Let’s assume Mr Bill and Mr Price decide that they want to argue about the trueness of a fact. There is truth as the buddha prescribes it but this can only be ‘seen’ and is non-dual, this isn’t what I’m referring to here. I simply mean a piece of verified information about events that happened in the past.
So then they decide they’d consult the previous source on which the authority of the facts was stood on, and they’d keep doing this till they got to the very foundation of the knowledge. They would go back in time as they as they apparently also moved forward in it sifting through ancient scrolls. If they argued and looked long and hard enough, searching for current authorities in prior facts and moving further backwards in that fashion only if they were convinced beyond all doubt, they’d soon find out after a while that they embarked on a futile journey.
So is the quest for meaning outside what possesses it. How does one truly know pain without feeling it? For to feel pain is to see the truth of pain as prescribed by the buddha. Everything we know that isn’t truth, is belief.
Just as Bill and Price would be better off testing both their theories and checking for their applicability and consistency with current practices while adjusting for differences as they went along, so is mankind also better off not digging through time for time’s meaning. That’d be shambolic to say the least. It is not very wise to search for the meaning of music outside of music, is it? Its meaning can be found in your bedroom with your headphones on or on the dance floor buried deep within the music itself, or even at a mosh pit if that’s more your style.
Doesn’t matter the location because the cause and effects are one and the same, and the meaning lies within the object itself. Searching for the cause of every cause can is like going into a yawning abyss in search of absolutely nothing.
The first step to realization 
Attributing meaning to words, which are basically just pointers, is like searching for what love feels like in a book or better still, saying nothing possessed meaning before the inception of language. The meaning of anything is in itself and that’s the first step. It’s admitting that meaning can neither be found in name, or description, or any other substitute for its outright indulgence. Now, there’s an unease that lies in the confluence of two basic ideas which our traditional way of thinking does not permit which are objects, and the absence of symbolical descriptions for them which we then confuse with meaning.
We sometimes still look for meaning even when it stares us dead in the face. It remains obscure to us because we have no symbolic representations for it, almost like we don’t recognize it. I mean it’s hard to find what you don’t know to look for right? The universe is so vastly spread out that sometimes conventional logic becomes insufficient for description, talk less of collapsing it all into simple terms. Way simpler to say life isn’t understandable. If you’re looking for the meaning of life, then live it. Simple. It would be useless to look for the meaning of life outside of actually living it.
If you ask someone today, do you understand art? Most will say yes but if you then say to them, what’s the meaning then? A very small percentage would pick up a beautiful representation of art and show it to you and go, that’s the meaning. We’re just not wired like that right? We’d rather put together a bunch of random words, cement them with logic and hand that to you as the meaning of art, leaving art itself out of the whole sequence. In the end, the meaning becomes more about the words that form it than the object it refers to.
Second step is knowing symbols aren’t meaning 
Just as you use a windmill to check for wind direction and intensity, or as you use a road sign to know what a road entails, or as a construction sign references the construction and is not itself the construction being done itself, so is the function of words and symbols. It seems obvious enough that it should go without saying right? Sometimes it’s the more obvious things that elude us the most. Now that we’re two steps in, we may touch the subject of mankind and what it means. Our immediate response may be to describe a human or describe his relationship with the environment.
Again, this would be correct only if description was meaning. To know the meaning of mankind, one has to be mankind and in being mankind lies the meaning that you seek. The wind never seeks its meaning when it blows nor do the trees search for their meaning in prints on their by-products for when we feel the wind on our skin, there lies its meaning. Therefore the effects we have as mankind on the environment or on ourselves, or on any other objects in the universe and vice versa is essentially our meaning. As the stars rule the sky, so does mankind walk the earth and with none more spectacular than the other.
When we look at the sky and see a shining star, its majestic nature may make us feel so little but this is all in a continuous effort of the Godhead to serve as a point of focus from which the universe expresses itself through us. The body and its universe are one, just as the sea and its shore, a ship and its sails, and so on. Nobody ever said marvel constituted only happiness and feelings of contentment, for how will you recognize happiness without those moments of sadness and/or neutrality that keep you grounded and vice versa.
After a long-distance hike, that first sip of water doesn’t feel like chemical components does it? It feels like a supply of blessing straight from the core of the universe. This camel definitely knows what I’m talking about and that’s exactly how inadequate words are in conveying meaning.
Third step is knowing what holds meaning 
Many of us do not think of ourselves as more than little odd balls because the Godhead hides perfectly behind the persona which is Latin for actor’s mask. We seem to forget the basic fundamental essence of objects being as they relate to their environment, not just as they act alone. If there were no water, there would not be a boat and if there were no auditory senses, music would have a different meaning.
An object affects its environment as the environment in turn affects the object and if you look for the meaning of an object outside of its environment, then you’re looking for the meaning of another object. We must remember that as Rivers flow through channels, and as blood runs through veins, as thoughts run through heads, we also live through life and each process is one and the same, differentiable but inseparable. Ever wondered why there is such a heightened sense of aliveness and zest when we connect with our natural habitat in the glory of its rawness, for example standing in front of a waterfall or standing in a forest where you actually have to fend for yourself, no packaged or processed meat or what not.
Here the ego is non-existent and this is because man has truly connected with his environment in a way that the universe originally prescribes and when you lock man up, man becomes less and less of man as time goes by because he’s devoid of his natural environment. You do not look away from a waterfall in search of the meaning of a waterfall in print, same way you do not deviate from truly living in search of the meaning of life.
In conclusion, to truly live, we have to realize three key things; what meaning is, what it’s not and where we may find meaning. It may be difficult to find meaning and even when found, may still be difficult to appreciate it especially in this day and age where most of us live but aren’t really aware of life which makes many things right in front of us go unnoticed. This difficulty makes it even more particularly futile to search for it where it’s not.
Being over reliant on symbols for meaning leads us to disregard many answers we seek just because we cannot symbolically represent them. Recognition is the first step to appreciation. No matter how much of a good thing we have going for us, if we do not recognize it, we cannot appreciate it. Do not look away from the waterfall. Let’s do this!
