Have you heard the one about the London taxi driver who recognised the passenger in the back of the cab as the famous philosopher Bertrand Russell. “So I turned to ‘im,” says the cabbie, “and I say to ‘im, ‘Bert, Bert, what’s it all about then?’ And do you know what? The bugger didn’t know!”
Then there’s the world’s greatest hotelier, Basil Fawlty (I think John Cleese’s TV comedy series Fawlty Towers made its way to the States) who was constantly railing against the slings and arrows of misfortune, shaking a fist at the heavens, and asking: “What’s the point? I mean, what’s the blooming point?”
The question has been asked down the ages, usually more seriously, and it boils down to this: is there a purpose to life?

Philosophers call them naïve realists, although in the time of Kant they were known as dogmatists. They’re the folk who believe in an absolute, objective world. When asked the age-old philosophical question, ‘Would the world be the same if you weren’t in it?’ they answer with an emphatic ‘yes, of course it would be’.

But of course, it wouldn’t be, and couldn’t be. The world is our creation, both metaphorically and physically. In fact, the material world of hard objects is entirely our interpretation or imposition.

As physicists and quantum physicists remind us, the material world of ‘stuff’ is made up of atoms and these in turn are made up of sub-atomic particles. At this level, space and time become, well, interesting.

What have our feelings got to do with what we believe?  Short answer: everything.  In fact, when you think you’re having a rational debate, you’re probably not engaging with the other person’s brain, but their emotions.  And the stronger the beliefs are held, the greater is the underlying emotion.

Our emotions are the residues from any experience we had that may have caused upset, pain or even trauma.  More exactly, they are experiences that we only partially understood in the first place because they were witnessed entirely from our own personal viewpoint.

These emotions colour our world, and they form the lens through which we see everything.  Anything that reinforces that view is immediately acknowledged; the thousands of things that happen every week that challenge our world view are discarded, or not even seen in the first place.

I upset a Zen monk the other day.

I didn’t mean to, of course.  In fact, I used to love the Zen koans – What’s the sound of one hand clapping?  What was your face before you were born?  Great stuff and a wonderful way to by-pass the conceptual mind.  And I used to love the Zen books by the likes of Suzuki, Bodhidharma, Philip Kapleau and Alan Watts.

The koans and the books are the essence of the teaching.  Behind that, and something we don’t often see, are the traditions and the rituals.  My Zen monk had clearly invested years of practice and dedication to achieve his current status.  Perhaps he had a different coloured robe to designate his more lofty position, I don’t know.

And we all like to do that, whatever path we follow, whether it’s religion, academic, some social activity or the work we do.  We study, we work hard and we achieve, and that achievement is recognised in the status or position we are then granted.  We know where we are and where others are around us, and there’s great comfort and security in that.

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman has figured out that we can think through a problem one of two ways: fast or slow.  Most of us choose the first way.  It’s the knee-jerk, immediate thought, often the result of previous experience, and even prejudice, that we employ.  Sometimes it’s the right approach, but often it’s not, as his book Thinking, Fast and Slow makes clear.

The same applies to seeing: we can see fast or slow.  The other day I looked up from the kitchen table and noticed a dead fly, lying prone on the window frame.  Fast-seeing would have been: dead fly, unsightly, dispose of.  It’s a superficial response, and it has its place, especially if danger threatens or we have to act quickly.