not at all actually. why do you think its a bummer?

and why do you disagree?

i agree that if the first statement was correct, the other three would be to.
Not sure about the first one though...
Its a bit the the free will argument:
if we don't have freewill, there's nothing we can do about it, so it doesn't really matter.

Wow, the meaning of life is such a huge philosophical, scientific, and theological question I really don't know where to begin. I try not to think about it too deeply most of the time... But if there is no meaning then why bother? I don't know what the meaning is, but I believe there is one beyond our understanding.

In all definitions of the word, 'meaning' is subjectively derived. Or at least its essence is. It is not logical to say that meaning can be derived from anything but a value statement from an involved actor. By this reasoning then, I can defeat the statement "Life is empty and meaningless" with only the following;

"I find meaning in life"
Therefore, life has meaning. :)

I'm sort of with Sword....maybe a life of honest searching is more important than finding a universal answer.... as we will all have different meanings anyway

The meaning of life is to give life meaning.

has anyone ever done Landmark Education? try it out... www.landmarkeducation.com

but in essence, the point is that most of the things in our lives that we think have meaning, only have that meaning because WE give them meaning... that there is in fact, no innate meaning to any of them.

so in fact... LIFE, the thing... has no innate meaning at all. we human beings actually give it meaning based on our past. based on our experiences which themselves have no meaning... which are just that... experiences... things that happend. nothing more nothing less.

the first part is easy to get... "Life is empty and meaningless" if you agree or disagree is not the point, it IS true. agreeing or disagreeing does not change the fact that Life itself has no intrinsic meaning.

the 2nd part is the important part...

the FACT that life is empty and the FACT that life is (intrinsically) meaningless also has no meaning. when some jump to agree or disagree... it is often because they are giving some sort of meaning to the FACT that life has no meaning.

another words, we end up feeling a need to assign some sort of positive or negative value to the meaninglessness of life. in truth, there is no meaning to the fact that there is no meaning.

realizing the ramifications of this 3 line sentence fully is very profound... and requires quite a bit of introspective thinking... but in essence, what it provides is an opportunity to view Life in a completely open fashion that allows for a much more fulfilling life.

by taking the meaning out of life, one allows for the possibility of seeing life for the infinite possibility that it truly is, and allows one to live life powerfully and in a much more fulfilling manner.


in all honesty, I personally, am just barely hovering at the edge of this understanding... but implementing these teachings from landmark in my life over the past few months, even to the limited degree I have been successful in doing, has profoundly improved my life.

so to any of you that have an area of your life where you would like to have a powerful breakthrough. or for any of you who want to live an even more fulfilling life, I highly recommend you attend the Landmark Forum. its not inexpensive, but it is one hell of a ride that will transform your life.

"the first part is easy to get... "Life is empty and meaningless" if you agree or disagree is not the point, it IS true. agreeing or disagreeing does not change the fact that Life itself has no intrinsic meaning. "

NOTHING has intrinsic "meaning". "Meaning" is a human idea that we subjectively apply to things.

What's really meaningless is the stupid cod-philosophy of this thread.

Yes, unless one dedicates oneself to its opposition.

Ok, lets brek it down...

'Life is empty' not true as we speak I have a pen in my mouth and I may resolve to cary this pen with me for life, I may trade it in for a better pen, or swap it for a ruler, but as long as I have something my life is never empty. I don't even need to own or control various pieces of stationery, the very fact that they occupy the same time and place as I do means my life is never empty.

If I've missed the point completely and you are all talking on some higher level, let me address that too. I have a mind, it may or may not be very complex (i don't know) but I can experience emotions which may just be littl electrical urges but hey, that works for me. I can also believe in things like god or science and where they don't exist I can make them up, or have someone else make them up for me. With so many made up things how could life ever be empty.

Life is meaningless? What do you mean by that? Maybe by answering your life will have meaning albeit only until you have meaningfully answered my question.

If life is neither empty or meaningless then it can't be that that makes it empty or meaningless so it must be something else.

