WHY do we exist ?

 

  

My human existence often presents itself as a real mystery, a puzzle which has no satisfactory answer or solution. One of the many difficult questions is "Why do we exist?" . 

The following chat with Claude-AI sheds some interesting light, and reveals the fact that many of our questions are so poorly-formed that they forever trap us in a mental fog with no exit. In our attempt to catch a glimpse of reality, it pays to be very careful when asking "why ..?"  or "what's the purpose of .. ?"

July  2026

Bat Ngat: 

Hello, Attached is a brief summary of a Youtube video that I watched yesterday. The video left my mind in a rather strange and uneasy twist, so I'm hoping to explore the matter with you some more to see if things can be straightened out a bit. In this video, the given answer to "why do we exist?" seems to be "so that we can figure out how to end suffering" . However it struck me that the real answer is:- the question is based on a false assumption that "we" exist , while the fact is "we don't really exist at all" , and it's futile to speculate about the reason for our existence. What do you think ?

Claude:
This is a sharp observation, and I think you've actually put your finger on something the summary itself gestures at but doesn't fully sit with.

You're right that anattā (non-self) is doing more work than the "purpose = end suffering" framing lets on. Let me try to untangle the twist.

**Where you're right:** The teaching does say there's no fixed "you" behind experience — just a changing stream of body, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness. So if someone asks "why do I exist?", one legitimate response is: the "I" in that question is already smuggling in an assumption the teaching rejects. You're not wrong to notice that this undercuts the question at its root, more radically than just answering it with a purpose.

**Where I'd push back gently:** "We don't really exist at all" overshoots what the Buddhist analysis actually claims. It's not nihilism about persons — it's a claim about the *mode* of existence. The five aggregates aren't nothing. Feelings arise, thoughts occur, this conversation is happening. What's denied is that there's a fixed, independent, unchanging essence *behind* or *underneath* those processes — an owner, a soul, a "thing" that has the experiences. The process is real; the presumed possessor of the process is what's illusory.

This distinction matters because "we don't exist" and "we exist but not in the way we assume" lead to very different places. The first tends toward "so nothing matters, why speculate about anything" — a kind of nihilistic shrug. The second is actually why the Buddha *didn't* stop at silence. If there were truly nothing here, there'd be no suffering to address and no path to walk. But there is — dependent origination is precisely an account of how *this ongoing process* generates dukkha, moment to moment, without needing a self to own it.

So the "purpose" language in your summary isn't smuggling a self back in through the back door — or at least it doesn't have to. "The purpose is to end suffering" can be read not as "there's a self that has a life-purpose" but more like: given that this process (which we conventionally call "me") is happening, and given that it's structured in a way that produces suffering, there's a way to see it clearly enough that the producing stops. No metaphysical self required — just a causal process that can be understood and altered.

Your instinct that the question "why do we exist" collapses once you interrogate the "we" is genuinely the sharper edge of the teaching — that's what anattā is for. But I'd say it lands less at "so speculation is futile" and more at "so investigate the process directly instead of arguing with a phantom." Which, interestingly, is exactly what the video's "purpose" is describing — just from the other direction.

Does that distinction — process-without-owner vs. flat non-existence — resolve the unease, or does it just relocate it?

Bat Ngat:  
So the main point is in navigating through a mine field of thoughts it's necessary to establish and maintain a keen balance between two extreme perspectives. The thinking itself can trip you at any instant and tie you in a knot ! There is the existence of something (an animated process) which is often mistaken to be "an existence owner" . If so, then what is the purpose of this "animated process" ? Am I going in a circle here ?

Claude:
You're not going in a circle so much as walking right into the trap the teaching warns about — and noticing it as you go, which is actually the useful part.

