There’s a phrase from Lama Tsong Khapa’s teachings that I choose to translate as ‘to realize the purpose of this life’. For everyone, unique as we all are, naturally, this will be different…

What realizing the purpose of our lives here on earth has in common for us all, from what I can tell, is twofold: The first is that, when we find our own purpose, and do our best to live that life, there is peace that comes from it, and a feeling of wholeness. There is the feeling of fullness, and satisfaction; and the second common characteristic is that when we live out our truth, then everyone benefits.

I’m thinking especially of my teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, as I write this. He is one of the best examples I can come up with of a person who has fully realized his Noble purpose here on earth. To me, he is the most perfect version of himself, and he affirms and supports the unique and precious nature of us all.

He is like the most perfect pine tree imaginable. A pine tree needs to do nothing more than to be a pine tree, and all of us benefit from that. It does not feel the need to compare itself to the flowers, or to the mountains, or the rivers, or to try to be like them; each have their own way. In fact, it’s only by fully being what it is made to be that everything else around it can be itself.

When we live cut off from our own purpose, there’s no joy to it, really. Competition, envy, smallness of character, and isolation are the signs of a closed up human life, one that, somehow, hasn’t blossomed in the original way it should.

We all have this precious opportunity while we are here to aim to do something truly meaningful with our lives, for ourselves and for one another, and in fact, we won’t know what we are capable of until we take up this challenge. Then, however far we may get with becoming ourselves in this world in this life, there is the feeling of rightness within, of being at home in ourselves, and fulfillment.