Well, good morning, everybody. OK, so a couple weeks ago a
friend of mine at the hospital said something that kind of
stopped me in my tracks a bit, he said.
And this is in part of a larger conversation.
You know, if my life were to turn out like my dad's, I'd be
disappointed. Well, now he wasn't.
He wasn't being cool. He just meant that his father's
life didn't seem very meaningful to him.
And not just like the lowercase M kind of meaningful.
He meant meaning with the capital M, the kind of meaning
that feels like it adds up to something, you know, something
lasting, something that would earn, you know, some kind of
attaboy from the universe. And, you know, we all kind of
want that, don't we? You know, to feel like our lives
add up, like the story of me will mean something.
And so I sat with the word for a while.
Meaningful. And the longer I looked at it,
the kind of slippier, slippery or slippery or I'll find a
better way or Yahoo Yeah, the more slippery it guts wouldn't
be bad. Like what feels meaningful to
one person, you know, might just seem ordinary or even
disappointing to someone else. You know, maybe his father found
deep meaning and things that my Co worker never even noticed.
Maybe it was like the quiet routines that he went through,
or the small kindnesses. Maybe what looks like a quote UN
quote small life from the outside was from the inside,
full of many quiet joys that added up to something very
fulfilling. It made me realize how narrow
our view can be. When we try to measure another
person's life, or even really our own, we only ever see
fragments. We don't see the memories that
still make someone smile, or the quiet choices that shape the
life. We don't see the web of
experiences, friendships, and moments that maybe to that
person, do cohere into something very meaningful.
We're so quick to look for meaning with a capital M, the
kind that proves something, that that shows that we left the
mark, that we tend to miss the small unshowy meanings that are
already living around us. Now, in Buddhism, we talk
sometimes about how all things are from their very nature,
empty and impermanent. Now, at first that can sound
like a pretty big like cosmic bummer, you know, kind of like
nothing matters. But but the deeper teaching is
something like this, that because everything is
impermanent, that means that everything is alive because
nothing holds a fixed meaning. Everything is free to reveal
meaning right now, meaning with a capital M isn't like a trophy
that we're it's not a plaque on the wall.
It's relational. It arises where our life
meaningfully touches the world. Think of, you know, maybe a
father teaching his kid how to tie his shoes, or a nurse
suggesting a blanket for a sleeping patient at 2:00 in the
morning. These moments don't announce
themselves as Capital M Meaningful.
They aren't going to make it on anybody's highlight wheel.
And yet, in the right light, they shine with a quiet kind of
complete now. Dogan says that each moment is
the entire world, and when we have ears to really hear that,
we begin to understand that the meaning of life isn't something
that we build toward. It's what's already here,
expressing itself through each fleeting, unrepeatable moment.
Now I got to be thinking about like, what's beauty, right?
Because I think beauty works in kind of the same way.
Something is beautiful not because it lasts or because it
meets some standard, but because it it is right.
It's this thing. Beauty can be this leaf falling
right if you're a Potter, or it could be like this cracked
teacup. It can be this moment that you
share laughing with somebody else.
Beauty is free to vanish as soon as it's seen as well.
And maybe it's precisely because things are impermanent that they
are beautiful or precious. What makes something beautiful,
beautiful or meaningful isn't that it's eternal in a sense,
it's that it will never appear in exactly this way again.
Beauty is this person, it's this place, it's this time.
Maybe meaning with a capital M isn't something that we
construct, but something we uncover when we stop trying to
make life so damn meaningful In Zen.
Really. And me, I sometimes talk about
suchness. Right.
Just things being themselves before we start calling them
anything at all. When we strip away all our
descriptions, good, bad, successful, meaningful,
meaningless, what's left is the unique expression of each thing.
Kind of just as it is. Like you didn't hear it earlier,
but the sound of rain on a roof or the warmth of the T in your
hand for all those aren't here. Glenn's holding AT guys.
Optic Poe, if you will. You know, it could be any of
these things. Each individual moment being
able to shine in its own way. This in a nutshell, I think, is
kind of the world of the Darner, right?
Everything be able to express its true nature, it's suchness
has it's happening and when we are able to meet life in this
way, we don't have to ascribe it capital M meaningful or
beautiful. We can just kind of allow it to
be meaningful, to be beautiful. And for me, this kind of
understanding means even the most mundane parts of my life
can have the opportunity to become alive in a different way.
Washing dishes becomes washing dishes.
Walking down a hospital hallway is difference.
Even trying to remember where I parked can be an opportunity
into a relationship with this unique experience as it's
happening. And those experiences, when
allowed, have a kind of quiet radiance, at least when I stop
trying to make them something other than what they are.
And maybe that is kind of the paradox at the heart of kind of
all of this, right? That's the more we chase after
capital and meaningful, the more we try and ascribe it, the
further away it tends to get. But when we stop trying to make
things capital and meaningful, and when we stop trying to chase
that ascription and we just simply allow ourselves to be
open to moments as they unfold, then they kind of reveal their
meaningfulness. So going back, maybe the
question shouldn't be, is someone else's life meaningful?
Or even is my life meaningful? Maybe the question is, am I or
can I be present to the meaning that is already there?
Because in that presence the ordinary becomes extraordinary,
right? The overlooked becomes luminous
in its own way, and even a life we may have judged as quote UN
quote, not meaningful enough might turn out to have been
quietly beautiful, meaningful all of all.
Big fan of Dogan. So Dogan wrote that the entire
universe is the true human body. And so if that's so, then every
breath we take, every encounter we have, every experience, no
matter how fleeting, is the universe realizing itself right
here and right now. And that's meeting with capital
M isn't something we necessarily achieve.
It really is the nature of being itself that nature is always
expressing, always changing, and always already complete.
And so maybe we don't need to chase meaning with a capital M
so much, or look for in others. Maybe we just need to be better
at noticing it in just about every single moment we have.