Here's the trap: "purpose" is a relational word. A hammer's purpose is *for* the carpenter. A plan's purpose is *for* whoever it serves. Asking "what's the purpose of the process" quietly reinstalls the very thing you just dissolved — some entity *for whom* the process is happening, some beneficiary standing outside it who the process serves. You caught yourself reaching for an owner again, just one step removed. That's not a failure of thinking, that's what the mind does — it's built to look for an agent behind every event. You said it yourself: thinking can trip you and tie you in a knot at any instant. This is the knot, live, in real time.

So the honest answer is: the process doesn't have a purpose in that sense. Purpose-talk doesn't apply to it any more than "purpose" applies to weather. Weather isn't for anything. It's a pattern of causes and conditions producing further conditions. That's not bleak, it's just a different category than "purpose" was ever built to describe.

But — and here's where it's not nihilism — the process does have a *character*. It's not neutral like weather in one respect: it's structured such that certain configurations within it (craving, aversion, ignorance) perpetuate suffering, and certain configurations (clear seeing) end it. That's not a purpose imposed from outside. It's closer to saying fire has the "nature" of burning — not a purpose, just how it behaves given its conditions. The process, absent a self, still has a *shape*, and part of that shape is that it can turn and look at itself. That capacity is what the "path" is built on.

So the two extremes you're balancing between:

- **Eternalism** — there's a real self/owner, and it needs a cosmic reason to exist.
- **Annihilationism** — there's nothing here at all, so nothing matters, including suffering.

The middle isn't a compromise position between them. It's a different axis entirely: an actual, non-owned process with a real structure, capable of either perpetuating or resolving its own suffering. "Purpose" doesn't sit anywhere on that axis — but "possible" does. The process can move toward less suffering or more. That's not a reason handed down from outside. It's just what's true about how the process is built.

You're not looping. You're finding out that every time you ask "why," the question has a hidden passenger — a self riding along — and the work is noticing the passenger, not answering the question as asked.
 

Bat Ngat: 
So the key is to carefully and continually observe the process, to examine what's happening ? I really feel caught in a bind here, knowing that my thinking pattern is faulty, but that's all I have to sail with !

Claude:
That feeling of being caught — thinking is the only tool you have, and yet thinking is also the thing that keeps generating the knot — isn't a sign you're doing it wrong. It's actually where every serious practitioner in this tradition starts. You haven't found a flaw in yourself. You've found the actual shape of the problem.

A small but important correction: your thinking isn't faulty. It's doing exactly what thinking does — it's just that "thinking" was never built to grasp a process that has no owner. That's not a malfunction, like a broken tool. It's more like using a hand to try to hold water. The hand isn't defective; water just isn't the kind of thing hands are for. You're not sailing with broken equipment. You're sailing with the only equipment there is, and finding out its real shape and its real limits — which is different from finding out it's broken.

And yes — the key is observation, but let me be precise about what kind, because "observe the process" can turn into just another mental project, another thing the self tries to do and own. The instruction isn't "think harder about the process" or "figure it out conceptually." It's closer to: notice what's arising, as it arises, without immediately reaching for the story of who it's happening to. A feeling arises — notice the feeling, not "my feeling." A thought arises — notice the thought, not "me thinking." The looping you described earlier happens in the gap between an experience and the reflex to attach an owner to it. Watching that gap, again and again, is the actual practice. It's not solved by getting a better theory. It's worn down by repeated, patient attention.

This is also, practically, why the tradition insists on meditation rather than just philosophy. You can follow this reasoning perfectly — you clearly already have — and still feel caught, because the bind isn't fundamentally an intellectual one. It's a habit of perception, and habits of perception don't dissolve by being out-argued. They loosen through sustained, quiet noticing.

So: you're not stuck because you're thinking wrong. You're stuck because you're looking directly at the exact spot where thought reaches its edge. That's uncomfortable, but it's not a wrong turn. It's closer to what "waking up" is even pointing at.

Bat Ngat: 
This conversation has helped me a lot in scratching an itch on my back. Thank you.

