What is “life”? What does it really mean? Not just as a definition, not just as a description but on a personal and experiential level? Apart from all the ideas, theories, philosophies about it – what is “life” from a point of view that is personally verifiable through direct experience? Or maybe – what is not life?
From the point of view of each and every individual – life is only what one perceives it to be. In that sense life is not a thing – it is a flow of perception. This is the only personally verifiable truth – when perceiving is gone, life is gone as well – literally. Something might or might not exist outside our individual perception but it is only a speculation, not a verifiable truth.
Above introduction is to encourage relating to our own life experience (rather than referring to any external source) in an attempt to pinpoint the defining characteristic of life, its core aspect.
A sequence of separate moments rather than a time-frame
The moment we are perceiving something, we are not perceiving another. As far as one perceives a flower, one does not perceive a tree. In the next moment, a tree is perceived and a flower is not. Irrespective of how many things we perceive in the the same particular moment, the fact is that in that moment, we do not perceive all the rest. Each single moment of our individual perception is life in its entirety in that particular moment. The moment when one feels angry – in that moment calmness is not part of life and vice versa.
Unique, fleeting and never exactly the same
No instance of perception can freeze or remain with us continuously – it is bound to be replaced by a next instance. No instance of perception is exactly the same as any previous or any future one. While in a more generalized way we can say that we have experienced certain feeling many times, if we think twice is that really so? When we eat an apple, does it feel exactly that sweet or exactly that sour as on a previous occasion? In fact, when we are experiencing “now”, the “before” is already not part of life and we can only compare from our memory, not the actual experiences.
With a life being a sequence of individual, unique and ever-changing moments of perception аn essential aspect of its nature is impermanence or change.
What does it matter for us on a practical level?
If we honestly analyze the motives, the reasons and the attitude in everything we do – it seems that all the time we strive to achieve for ourselves some “ideal” life. A life to which we can then hold on to and have the guarantee of keeping it that way… forever. In having that approach, we basically resist the nature of life itself. While we might intellectually understand and accept impermanence and change, we suffer because of our psychological resistance and escapism from the reality of it.
In simple terms – all difficulties in our experience of life, boil down to our incapacity or rather unwillingness to be “realistic” about it. Until our mentality matures enough to truly embrace impermanence and change, whatever we do is bound to take place in a manner of resistance, effort, struggle and therefore can only bring us dissatisfaction and suffering in one form or another.
