What is the meaning of life for Buddhists? There is no such thing. The meaning of life is not separated from the life itself. The life is the meaning in every small action, thought, word, every nuance. When we ascribe to life a meaning in words which we perceive as separate from life we are falling into ignorance born of habit and the tendency of the human mind to separate, categorise, measure and interpret.

I wrote a poem on the subject a while back, shortly before performing my first reading to a public audience of strangers. I enjoy these poems, and the audience did too. The poems don’t really spring from “me”, but more from that dark place I wrote of recently.

Out of that dark place comes “my” poetry and even that truth appeared in a poem some time ago where the last stanza reads: “And me, I write my worlds of truth, knowing they’re not mine. Trying not to try too hard, just letting justice shine”. The dark place, I am starting to realise, is very bright and luminous inside and not to be feared, though the journey there may involve uncontemplated perils.

Recently I noticed on my visitor stats for this site that I had received a visit from someone searching Google for ‘Buddhist meaning of life’ (without the quotes). As often when I discover these things I repeated the search myself to see where Google was ranking me on this one. Second out of about 734,000 webpages worldwide seemed pretty good going really. And My ego is content to come so close to a page quoting the Dalai Lama’s book “The Meaning of Life” that was first. That Search.

My personal “becoming buddha” project (aim: the ego decided to get rid of itself) must be coming to some sense of fruition, after all Google knows everything today: it’s the worlds encyclopedia and the sole source of repute. Of course, I don’t put much weight on such measurements, but my ego on the other hand, loves them to bits.