly "happiness" entails that which Christians regard as evil - selfish gratifications of various kinds.
2 comments:
I have this idea, hopefully I can make it fit.
Maybe the difficulties in life are bite-size reintroductions to our chaotic existence before original participation. It must have been a huge relief to enter God's creation, and I think this is why many people yearn for those happy childhood days. Perhaps our struggles with a 'lizard brain' are really about coming to terms with our pre-existent, chaoticly motivated selves. It seems to me that this is the suffering that would be good to be free of, the suffering of experiencing the uglier motivations of our real self with no hope of getting better. The bright future being the ability to redirect our motivations toward love, rather than seeking love to happen to us, as it did with original participation. (I just noticed that the word happen and happy are similar, looked it up and both are tied to the idea of chance occurrence.)
@Lucinda - I think the difficulties in life are unavoidable, given our pre-existing "nature" with which we enter mortal incarnation; and that (especially at this point in history, and in "the West") the incarnating souls seem to need to work things out for ourselves as much as possible.
Maybe this is because, unless we do it for ourselves, we shall not learn the lessons. As when people often don't believe or take good advice, but need to make mistakes for themselves (and even then, often don't learn first time, or even second or third time...).
Modern souls seem very difficult to teach compared with people of the past, which I think explains much of the current situation.
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