What is life?

What is your answer to the most fundamental question “What is Life”?

Some of the most common answers I have heard are - “Life is Joy”, “Life is Happiness”, “Life is Love”, “Life is giving”, “Life is pain”, “Life is hard”, “Life is meditation”, etc.

My way of looking at it – My answer, is - Life “IS”.  Yes, you read that right. Life just “IS”. It is ‘this’ and ‘that’, and more, but fundamentally it just ‘IS’. If we understand this basic fact, then a lot of the other questions that come after “What is Life” cease to exist. Questions such as “Why”, “When”, “Where”, “How” are no longer relevant because when the answer to the fundamental question is “Life IS” then that actually answers all the other questions too.

We know we are born to die. All that in between birth & death is life and it just IS. How we relate to it, how we learn from our experiences, whether we choose to be happy or sad, whether we like or dislike is always a function of our logic. We give life definitions, names, emotions. We try and attribute logic to it like we do for everything else. And that is different for each one of us but Life meanwhile just IS.

If we can just “Be”, if we can just “feel” without feeling this or that, if we can “experience” without rationalizing, if we can just “live” each and every moment, then that, is Life.

Try just living for a day. Breathe, eat, drink, walk, talk, love, and everything else that you do. Just go about living without trying to put a logic to everything. Just the pure experience of being alive. Don’t rationalize, judge, compartmentalize, or justify. While at it be aware of what you see, touch, smell, taste. Be aware of the lives around you. Just be aware. Thoughts will come, let them, but do not dwell upon them. Let them just come & go.

Try it for a day and even if you can do this for a few minutes the first time, you may get a glimpse of what am talking about. Life – as it is.