Pointlessness is Great!

I've been meaning to write this post for some time now, several weeks, but haven't quite got around to it before now. I think this is largely because I quite like the living joke involved.
"I was going to write about pointlessness, but somehow I can't bring myself to do so."
That's probably not funny for you, but it is for me. However, I was going to write another post that feeds off something in this post, and so to write that one I finally have to get to it and write this one.

When religious people find out I am an atheist they often comment in some manner that my life must be meaningless, that there isn't a point to it all. This is never a comment that comes from atheists. The usual response is to say that there is meaning and a point to my life, just as much as there is to the life of anybody else. I can then list points, such as love and happiness, intellectual exploration, self-development, compassion, the arts and so on. But I think this is fundamentally a shallow answer, it presupposes the worth of meaning, that having a point is better than not having a point.

Why is this concept, that having a point is better than not having a point, assumed to be true? It seems to me that it must have to do with being productive. Someone with a point will work towards the fulfillment of that point. A hypothetical person with no point at all will die of starvation lying on the ground at some random place. To survive there must be a point, although in that case the point is survival. All the great achievements, and the crappy little ones too, came about because someone had a point. The construction of of Western Civilization is an aggregation of billions of smaller points. When people think that having a point is better than not having a point, they have a point.

So some level of meaning and a point is vital. However, I think in our western culture this has been taken to such lengths that everything at all times must have a point. Many people without a point at any moment become agitated, and fret, feeling bored and anxious at the same time. These people are easily identified, they are the people who fill all their "off" time with chores and duties. They are the people who on the weekend trim the edges of their lawns, and fold dish cloths, and arrange, arrange, arrange. They are the people who create freakishly perfect gardens but can never sit in them and enjoy them because they have to go fix them.

This anxiety, downright guilt, that western people in particular (including myself) feel when not being productive is so pervasive it is taken as a given. Even vacations are provided with a point, either to see all the things that must be seen, to do all the things that must be done, or to recharge the batteries so that you can be more productive later. There is little more annoying to me than to be on vacation with someone, go to see something amazing and have the other person take a photograph and immediately ask, "What's next?" There shouldn't be a next when you haven't looked at the Taj Mahal for more than five minutes, there should be a whole lot more of now. It is one of the things that is simply not seen, something that the very "why?" of it is not asked.

In the east there has been a massive and amazing examination of pointlessness. It has reached such a level of sophistication and power that the largest religions in Asia are organized around people who professionally try to get to the point where they recognize that not only is there not a point, but that there isn't an I to have it. Hinduism and Buddhism are about going through extremely deeply researched methods of finding all the points in your life, dismissing them, and then reaching a point where the you and the it are the same, and the thisness of this is all there is.

Once having reached this point the reported effects are serenity, compassion, peace, and love. That's pretty cool, but one of the fantastic things about the whole thing is that if you are going through the process to get the serenity, that the point of it is serenity, then you are missing the point. It's about the pointlessness. This oxymoron is the crux of the matter in Zen Buddhism, where realization is through experience rather than intellect. Nonsense questions of seemingly great wisdom called koans are used to essentially break down the students intellect. "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" is the most famous one. Essentially these work by using the eager student's own intellect against itself until it collapses under the pressure.

In terms of experiences pointlessness is right up there among the best, the most important, and yes, the most useful of all experiences. Sitting in your garden without thinking, without deciding what to do next, without worrying about anything, is fantastic. It is soothing, beautiful, relaxing, deep, perceptive. It is impossible to be bored when things are pointless. Nothing to do, is just not doing anything. When you do this your awareness of what actually is around you expands to the full size of your consciousness. Perception fills the empty spaces that were filled with your thoughts. A few blades of grass take up the same attention as your sudoku puzzle.

Now, this doesn't mean that I am recommending that everyone stop everything they are doing and just sit down. My favorite Buddhist story is when a new monk. full of excitement and passion for achieving enlightenment, joins a monastery. He has eaten his rice and has a few spare moments without any tasks and he sees the great master sitting across the courtyard, seemingly with a few spare moments himself. The young monk scurries across to the master and asks, "Great master, please give me some of your wisdom, just a piece of advice. Sir, what should I do?"
"Have you finished you rice?"
"Yes, master."
"Then you should clean your bowl."

I have applied this concept, that the full wisdom of the zen master is to do the things that you need to do while maintaining the full realization of the pointlessness of everything, most effectively to chores. Washing dishes is the best one because to a large extent it is so unpleasant if done another way. Who likes doing dishes? One of the main problems with doing dishes is the knowledge that it must be done, but you don't want to do it. This makes doing dishes so much worse. But if you can instead simply turn your full attention to the dishes, noticing the colours, the feel of the water, the smells, the sounds, without having any awareness of the point of it all (to be not doing it) it can be a really nice experience.

The real point of this whole post is to take this value of pointlessness, the value of this as it is, to the largest possible level. It is a common view that there must be a point to it all, that the Universe must have been created to do something. To many it is inconceivable that there isn't a point to something so vast, which is a shame because the inconceivability of it is largely down to the not-willing-to-try-to-conceive-it of the individual. It is common to think there must be a plan, and so we better work out what the plan is, and make sure everybody else knows what the plan is, argue about the plan, and then kill and enslave those who think there is a different plan, teach our children the plan, and then to make sure they have the right plan tell them that if they don't follow the plan they will be tortured in the fires of Hell forever.

How about there not being a point? How about that the Universe exists, full stop? It is, and that's it. This would enable our minds to open up simply to notice what the Universe is, and that is enough to fill anyone's mind for lifetime after lifetime. If taking some time to remove the everyday point and meaning from our activities helps us be more serene, why shouldn't that be true with the biggest questions?

I think the search for meaning that goes on in so many lives is an entirely natural, completely human endeavour. It is a basic thing to our psychology. On the other hand, so is rape, murder, xenophobia and bigotry. The human mind is such that it can examine itself, and then alter itself to experience a better life. If nothing else I hope those of you who read this long post who haven't seriously examined pointlessness will give it a try. One of the fascinating things about it is that it is much harder than you might think, and yet by definition requires no effort at all.