What is the meaning of life? – Chaitanya Charan

Transcript

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so science can provide us the means for living, means for living means we can have transportation by which food supply can be brought from one part of food which can be brought from one part of the world to another we can have food, clothing shelter and so many of the other needs of our life we can be provided for and to some extent this covid pandemic has revealed that for each one of us the means for living we were able to stay, live digitally we have this class digitally so technology can provide us many resources for living however we human beings also Gita provides us the meaning for living now if you ask Siri what is the meaning of life? it gives all kinds of funny answers because that is a question which is very difficult to answer one of our friend is in California and he he is in the mental health care profession and he told me that in this pandemic there has been a lot of focus on the covid itself and how it is going to take a toll and how to manage, balance the lives and the livelihoods that whole dilemma that the whole world is facing he said what is being overlooked is the mental health he said in the last three months and this has been, we are talking regularly last three months I have received more emergency calls for help than what I have received in the last twenty years of my life why? because because of the shutdown of normal life as we know it because of covid many of the distractions we had, we no longer have them and then we start asking ourselves what is the actual meaning of life what am I here for? is it that one one creature that is utterly invisible to us can bring my whole life to a standstill what is life all about? so we need meaning in life as much as we need the means of life so in fact for many people who end up ending their lives who commit suicide of course now the politically termed correct usage is not to commit suicide, it is to die by suicide that means they treat suicide not as an act committed by oneself, it’s like suicide is a disease and you get infected by the disease and you die that’s a sensitive but tragic way of phrasing the things the point is most people commit suicide not because they are starving, yes some people do in emergencies but far more people commit suicide because they feel their life has no meaning or whatever they thought was the meaning of life was taken away from them, was thwarted from them so is there an enduring meaningful life which can keep keep us moving forever? we don’t really fear suffering suffering comes upon everyone in life but what we really fear is meaningless suffering when there is a war, soldiers anyone, young people from the country will voluntarily go to the battlefield to fight and they know there will be deprivation over there deprivation over there, there may be even destruction death over there so they choose all that suffering because it is meaningful that yes I am doing all this for my country so as much as the body needs food, that much the human head and heart need meaning and with meaning we can even accept suffering and without meaning, even pleasure becomes boring pleasure becomes boring most of us may think that I want to enjoy life if I ask you face to face, how many of you like comedies? who doesn’t like comedy? who doesn’t like a good laugh? everybody does but if I told you from tomorrow onwards you have no family obligations no financial obligations, no social obligations from tomorrow, morning to night for the rest of your life you do nothing except watch comedies you might do it for half an hour, an hour, if you are very frustrated with things in life, maybe for a few days but after some time you get fed up of comedies, you want to do something meaningful in life, it’s all just meaningless laughter so with meaning even pain becomes acceptable without meaning even pleasure becomes unacceptable so we need meaning in life and unfortunately science itself doesn’t tell us what is the meaning of life in fact, the way science reveals the world is, we are just lucky accidents in this cosmos and we are here flapping around for some time and then we die so, if we take not a scientific world view but a scientistic world view scientism is different from science, scientism is the ideology, science is the methodology scientism is the ideology which claims that science is omnipotent, sorry is omniscient, that science knows everything, that all the questions that are worth asking are answered by science, and if any question is not answered by science then that question is not worth asking so scientism significantly has no scientific proof scientism itself is unscientific but the point is science cannot tell us what is the meaning of life and Albert Einstein famously said that we can have we can talk about the ethical foundations of science is science being used ethically is science being used meaningfully but we can’t talk about the scientific foundation of ethics because ethics what makes meaningful, what is moral what is right, what is wrong this is something science cannot tell us so again, the point is not to devalue science the point is to recognize that we humans need knowledge of another kind, to quote Einstein again he said, the sciences, the arts and the religions, they are all trees, they are all fruits of the same tree of human knowledge, so now this is about scientism you know, how dare you believe in something that cannot be measured, analyzed or peer-reviewed now well, what about my mother’s love does your mother love you well, if I ask this question in America, it’s considered to be unpleasant question to ask because there are some people whose mothers have abandoned them and they grew up in maybe child, in children care services or whatever but for most of us we have experienced our mother’s love in fact, if our mother had not loved us we would not have survived our infancy so it is real, but how can we measure it, how can you quantify it how can we scientifically prove our mother’s love is there an experiment by which you can say that my mother loves me no the mother’s love is real it is what sustains our life and yet it cannot be scientifically proven so there is much more to life than what science can provide us now science can provide us entertainment we get incredible amount of titillation through entertainment but Gita can provide us enlightenment now what is it that we want to do beyond just stimulating our senses how can we live a meaningful life so what we live with is important, but what we live for is far more important live with is the resources, is the means live for is the purpose the meaning so science can provide us the means for living the Gita can provide us the meaning for living and what we live for is far more important than what we live with, both are important no doubt so with this background science can provide us a great car, but it cannot tell us where to go with that car, it is we who decide and for deciding that we will be helped if we have some information, some guidance