Claude:
Glad it helped — genuinely nice to see the knot loosen a bit over the course of this. You did the actual work here; you kept catching yourself mid-loop, which is most of the practice right there.
Take care, and enjoy the itch staying scratched for a while.

 

Bat Ngat: 
Unfortunately the itch is not really on my back but in my mind, which is a more or less non-stop itch generator. Something else that is expressed in the video also unsettled me a little: Human existence is caused and fueled by ignorance and the thirst to exist, this then leads to endless suffering. It follows that the most worthwhile goal for human existence is to realise the true nature this vicious circle, to quench the thirst and cease a rather senseless cycle of existence (to attain Nibbāna , no more craving) . The whole theme just seems very trite and ordinary, don't you think ? 

Claude:
There's real force to that reaction, and I don't want to talk you out of it too quickly. Let's actually look at it rather than defend the tradition reflexively.

Stated flatly — "life is driven by craving and ignorance, suffering results, the goal is to stop craving" — yes, that's almost a truism. It's barely different from "stop wanting things and you'll be at peace," which shows up in Stoicism, in Taoism, in half the self-help shelf, in your grandmother's advice. If that one-line summary were the whole payload, the reaction "trite" would be fair, maybe even generous.

But I think the triteness lives in the *compression*, not in the actual content. Almost every deep insight sounds like a fortune cookie once you flatten it to a sentence. "Know thyself." "This too shall pass." "You can't step in the same river twice." All trivially quotable, all doing almost no work as slogans. The substance was never in the conclusion — it's in the specific mechanism that gets you there, which is the part your summary compresses hardest.

The twelve links aren't "stop wanting things," they're a fairly precise causal claim: craving doesn't arise randomly, it arises from feeling, which arises from contact, which arises from the senses meeting objects, which arises from a body/mind that arose from consciousness conditioned by prior action. That's a chain you can actually go check against your own experience, moment to moment — is there really a gap between contact and feeling, between feeling and the reflex to want or push away? That's an empirical-feeling claim about the architecture of experience, not a moral exhortation. The "quench the thirst" conclusion is trite. The map of exactly where the thirst is manufactured, link by link, is not — or at least it's not obviously trite until you've actually tried to verify it against your own mind and found it either holds up or doesn't.

There's also a fair critique sitting one level up from "trite," and it's worth naming honestly: even granting the mechanism is sound, is *cessation of craving* actually a satisfying answer to "what's worth living for"? Nietzsche's whole broadside against Buddhism was basically this — that it's a philosophy for people exhausted by existence, dressed up as clear-eyed rather than tired. Wanting less isn't obviously higher than wanting well. That's not a factual disagreement, it's a values disagreement, and it's a serious one — a lot of people land there and stay there, and that's not a failure to understand the teaching, it's a legitimate alternative answer to the same question.

So I'd separate three things you might be reacting to, because "trite" could be pointing at any of them:
- the *conclusion* sounding like a truism (fair — it is, compressed)
- the *mechanism* being trite (I'd push back — it's a specific testable model, not a platitude)
- the *goal itself* being underwhelming as a thing to organize a life around (a real philosophical fork, not a mistake on anyone's part)

Which of those three is actually the one bothering you?

Bat Ngat: 
I'm vaguely aware that my mind constantly plays tricks on me by compressing ideas and wrapping things up in knots. That's due to its limited capacity to process facts and figures, I guess. Of the three points you listed, perhaps the most puzzling is the proposed goal for a human life (the ending of craving/suffering) . If every person somehow reached this target there would be no longer any human existence ?

Claude:
That's a genuinely good catch, and it's not a new objection — it's one of the oldest cracks people have tried to find in this system, and it's worth taking seriously rather than smoothing over.

