No One Knows Why We're Here

And What's Wrong With That?

(Please excuse the distortion in the voice-over. I cannot seem to get to the bottom of it, but my friend, Mike, is going to help me find the problem. Hopefully by next week!)

---

Hello. This is Shy Guy Meets the Buddha, and I’m Don Boivin. Thanks for being here. If you like what you are about to read, or hear, please consider a small token of appreciation; a tip or paid subscription would be so generous and so helpful. Thank you! 🙏

---

I notice that writers and thinkers in the faith and spirituality arena often begin sentences with, We’re here to... or Our purpose is...

The words that follow often include love, observe, experience, give, manifest, actualize, witness, be.

Is it necessary to provide such definitive answers to the question of life? Is it wise? Is it true?... And at risk of being contentious: Who are you to say?  (Which is actually the more important question.)

Why do we exist?

This is, I think, an illegitimate and unanswerable question, constructed by minds—including my own—that cannot accept, or haven’t considered, that whatever is, is, regardless of what we believe or think or want. By coming up with answers, are we not delegitimizing the real truth, the one we cannot know?

What happens if we do away with the question completely? Just shrug it off and let it fall away. Stop assuming that what we want the answer to be, is the answer (read: the invention of religion.)

Empty your cup, suggests the old Zen master.

Someone recently pointed out to me the quote by Eckhart Tolle, “I have lived with several Zen masters—all of them cats.” Does a cat suffer such existential angst, desperate to know its purpose? Okay, so we have bigger brains; does that mean we’re incapable of making a mistake, of short-circuiting those big brains with trick questions?

I wonder if we can live well and true, content with what we’re given, and comfortable in our own skin, without asking for God, for ultimate answers, for meaning, for enlightenment? I think we can. And I think that a state of total acceptance like that, of humbling oneself so completely that I don’t know becomes one’s defining position, is a highly spiritual state. Not a transitional state that one passes through on the way to Nirvana, but rather, the home ground, our natural habitat, the place to just settle down and rest easy.

I think this is true because I asked my cat, Maggie, and she said, “Duh. What took you so long?”