Finding Meaning Without Manufacturing Meaning

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We all want our lives to have meaning. The human ability to envision a time when we are no more – when we can no longer remind people we are – infects us with a dread of that time when we are no more and nobody remembers that we were here. In quiet moments we may chide ourselves for being less than we can be and for doing meaningless things. In the weak moments that follow we take to constructing ornaments.

The big ornament on this tree is a proposed ‘coherent narrative’ of some sort that we weave around the idea of our ‘self’ – a narrative in which we are separate from the rest of the universe. We tell ourselves a story of our ‘self’ and then insist that that ‘self’ has meaning. But the truth is that we don’t exist as a ‘self’ with meaning but as living human beings. Any meaning beyond that is manufactured. We do not represent something else. Each of us is here in their own right. As a human being, just as with a lion or a rock, we are complete meaning without ornaments.

Maybe another example will help.

Meditation is. Neither good nor bad – easy nor hard – advanced nor beginner meditation is simply meditation. Doing meditation means meditating – not ‘improving yourself’ – nor seeking enlightenment – nor proving superiority – meditation is simply meditation. Like breathing or a bowel movement, it is sufficient to itself and no manufactured meaning makes it more than that.

This tends to be a very hard idea for many who see meditation in ornamented terms. I remember listening to a lecture on meditation during which the teacher made exactly this point. One in the audience became quite upset at the idea. “I thought that meditation was the path to enlightenment. You say that it is not a path to anywhere – just something you do. What do I get out of meditating? You seem to be saying ‘nothing’. Then why should I meditate?”

The meaning of meditation is in meditating. Adding the ornament of ‘something to gain by meditating’ introduces the idea of grasping – an ornament – into the process. “I meditate to gain enlightenment” is a manufactured meaning that ‘overwrites’ the true meaning.

Like most of what we do in life, meditation isn’t about anything other than meditation – meditation is simply meditation. If you try to define it in terms of something, you confuse the issue and insulate yourself from experiencing the meaning of meditation. The experience of the ornament becomes a substitute for direct experience. At that point, something destructive occurs. Meditation becomes like every other self-improvement system.

What would you have your meditation mean? Should it get closer to god, help you ‘find yourself’, or maybe enrich your life or circumstances. You don’t need to meditate for all that. There are plenty of therapists, self-help books, and programs to provide distractions from direct experience. They thrive on the idea that your life can be adjusted – brought into focus – their focus – and, thereby, filled with meaning – their meaning. It seems to me that meditation is – if nothing else – an oasis – a refuge from all of that. It is a way to drop all the ornaments and just be – just breathe – and to let meaning emerge.

I remember sitting in a small forest clearing some years back. A warm rock in a sunny spot was too inviting to ignore. When I first sat down, there were no animals to be seen but, as I sat quietly, they began to appear – the clearing became full of life. Less is truly more. Direct experience of the present is possible only when we clear away all intervening ornaments – only when we experience it directly.

Meditation is precisely the opposite of ornamentation. It isn’t repairing and adjusting – striving and wanting things to be different – it is settling into an experience of things as they are without overwriting them with our ‘editorial tendencies’. Mastering that simple idea can bring thunderous changes to your experience of living and meaning. Now meditation requires neither effort nor discipline – it is neither hard nor easy – it is as you can do it and no more. If you experience meditation – and anything else in your life – that way, you will enter the world as it is and experience the joy that replaces the guilt – guilt that ornamentation always brings.

When you meditate – meditate and nothing more. When you walk – walk and nothing more. When you live – live and nothing more. The meaning in all these is more than all the meaning you might manufacture.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Hamlet, Act 1, Scene V

Meditation, walking and living can be a refuge from the world of self-improvement, personal guilt and ornamentation. When everything else is something it is not, they can be simply what they are. A life of ornamentation is struggling – striving – worrying that it is not ‘just right’. Meditation, walking and living without ornaments is the effortless experience of life as it is.

© Dr. Earl R. Smith II

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Related Articles:

• Finding a Mirror – Realizing
• Yes You Can
• A Question of Identity
• Seeking the Upward Path
• Presence in the Present
• Walking Together Alone – Searching For the Self

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Contact Dr. Smith

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