Your Purpose in Life
December 28, 2023

Close your eyes; watch your breath. Give the mind a place to settle down in the present moment, where it can observe itself. Start by observing the breath, trying to make it a good place to stay, so that the mind feels happy to settle in. When the mind settles in, things settle down inside. Everything has been stirred up as you go through the morning. This is a chance to clear things out.

It’s like a big water jar that’s been stirred up. When things are stirred up, the water can be murky. But if you let it stand still for a while, the sediment falls down to the bottom, and the water can be clear. You can see what you’ve got inside.

People often ask, “Why was I born? What’s the purpose of life?” Those are two different questions. The purpose of life is to survive. But why you were born: You don’t know what impelled you to come here, but birth isn’t something that was imposed on you.

Some people act as if they were made to be born without their will. But actually, we made the choice to come here. The question is, what kind of choice that was. Was it a good choice to follow through with? You get to choose. You can change your choice. You can change your purpose, because the world doesn’t have a purpose for you. There are other people out there who have lots of purposes for you, but the question is: What authority do they have?

So the choice is yours: What do you want to make with your life? You look at your actions, and they’re all for the sake of happiness, all for the sake of well-being. The Buddha carried through with that observation, all the way through, until he could find a happiness that doesn’t change. All too often, the happiness we look for is something that will change on us. And when happiness changes, it doesn’t necessarily change for more happiness. It can change for things a lot worse. But if you find a happiness that doesn’t change, a happiness that is totally satisfactory, then you know you’ve devoted your life to a good purpose.

So that’s the answer the Buddha would recommend—saying that it is possible to find true happiness, and you can do it through your efforts. You don’t have to wait for somebody else to bring it along to you. It’s up to you to make the choice and up to you to carry it through.

But whatever choice you make, you’ve got to live with the consequences. This is one of the reasons why we meditate and get the mind still, so that you can start thinking about what kind of life you really would like; what kind of purpose you really do have; which purposes are worth holding on to; which purposes are worth putting aside.

We came into this world largely because we saw we had the chance. We didn’t read the fine print. We didn’t read all the conditions. We get here and we find, oh, we have conditions like aging, illness, and death. Not the sort of things you’d want to sign on for but we did.

You can tell yourself: The best purpose in life is to find true happiness and to act in ways that will head in that direction. As for anything that heads in another direction, you can ask yourself: “Is this really where I want to go?” Again, you have the choice.

The world is clamoring for you to side with them on their issues. But you have to realize, your big issue is that you want to find a happiness that doesn’t harm anybody at all. You’re not harmed; no one else is harmed by a happiness that lasts. It doesn’t change. We’re so used to things changing that we think that happiness lies in the fact that things can change.

But the Buddha says, when you find the ultimate happiness, any change would be for the worse. At that point, you stay with what you’ve got, and you find that’s it’s totally satisfactory. That’s when you know you’ve chosen well.

So think about your choices, because they do have consequences. You have the freedom to make good choices, so take advantage of that freedom.