The Quest for Meaning

Qayyim called ‘the seekers’ way’ (Madarrij Saalikeen (‘Stations of the Seekers’)), and it leads us back to ourselves. In the face of self-awareness, in the face of death or love, in the face of loneliness or suffering, in the face of doubt or absences … on the road, and in the heart of life, we must return to ourselves one day.

Basically, Kant’s three questions could be summed up in one other question whose essence holds the key to all the others: where do I come from? It synthesizes all the others: is there a Creator, Spirit, Being, Substance or Cause? Is meaning determined from the origin? Are we products of a will, an accident or chance? These questions are the very substance of the search for meaning. Time asks questions, and consciousness tries to answer them, or fails to answer them. The meaning that is produced by the question of passing time and approaching death naturally transforms our relationship with space, Nature and the elements. If life does have a meaning and if the source does show a way, then the elements are transformed into signs … and they reveal that meaning because they are individual and singular

The three basic philosophical questions formulated by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant clearly relate the awareness of time to the existential quest: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope for?3

Why?’ expresses the quest for meaning, and an awareness of our needs, limitations and powers.

The essence and the prospect remain the same, from the tribal religions of Asia to the Aztecs and the Mayas, from the religions of the Andes to the traditions of Africa: understanding, doing and giving meaning. Egyptian, Greek and Roman polytheisms, like Hinduism and Buddhism, and even the Jewish, Christian and Muslim monotheisms, offer frameworks and systems that allow us to answer the basic existential question, and then all the other related questions: what is the meaning of death, suffering, love, morality, and so on?

Escaping consciousness is, however, difficult. And perhaps we can never really do so. The intellect gradually awakens as it discovers the realities of life and asks the first questions: why, or why not, are there things to eat?