The question was, “What is the Meaning of life?” The answer to the question is not 42. The answer is 0. The answer is zero. Nada. Zilch. Not anything. Nothing.

Life has no meaning, no reason whatsoever.

Life is an empty crystal bowl – empty and waiting for your input.

You invite friends around for coffee and need something to put the sugar in. You choose your crystal Bowl and your friends exclaim, “What a beautiful sugar bowl!” Then it’s your child’s birthday and you fill your beautiful crystal bowl with sweets and people exclaim, “What a beautiful sweets bowl!” Then you’re entertaining guests for dinner and you use your crystal bowl for the dessert strawberries and your guests exclaim, “What a beautiful fruit bowl!”

The bowl, of itself, is simply a bowl full of nothing. Nada. Zilch. Not anything. Nothing. But you and your visitors define it by what you’ve popped in it. Like your beautiful crystal bowl, life is simply life, simply an emptiness into which you pop your meaning. Today your meaning is happiness, tomorrow it’s sadness, the next day it’s … well, it’s whatever you decide to pop in it.

• If you think life is unsafe, it is unsafety that you have filled your bowl of life with.
• If you think life is joyful, it is joy that you have filled your bowl of life with.
• If you think the meaning of life is to be a good Christian or Buddhist then Christianity or Buddhism is what you have filled your bowl of life with.
• If you think the meaning of life is to avenge your race’s or your culture’s persecutors, it is revenge that you have filled your bowl of life with.
• If the meaning of your life is to rid the world of homosexuals, tyrants or skate-boarders, then it is that which you have filled your bowl of life with.
• If the meaning of your life is to give compassion and love to underdogs, then it is love and compassion that you have filled your bowl of life with.

Some people are confronted, depressed and/or angry at finding that life is meaningless. However, a smile returns to their faces when they realise that their life is what they popped in there … and, therefore, they can change it! They are not stuck with a bowl of mud when they want a sugar bowl.

We’re all in the same empty bowl, a bowl called life. Our bowls just look different for we’ve each popped different things in them … some have pooped in their bowl and some have popped in it!

You can tell me the meaning you’ve popped into your bowl of life but I cannot see, touch, smell or taste that meaning. It has little impact on me. However, the meaning I’ve put into the bowl of life is important for me as I can sense it in every way and it’s with me every moment of my life. Yours is only before me when you tell me and when you go away, so does your meaning, to me.

So, like a previous blog – The Problem With The World … – we live in different worlds. The same empty, meaningless life but different worlds, depending on what meaning we’ve popped (or pooped) into our empty bowls.

So, our exercise – yes, I must take my own advice – is to simply observe what we have popped into our bowl of life. We don’t need to change it. We just observe. We’re disinterested onlookers, watching a pair of birds squabbling. We watch, smile, grimace and let what we see be there. Do nothing. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Not anything. Nothing.

Try it. It’s fun!

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