It may be that life isn't empty or meaningless but it seems like it, the solution to this is....
(a) long walks, (b) less diplomacy, more life (c) consider the alternatives, they aren't so great either.

Landmark ...

Is that still around? It's just another ponzy pyramid scheme out to bilk you of your money on the promise of a "better" you, and loose friends as you try to get them to join. Seems to me they're trying to make money off Buddhist principles. Might I suggest the library and a good shrink instead. You might even get something meaningful out of both.

(Yes, red faced me, went to one of their meetings to support a friend -- the things I'll do, I tells ya!)

"To live would be an awfully great adventure." Therein lies the meaning of life. It's not the destination, nor is it the answer. It's the journey and the search that give life it's meaning.

@babak
you have presented a circular argument, an argument that, by definition, defies its validity.
You claim that nothing in life has meaning, the words i'm writing mean nothing, when i imagine my house or feel that i understand something, all that is is random electrical signals. If our concept of truth is just the behavior of nerve cells, and there is nothing more to it, then how can we trust anything, or think of anything as true?
Therefore, your understanding and reasons for giving your statement are invalid and meaningless, and the statement could therefore be true.

I'm going to massively oversimplify - because I can. :P

Perception is reality (albeit subjective). I perceive my life has meaning, so it does. It is completely irrelevant to me how many other people disagree with that; or how many may use their system of philosophy, religion or science to form dissenting opinion. The fact remains that since I believe my life has meaning, than it does.

I should also add that my kids have provided me their professional opinion that my life also has meaning. In the words of my 5-year old - "Papa, I love you; you're the best dad in the world". That's enough for me to counter anyone else's belief that my life doesn't have meaning.

"Life is empty and meaningless,
and its empty and meaningless
that its empty and meaningless."

"...by taking the meaning out of life, one allows for the possibility of seeing life for the infinite possibility that it truly is, and allows one to live life powerfully and in a much more fulfilling manner."

It seems you're using mutually exclusive terms. If life is indeed empty and meaningless, how then can I take the meaning out of it? It seems that is a bit like taking water out of an empty bucket. There has to be something there. Perhaps you mean that I should embrace the meaninglessness and emptiness of life? If this were the case then why would I, immediately after doing so, seek something else to allow me to live powerfully (arguably a direction for my life and therefore a meaning) and to see life as an infinite possibility (which would also by definition lend itself to infinite meanings and therefore not be empty)? The end precludes the beginning, which in turn refutes the end.

@ LanGaidin

**two thumbs up** :-)

The problem we have here is that the word 'meaning' has so many meanings and is very subjective, that stating 'Life is empty and meaningless' is so ambiguous that we could all be arguing with ourselves forever about it.

By the way. In regard to this thread and posting last, think I win.

This thread is empty and meaningless,
and it's empty and meaningless
that it's empty and meaningless.

I don't get it.
Can anyone please explain? :/

I think the goal of the statement, which should not be taken too literally, is to free the mind of preconceptions, and to then to open one's mind to a new way of looking at things, perhaps as way to find "true meaning". That's my guess anyway. Babak mentioned that he has recently attended a Landmark Education seminar. I suspect that it probably made more sense within that context. It sounds to me a like a "Zen" thing.

There is neither God nor any meaning in life.
We are all just the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

"There is neither God nor any meaning in life."

What a remarkably dogmatic belief!

Dogmatism is my middle name

"'Fight Club' reference" is his other middle name.

@TiresiasBC

You do NOT talk about Fight Club.

I love that there are so many of you that do live such rich lives ... but living a rich life (with kids, 'things', or pencils and rulers) is not the point of 'Life'. your LIFE is a separate and distinct thing than what you DO in your life. and indeed it is tough to bring 39 hours of conversation into a short statement on a thread... but i do want to counter the unfortunate impression one person on this thread had of it...

