You live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is reality, but you do not know this. When you understand this, you will see that you are nothing and being nothing, and you are everything.

Welcome back to the imperfect Buddhist. My name's Matt. This is a show where we discuss mindfulness and incorporating Buddhism and meditation into modern life. I want to apologize that it's been a while since I've done an episode, my wife and I bought a house here in Jacksonville, Florida. As everything that goes along with that, moving in stuff moving in all of our furniture.

Little projects that come up with electrical work and plumbing and all of that. Plus, I got a new job working from home, and I've just been really focused on learning that and then resting on the weekends. To top it off, I've spoken about this before, meditation, Zen is one of those things.

It's hard to speak about.

Bill who leads a Soto Zen meditation group here in Jacksonville, Florida. He said his teacher says that talking about these things or trying to say, you figured out what Zen meditation is or mindfulness is, is like squeezing a bar. So the harder you grip it, the more likely it is, it's going to shoot out of here.

The purpose of this podcast is to just be a place where people can come to lightly grasp that bar of soap, to talk about these ideas, listen to these ideas, just make an attempt, be a finger pointing to the moon, as they say in Zen. We talk about these concepts; it's a finger pointing to the moon.

What that means is you don't mistake the finger for the moon. So us talking about this is not the actual thing itself, and that's what's important to keep in mind. Many books talk about these concepts, and they're healing and powerful in their own way. But I don't think.

That these concepts mean anything without practice. If you get anything out of this podcast, I hope that it encourages you to find that mindfulness and meditation practice in your own life.

Today we're going to be talking about the purpose for some people; this may be a familiar topic for others. It may be something you don't think about. My. For me lately and through most of my life, it's kind of been a theme, thinking about what am I supposed to be doing with my time, what really matters. At times had been something that I really thought about. And then times I was really intentional about with common tiger, my music.

Pretty much told everybody I'm committing, you know, the next five years of my life to music, which I did. I said this is what I'm going to do. This is all I'm going to do, success or failure. This is just what I'm going to do. It felt excellent to have a purpose, right. To define something that meant something to me, I could see a deeper meaning in and go after it.

But that meaning kind of started to fade a little bit. I began to become a bit disenfranchised with the idea that being more successful in music would make me happy or getting more plays on Spotify. It was going to make me happy and don't get me wrong. I didn't start this project or goal for those things, but eventually, that's kind of what it turned into because I did find success. It stopped being about my connection with the music and making something that I really enjoyed. Fast forward from that to living in Florida, Jacksonville, lived here for a couple of years.

My music, it's still something I'd worked on. I'd done voice lessons and tried a little singer songwriter stuff that I put out under the name, Matt sun. Things just kind of started to fade a little bit. It wasn't, it's not, didn't feel as important to me. 

My personal experience with purpose. I'm well acquainted with the question for a while. I wasn't very acquainted with the answer as I do with most things, most questions that I just don't have a clear answer to, or have a gut answer to. I sat with it would bring myself back to the moment that I was in.

I'd bring myself back to sensations. Sounds, colors, site. I would just bring myself back to the moment and continued my sitting practice and let this question, not as much, turnover in my mind, but more rest in my mind and my body having that question. And I'm sure, meditators out there, people that are experienced with this stuff will know what I'm talking about, and you have the question, it kind of sits there, some traditions of Zen meditation. I'm not very well acquainted. This style of practice, but they use koans. There are these questions, right? The teacher will give a question to a student and they'll say, what is the sound of one hand clapping? There's not really a clear answer to that. And the more you try to think about it, the more you try to conceptualize and to give some clear answers. You get further away from the truth. And I think when it comes to purpose and finding purpose in your life, the more you try to analyze and overthink it, you get further away from the truth.

Over a couple months, I started this new job and I'm working from home I'm not really doing as much music. I haven't done the podcast as you know, kind of thinking, like what does this all mean? And I did, I did come to some conclusions and conclusions are so slippery, just like that bar of soap of Zen.

You come to a conclusion and it will change, but I'll come back to that in a moment. Let's talk a little bit about your experience or maybe what I would perceive the general experience of most people in our society is. And that is one of lack of purpose we are facing. Commercials for clothing products and food.

We go on Instagram and Facebook and we see people just living these glamorous wives. I think most people, including myself, had been sold this idea of fame. Your purpose is this fame. Some people do find a more wholesome connection with purpose. Maybe not one that they chose necessarily, maybe it's having a family or having a house.

I begin to question where they came to that conclusion from, was it out of default or was it out of just going with the flow? They went to college, met somebody, got married, had kids, but for most of us, there's this sense of lack of purpose jobs are paying a lot less.

So you don't have this sense of fulfillment or purpose in like bringing home a paycheck and feeling like, Hey, you know, I'm serving a purpose. I, I work at, maybe I work at the, the car manufacturer I work at. , I don't love my job, but you know what my purpose is, I provide for my family, I come home, I have dignity.

That was the reality for our grandparents and even our parents. A lot of people these days, we don't get that satisfaction from our jobs anymore. Even if they're not something that we love. , lower-paying jobs, lack of purpose and work. Most of the work that's available is customer service.

I understand people wanting to veer away from religion. I grew up in a small town and listening to the podcast will know about this. I grew up in a small town rogue river. Grant's pass in Oregon. And it's kind of like the Bible belt of the Pacific Northwest. There's a lot of churches and that's like very strong influence there.

I would go to church. I haven't played in a Christian rock band, so I understand people being wanting to kind of push away religion and even spirituality. We're kind of fed up with these brands of spirituality and religion that were shoved down our throats and didn't feel real, but that's another place that we are lacking.

Meaning is, is some type of connection. To something bigger than ourselves and for many generations, our grandparents and their parents, and even our parents, God or religion, was this connection to something bigger than somehow gave us some meaning in the midst of suffering. We've lost that connection are homogenizing society, machine culture, machine.

When there is something that's beautiful, like mindfulness, you're listening to this podcast and hear the word mindfulness, and you roll your eyes because it's been turned into this thing that it's actually was never meant to be. It's this commercialized thing.

And you've got, people. Women in yoga pants being like, just be mindful of it. And it really ruins the whole thing. There's many instances of this coming up in our society, anything that has this ability to help people breakthrough and find some type of reality past this Dole flat existence, I think our society kind of likes to keep us in that place, but anything that comes up, you know, mindfulness or psychedelic drugs or the hippie movement. Originally, these are all things that actually had a real purpose behind them, but it just got homogenized. Hippies, for instance, you , start seeing Halloween costumes with a girl with her fingers and a peace sign and a bandana, Thai bandana or whatever.

This process of taking. That have meaning, and that can offer value to our society and then homogenizing them into this consumerist machine strips that value. It steals that value away from us, that people that are in this society. These are just a couple of instances of how this machine does this.

We're being not attacked, but we are purpose as being eroded, meaning as being eroded. Many fronts. So it's not really, it's not our fault. It's not your, your fault. If you feel lost, you go to your job and you feel like what's the purpose. I mean, I, I probably more than others, I will admit have those existential crisis is, or did for quite, quite a many years where it's like, it would just hit you.

And I was like, what is the purpose? This is pointless. So we lack inherent meaning. We lack direction, we lack purpose the question is like, okay, well then what is my purpose? How do I find that in my life?  

Back to a revelation I had, I was watching a YouTube video called the Hermes paradox, and it was talking about the idea of, okay, if there's like all these aliens out there, all o