One of the deepest sources of suffering, particularly in the western world, is the lack of a spiritual purpose in life. If you find yourself going through life without a clear spiritual purpose, insight meditation can be helpful to you.
Since so much of our society is designed to facilitate our work life, it’s easy to assume that our purpose in life is to accumulate as much material wealth as possible. While material possessions are surely important to sustain ourselves and avoid being a burden on others, they are not an end in themselves. This is so because no amount of material wealth is satisfactory to us. No matter how much we get, we will always want more. Quite literally, there is no end to it.
Quite apart from the worldly pursuit of wealth, is the spiritual pursuit of real happiness that does not depend on how wealthy we are. This spiritual pursuit remains obscured for many due to the overwhelming dominance of material pursuits in our lives. Ironically, we are so busy trying to obtain satisfaction from the material world that we convince ourselves we don’t have time for spirituality.
Insight meditation is a cure to this problem because it illuminates for us the ways in which we can integrate spirituality into our lives while taking full account of our material needs. Furthermore, we learn how to devote our resources to helping others, giving purpose to legitimate material pursuits. Once our path is lit, so to speak, we can finally start to experience a sense of satisfaction from life.