i get nothing (materially, monetarily, or even socially) for promoting the Landmark Forum, nor getting my friends to sign up for it... except that my friends all live more powerful lives which makes me happy for them. 7 of my friends have attended the forum since I attended in July, and every single one of them has thanked me profusely for 'enrolling' them in the possibilities I saw for them in the forum... each has in turn invited friends of theirs into the course, some of whom have completed and in turn thanked them. but the doubt is normal, it took me THREE years to actually register after my brother first attended a forum in 2006, and my Mom did it last year and had to practically BEG me to take the course... i am an extremely analytical person with way too high a view of myself to have fallen for some cheap pop-psychology... and on top of that, my Dad who is a professor of Psychology was one of the 7 people I enrolled... and after HE took it, he himself has become its biggest booster whereas before he would deride the idea openly.

suffice to say, I will not do the program justice no matter how well I try to explain what the Landmark Forum is - all I can say is I can give you a 97% guarantee that if any one of you actually signs up, attends the 3-day, 39-hour course... you will come back to this site, FIND this thread (even if its 10 months from now) and thank me for having pointed you towards it.

as for the "Life is empty and meaningless..." statement...

the point is this... human beings are meaning-making machines... and we homo Sapiens look at our future through the lens of our past. Almost always, we allow our past (and the meaning we give to our past experiences) to dictate our present, and thus we allow our past to form our future.

But in point of fact, what landmark helps you recognize, is that your present is not tied to your past, because the meaning we give to our past is total BS that we pile up into our little meaning-making brains. in fact, we are in control of what we want our future to be and we should be living our future in the present, rather than living our past in the future.


as for the definition of meaning, there are various levels of meaning, socially agreed to meaning is the most common. but simply because society has agreed to give something meaning, does not make that meaning the correct one. it simply makes it the most socially acceptable one.

and the most socially acceptable meaning we all live with is that Life actually has to have meaning. it does not. and no matter how much society demands that we all pretend or come up with ways that life has meaning, WE are giving it meaning.

Babak,
Glad to hear Landmark has been such a help to you, truly.

My point is, that it's using Buddhist principles, marketing and making money off them. Is that a big deal, not really, I suppose, let's just not pretend that some one isn't making a LOT of money from it, maybe even a few are, but it sure ain't the Buddhists or you. So they get a free sales rep, how nice for them.

Landmark is just another "way in which", which gives a supporting belief and another option to address and frame the life we are living and trying to understand -- because we want our lives to matter, ie: have meaning, as you say we are meaning making machines.

I agree, our past can not only inform the moment; it can determine and take it over entirely (there's a difference between inform and take over), such that we keep making the same choices over again depending on what meaning we give it. But meaning is not all bad, nor do I think it's to be avoided, in Buddhism this idea would be expanded, to paraphrase (or is that parapostulate) to say the meaning is in the moment, and the next moment will have another meaning.

These ideas show if we can take a moment to be where we are (be it good, bad, indifferent, etc...) and just be there, then a whole space of being opens up to us, and in this space we can make choices our habitual and learned responses would otherwise not allow us to see.

We all give meaning or derive meaning in life, I wouldn't call this pretense of thought, except of course when it is.

You would not be so attached to and in defense of Landmark if it didn't mean something to you. The ideas it has exposed you to, also mean something to you. In fact you've told several of your friends and family and the forum here just how much Landmark means to you...







Each moment is meaningful, as it informs, enlightens, and frees us.


There are all kinds of good books on these subjects, but often we like to do this kind of work in community -- that's how religions get going. I know, you'll say it's not a religion. Still the only time I've been pressed that hard to join, was when the bible thumpers have come to my door.

Babak I must admit I had not heard of Landmark before. It's great that you found the course so rewarding. Of course we also feel most enthused about a project at the beginning of an endeavour, but it is rare that the euphoria lasts for long. So it would be interesting to hear how you feel about Landmark a year of two from now.
Some of the basic concepts that you have espoused such as not being tied down to the past, or not shying away from challenging deeply held assumptions, sound like good advice.
One thing though, I googled Landmark to see what others had to say, and while I found plenty of very positive testimonials, I also came across some very negative testamonials - even hatred of the organization. Have you come across this? If so why do you think this might be? Why is it so controverial?

* Correction (it was late)

Each moment is meaningful and it has the potential to inform, enlighten and free us.

Yep, there's that word potential again...