The Zen of Life

“Who We Really Are”

We always question life and it's purpose and despite of all that we think we have achieved to understand the meaning and purpose of it, we still find it rather hard to contemplate the dynamics and struggle to find a singularity as to how to be content with the never ending chaos that we created in pursuing acceptable answers in why life goes the way it does. Ever since we learned to think and started to question things that concern our existence, we have looked for answers around and within our minds in why we live life with such turmoil despite advancement in improving our selves as human beings. Most important of all, why we behave so irrational when it comes to understanding our fellow human beings.

With the dawning of the Age of Reason, human society has been brutalized with war and conflict within the foundation of it's culture. It seems that human beings are easily intimidated by its own kind despite coming from one gene pool. No matter how hard we try to understand ourselves in this society we still lack rationality and may have overlooked the simple meaning of “peace” despite devising ways to fully utilize our mental faculties in trying to achieve it. It is so ironic to think that in comparison to all the things we had done to improve the life around us, conflict of war and chaos follows us in the distant,waiting and lurking in the back of our minds just waiting to be released.

Fear is one of the traits that control any living organism and it is fear and inadequacy within its environment that stimulates its need for self preservation. Living organisms are genetically inclined to survive and they automatically veer away from things that may be a threat for their existence. Humans have that same fear amongst themselves and it is this fear that triggers a paranoiac tendency to retaliate against one another regardless of any rational reason bearing any thought of to what it is. It may be rooted from the source of our ancestors...the apes.

Apes have this uncanny habit of looking at each other and leaving a bad impression on their fellow apes that it often ends up in a fight. It is often called “The Bad Monkey Look”, and as the term suggests it, apparently is a predominant trait amongst the great apes including humans. As a specie, we are so egoistic and take pride in what we achieved and done for our own self improvement but that can not be a valid reason to justify such a negatively enforced trait. We hate competition even amongst ourselves that we end up plotting means to eradicate competition as to emerge as a dominant and controlling entity. Leaving it to the predominant specie to take all pertinent resources to ensure its survival.

Despite of this undeniable truth in which we exist, there are still those who believe that this chaotic way of life is just an evolutionary stage in which our society is going through and that the final understanding of what our purpose in life is still in the process of being unlocked in the deepest recesses of our minds. It maybe just a question of acceptance and outlook of how we perceive life all around us and that the complications of this society that we exist upon based on the conveniences that we created to favor us.

Our true biological purpose in this world is to populate it and consume it's natural resources, quite true, but the way that human beings go through about life is such a frightening manner. Compared to other living organisms, we as a species are the only ones that leave a trail of destruction while slowly ravaging the very resources that can sustain our lives. Unlike animals that only take what is proportionally permitted in nature, we on the other hand consume more than what is needed and at the same time dilute our selves with our own residual filth caused by our intentional defiance of nature's divine purpose.

For millions of years even before the emergence of human beings, animals have populated the world without much complication as far as nature was concerned. Naturally living out their lives as intended by instinct dictated them without making not as much of any detrimental unbalance to it's natural surroundings. As far as nature was concerned, nothing can be far ideal than this. Then we came in the world strutting out our egoistic ideologies that drastically changed every imaginable concept of life contrary to its natural precepts.

Since then, life as we know it continued to flourish up to this day to favor our own convenience despite the growing threat of unbalancing the natural cycle of nature which is now clearly being manifested by drastic climate change. Despite the undeniable truth, we still remain remorsefully defiant thinking that we can never be undaunted by such unimportant things that do not concern our own personal conveniences regarding our way of life. Unfortunately nature can never be defied. Human beings have no hold when it comes to the seemingly naive thought that it can in some ways control or go against the natural balance of life despite all the compendium knowledge that man has achieved.

It is now coming out of the clear that we are anomalous to nature as we don't live by the natural guidelines that it intended us to dwell within its natural confines. Continuing to live with a blinded idealistic fervor might lead to the demise of the human species as nature can easily eject us from its own system. Just like when the body ejects foreign substances that knows can be harmful to it's biological system. It is just a matter of humanity making its next step with its dance against nature, to make a fatal step will end the dance in a chaotic reality for us.