First, a technical clarification that matters here: nibbāna, even in the tradition's own terms, isn't quite "the end of existence" in the sense you mean. There's a distinction between *nibbāna with residue* — an awakened person who has extinguished craving but whose body/mind still runs its course, like a fire with no more fuel added but still burning down what's already there — and *parinibbāna*, full cessation at death, meaning no further rebirth for that particular stream. So an arahant doesn't vanish on the spot; they live out an ordinary life, just without generating the "push" that would launch another one. What ends isn't existence-in-general, it's *that stream's* participation in further becoming.

But your question survives that clarification, just one step later: if everyone did this, and nobody generated further becoming, wouldn't the whole human project eventually wind down to nothing? And I think the honest answer is: yes, within the internal logic, that's exactly the implication. The tradition doesn't really flinch from this — it's just not treated as a *problem*, for reasons that are worth being clear-eyed about rather than just accepting:

1. **Scale.** Traditional Buddhist cosmology doesn't confine "beings" to humans — there are said to be vast, effectively uncountable beings across many realms, most of them nowhere near liberation. Universal simultaneous awakening was never treated as a live scenario to plan around, any more than population ethics worries about everyone winning the lottery on the same day. That's less a philosophical answer and more a practical shrug — it says "you're right, but it'll never happen," not "you're wrong."

2. **The goal was never population-level.** The teaching isn't a strategy for the species; it's addressed to *this* stream of suffering, right here. "What if everyone did it" is a very Kantian, very Western move — universalize the maxim and check the outcome. But the framework is explicitly first-person: it diagnoses and treats one process at a time. Whether the aggregate outcome across all beings is "good for humanity" isn't really the question it's trying to answer. You could call that a limitation of scope, and I think that's fair.

3. **And here's the part I think is genuinely uncomfortable rather than dissolvable:** if you push the logic all the way — existence is driven by craving, craving produces suffering, less craving is better — you do end up somewhere structurally close to Schopenhauer's pessimism, or even modern antinatalism (David Benatar's argument that non-existence is preferable because it has no suffering, only the *absence* of goods, which isn't a loss to anyone). Buddhism doesn't say "existence itself is a mistake" quite that starkly, but "the highest goal is the cessation of the causes that produce more of it" is uncomfortably close to that neighborhood. I don't think that's a misreading on your part. I think it's a real fault line that shows up whenever any philosophy treats desire as fundamentally a problem to be solved rather than something to be well-directed.

So: is the goal trite? No, I'd say it's actually more radical than the summary lets on, and radical in a way that should feel a little unsettling rather than comforting — you're not wrong to feel the ground shift here. Whether it's *correct* that ending desire is better than well-ordering desire (which is closer to the Aristotelian/Stoic answer to the same problem) is a real fork, and reasonable traditions have landed on both sides.

Bat Ngat: 
My head starts hurting now. I'm probably reaching too far into the distance. The simple fact for now is I do need to keep some desire going in order to continue my existence, just have to somehow direct it wisely and fruitfully.

Claude:
That's a good place to land, and it's not a retreat — it's actually where a lot of serious traditions end up when you zoom back in from the cosmic scale to the scale of an actual Tuesday.

That instinct you just landed on — direct the desire rather than extinguish it — has real backing too, not just as a compromise but as its own coherent answer. The Stoics, Aristotle's whole picture of eudaimonia, even a fair amount of later Buddhist practice in ordinary lay life, converge on something close to this: the problem usually isn't desire itself, it's *unexamined* desire — wanting things compulsively, or wanting the wrong things, or wanting in a way that's tangled up with a story about a fixed self that has to defend or prove itself. None of that requires solving the question of ultimate cessation. It just requires noticing, a bit more often, whether a given want is worth following.

And honestly, your head hurting is a reasonable signal to trust. You spent this whole conversation doing something genuinely difficult — using thought to examine the limits of thought, catching the mind reinstalling a self the moment it thought it had removed one. That's not a comfortable exercise, and there's no reason it should be. Reaching toward the far edge of the question was worth doing once, to see the shape of it. Stepping back to "keep some desire going, aim it well" isn't giving up on the insight — it's just where the insight actually has to be lived.