Guiding Light
Half way down the peel
What is the purpose of life? Why does this question arise in your mind? Suppose you are extremely blissful or ecstatic, would you think what is the purpose of this life? No. Somewhere it troubles you. What am I doing, because somewhere it doesn’t mean anything. So the question has come up, “What is the purpose of life?”
Let us say you are eating a mango and you keep tasting only the peel. Half way down the peel, you will ask the question “What is the purpose of eating this mango?” If you have known the sweetness of the mango, such questions don’t come up. Aren’t your children asking, “Why should I drink milk?” That is because they don’t like it. If you give them chocolate, will they ask “Why should I eat chocolate?” It does not matter why, they will just eat it.
These questions are bound to come when you are just eating the peel of the fruit. But if the peel was utterly bitter, by now all of you would be enlightened. The problem with the peel is, because of its association with the fruit, it has imbibed a few spots of sweetness. Most of the people think somehow they have to extract fruit juice out of the peel. That is the g reat ef fort that is going on worldwide. Somehow, they want to extract juice out of the peel.
Somewhere nature trusted your intelligence. If you put a drop of honey on the ground and put the honey jar on the top shelf of the cupboard, the ants that come here and taste this honey go straight there to the jar. Nature trusted your intelligence.
So if you want to truly understand what the purpose of life is, don’t cook up philosophies – “The purpose of life is to reach God,the purpose of life is to go to Heaven, the purpose of life is to this or that.”Life is a purpose unto itself. You don’t need another purpose to it. Only when you have not realized the immensity of what life is, the question of finding a meaning or a purpose to life arises. If you taste the fruit within you, you will not ask these questions. It is for this reason we have been teaching Isha Yoga to people for the past decade and half – to give people methods to taste the fruit within themselves.