“The Zen of Life”

Defiance of nature can be so unfavorable to us as human beings that we tend to forget who we really are. Our own achievements blind the reality around us as to make ways of covering up the ugly reality of the natural truth from which we had been spawned. The life around us contains negative and positive sides of reason both which favor each others justified principalities. Regardless of this obvious truth neither one of both principalities can not exist without the other. As it is a “singularity” as illustrated by the Buddhist symbol of the “yin and yang”.

Buddhism is not a religion but a principality on how to deal with life and all that can be negatively bad for human existence in all aspects concerning nature around us. Be reminded that “Zen” had been derived from the original Buddhist context and was adopted by Shinto monks of Japan. Adding to this, Buddhist do not consider Buddha as a god but rather as a teacher that showed the clear path of enlightenment though the adulation for Buddha is a from a purely human conceptive point of view as stated by followers of the discipline.

Man is a primitive being despite of all claims of social achievements, as manifested in his primal urge to uncontrollably hate his fellow human beings. A famous ancient saying that goes...” Stop wanting. Less is More” is one of the basic founding teachings of Zen. The more we want, the more our possessions cause confusion for us. This is greed in all of the sense of the word itself which is one of our worst traits as humans. Less is definitely an accurate proportional suggestive word to put emphasis in how we should conduct our lives in a daily basis. The less you bring with you as only the necessities, the faster you travel about your way in life and the lighter it is to make clear cut decisions.

Life is more vibrant and dynamic if we were given clear and tangible choices which have substantiated positive implications that improve our inner thoughts and manifest a positive response from those who we meet everyday. Others prefer a radical way of changing the world, while others prefer a pacifist way of dealing with the chaos. I say change the world according to its natural flow an not adversely change it to suite our purpose. The temptation of taking advantage of one another is bit of a narcissist and egoistical approach and not really well worth the effort as seen on the previous history of past wars that we as a society paid very dearly for our ignorance.

Peaceful coexistence is not one of our strongest traits as humans and that is a given. But the world does not evolve around hate and war and the mere purpose of both are hardly not essential to human existence. One does not understand why people hate each other because of differences in various beliefs and implementation of variances in traditional social beliefs and practices. For others they find violence and hatred a necessary means to answer everything in life, just another proof of us not completely evolving out of our primitive genealogy. Social order favors only those who put inhibiting laws against other human beings in fear of being over run and losing control over others within the same species.

It is so hard to enforce a peaceful means of running the world without critical objections that come from people that fear being taken advantage by servitude. Social equality still remains an elusive state of reality despite claims of actual implementation as to provide a comforting assurance of balance in this world despite the actual chaos that still runs rampantly. Still we are hopeful that man will one day leave all the hatred behind and renew his outlook on life for the betterment of himself and nature. But as of now we still need to find within ourselves to search of the answers individually and not collectively as a species.

Peaceful resolutions of human existence can be achieved unless it is purposely denied. Hate gets the best of us as a society and we incoherently laugh at ourselves enjoying the misfortunes of others while enjoying our own comfortable conveniences as well. Unless we change willingly or wait till nature take on its own hands at changing in how we look at things in life, which will not be very pleasant for us, we as a species must take the first step to have a collective consciousness in dealing with the actual reality that is happening to prevent the unthinkable which will inevitably come for us.

The word “Zen” means “perfect simplicity”, achieving it simply put is just being simple without being complicated. We put the complications in a fairly simple life because we don't want to be bored with its plain simplicity. An “Overdone” life does not have an everlasting way of satisfying society as being perfect, because human beings are easily bored. Simplicity itself is beauty, and the imperfections of life are a testament of the perfection of nature. Simplicity is contentedness and once you are content with the simplicity of things in its natural aspect you will be happy inside,smiling.

The choices we make are the sole reasons that will decide on our fate and no amount of human reasoning contrary to natures divine purpose will ever. Thats why we were made with a conscience, the reason that we decide from good or bad and its not bad to use it once in a while.