Hexagram 43 > Hexagram 28
"What is the point of life" is the kind of question that often comes to us when our sweat is wetting the boxing ring ropes as we inhale haymakers that seem to be slowly turning our brains into hay.
We don't tend to ask that question when the dopamine and serotonin are pumping chemical feelings through our veins. We're too busy trying to savor the highs.
But, because most of us are not immune to such questions at some point in our life, I wanted to offer some suggestions that have helped me, and may help you.
Here we go.
Three Possible Answers And One Better Suggestion
1) The I Ching's Answer
I asked the I Ching what the point of life was and it gave me Hexagram 43.1 > Hexagram 28.
It's a line I call "grasping at straws."
What a perfect answer.
The point is the sand of impermanence eluding our grip.
Building coliseums in our life that will just be demolished for a crawfish, or crematorium, to survive us, or make an impermanent memory of our impermanence.
This reminds me of the quote "the purpose of a system is what it does." Being fleeting is what it was designed to do, since that's what we get.
Some of us spend our whole lives trying to stomach that.
2) A Non-Answer Answer
Life is pointless, and it's pointless that it's pointless.
It's impermanent and meaningless, and it's impermanent and meaningless that it's impermanent and meaningless.
It's empty and meaningless, and it's empty and meaningless that it's empty and meaningless (as one Werner Erhard would say)
The thought of such possibilities can be nearly annihilative if you don't take that negation all the way and still have some judgement of good or bad attached to it.
If it turns into a thought that furthers either a positive or negative goal, it can become a prison of nihilism.
Which reminds me of a quote from Guy Armstrong in his book, 'Emptiness':
"Tsoknyi Rinpoche calls this cynical view “one-legged emptiness”: everything else is worthless but I am supremely important."
'Woe is me' can be debilitating, potentially driving you to some devolution where you turn back from being a forward walking human into a being on its knees, cursing the dirty and every organism inside of it.
"What's the point of life" is a question that doubles as a symptom. Instead of being with the void, you become suspicious of the thought that it could be anything other than bad, or good (if you're deluded).
But rolling that river of thought back to the idea that it's pointless that it's pointless can give you a pocket to be present in, which leads us to number three:
3) The Answer That's a Productive Suggestion
The practical answer to "what's the point of life?" is to be in the living part of it as much as possible.
To get out of our heads that are reaching backwards and forwards, and instead rest in what's 'us' right now.
If you have a way of dressing up that experience of 'experience' with a new (old) way to get it, you have a license to print new age, spirituality, and wellness book publishing money.
I say we're all looking for excuses to be present.
Goals can serve that purpose. You formulate an aspiration and it leads you along life until you achieve it or fail, and have to recalibrate everything.
Being in a different location, or company, or around different people, are all an excuse to have that 'in the moment' feeling, because being in the present in the familiar has gotten too mundane.
Maybe "free will" is the experience of being present.
Maybe we can say that you've "mastered" life when you can be present with anything that arises.
Most of us will be spending our time trying to reach for that particular elevated glowing celestial goal.
4) A Question To Ask Instead of "What's The Point?"
If you're asking "what's the point of life," chances are you're a little dissatisfied.
And if that's the case, ask yourself what makes your life work, and what doesn't.
Drop all of the doesn't's, if possible.
If you're staring at your job that's become a vampiric villain in your life, or are down after the death of someone you've loved, or if a relationship is making you question why you even tried, don't reach for the ever-illusive answer to "why" you're going through it.
Don't spend your time searching for the answer, because it's interpretations all the way down. So, try to choose an interpretation that works better for you while not doing much harm to the rest of the world (because being harmless will probably make your life work a bit better than being malicious).
Desperation is a subtle call to action. It's an alarm telling you to change something, and often the easiest way to change things is to look at them from a different angle.
For example, creating a fake binary for yourself and having to choose between the lackluster present you're staring at, and a much more intolerable alternate reality that can often be the source of a quick sleight of mind to get you on the other side of despair.
By figuring out what's working and what's not, augmenting the former, and curttailing the latter, you're going to be putting much needed distance between you and any need to question what the point of all of this is.
If thousands of years have passed without us being handed a consensus answer, that might be as good as humans can do.
Final Thoughts
If the answer to what the "point" of all of this was came beaming down, validated and authenticated by some divine blockchain in the sky, some of us wouldn't like it.
We'd complain, we'd argue about whether it actually was the point, who decided that was what it was, and why others are so happy with that being the answer.
Maybe we wouldn't really want it once we got it.
So, with that possibility in mind, I wish you much peace and presence, instead of a pressured pursuit of something that parting clouds might not even be able to give us in this lifetime.
Let's try not to waste that lifetime second-guessing the present.