What should be our GOAL of life ?

You didn't answer my question:

On the grounds of what should we take this as true, factual, as being the case?

It may look nice enough in theory, and most of the statements there seem to be simply truisms, philosophical deductions.
Given given how the people (and especially the founder acharya himself, so don't tell me about my not discerning between devotees) who preach this "Vedic knowledge" tend to behave, and some other stances they express, it is hard for me to take any of this seriously.

 

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Our nature is our nature, whatever it is at any point in time.

It is a truism that acting in line with our true nature is necessarily fortunate.

 

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Do you believe yourself to be already enlightened?

 

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On what grounds do you think it doesn't address the question (since the terms explain the role austerity plays in the pursuit of happiness and also the qualitative difference between short term and long term happiness)?

 

Schopenhauer was the first European philosopher to be influenced by Indian traditions...particularly the Upanishads and Buddhist writings.

Sometimes these traditions are interpreted in the west as nihilistic...but they are not.

In Asia, enlightenment is considered a antidote to all the suffering of life you mentioned...not something that is attained through suffering.

Is a beautiful sunset sterile or nihilistic? Of course not, and yet you can enjoy it just as it is...without attaching any goals to the experience.

 

As long as your molars are relatively intact, yes.

 

Your reply addresses the question, indeed, but that doesn't automatically make the reply true.

As the song goes
Out of sorrow entire worlds have been built, out of longing great wonders have been willed.

Grief and desire make people do all kinds of things, including concocting fancy notions of what reality supposedly is.

Just because one is miserable and comes up with an intellectual band-aid for that misery, doesn't mean that the band-aid is true or that it will forever do what it was originally intended to do.

 

That's why I asked you to point out in what way it is lacking.

I mean usually we would discuss the shortcoming of such a model by pointing out how it is not sufficient to incorporate all that is pursued as "the goal of life"

 

Even if your whole body is intact you may not be able to fully enjoy whats in front of you...as the unenlightened mind is plagued with the distractions of fear, guilt, envy, greed, hate, anger and all manner of other psychological maladies.

 

It's full of suffering. Means I'm drunk enough to feel some sort of truth in beauty of the sunset and reminds me I have to work with a hangover when it comes back up...

But I guess that means existential because my job keeps food in my belly despite my subjective emotions concerning the issue.

 

To me, the philosophy you espouse sounds too good to be true. And if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true, and is thus, false.

More importantly, since those who espouse this philosophy don't really seem to live up to it, and are prone to anger toward and contempt for those who don't subject themselves to them, that is the main reason I find the philosophy suspicious.

Why would someone preach that all living beings are parts and parcels of God who have free will - and then get angry with them for not instantly and unconditionally subjecting themselves to the preacher?

Why preach free will, and yet demand that a person come to a particular conclusion as opposed to another?

Why preach that people should practice discernment in whom they associate with and how, and yet resent it if people practice that kind of discernment toward the preacher?

Then the blatant misogyny, often rationalized and intellectualized away, but nonetheless practiced, both by men and women in your organization and society of reference.

The model that you preach is also insufficient because even in the ideal, theoretical case, not everyone can live accordingly:

Your model is elitist and exclusivist; without there being those 99.9% of the population whom you fight against and deride and deem yourselves superior to, what would be left of your model?

According to your model, you do not meet people where they are. They first would need to become effectively different persons before they could even begin to implement your model.

Any model of behavior and society that even theoretically cannot be implemented by the whole population, is immoral.

The model you espouse is similar to capitalism:
For capitalism to function, it is required that a percentage of the able workforce not work; if all people would work, capitalism collapses as there is not enough profit made. Capitalism is immoral because it requires that a percentage of the population be excluded from earning a living.
Your model depends that there be a percentage of the population who are excluded from practicing it. That makes it immoral.

 

Do you believe yourself to be already enlightened?

 

Let's take a further example:

The devotee does not desire any achievement other than pleasing the Supreme Personality of Godhead. His life's mission is to please Kṛṣṇa, and he can sacrifice everything for Kṛṣṇa's satisfaction, just as Arjuna did in the Battle of Kurukṣetra.

"Sacrifice everything for Krsna's satisfaction"?

Since ordinary people have no direct feedback from Krsna Himself whether He is pleased with one's efforts or not, one has to rely on the input of those other people who claim to know what pleases Krsna and what doesn't.

So for an ordinary person, "sacrifice everything for Krsna's satisfaction" easily ends up meaning 'sacrifice one's sense of worth, sacrifice one's pursuit for a meaningful life, sacrifice one's desire for things to make sense; settle into a life of despair and confusion.'

If a person ends up suicidally unhappy in their efforts to practice devotional service, what do devotees reply? That the amount of happiness and misery is set and that one cannot do anything about it - so one should just chant and suck it up.
Or perhaps some glib truisms that "if one doesn't like it, one isn't going to persist with it."
As if that solves anything!

 

the three modes of nature explain precisely why surrender unto god (or even the mere notion of it as a concept) doesn't materialize in everyone

 

And this is supposed to give us a satisfactory meaning of life how exactly?

"Oh, I'm not good enough to be a devotee or to have a meaningful life, therefore, I shall just go curl up in the corner and die of shame."

This is what you want me to say, don't you, representative of God?

 

you misunderstand.

we (you, me and everyone) already have goals of life

The three modes simply explains how it all fits under the goal of the pursuit of pleasure

 

No, you misunderstand.

I'll put it this way: Explain to me how someone can make a point of claiming they believe in God, but nevertheless also despise other people. How is this even possible?

 

Devotees in this stage consider the Lord to be present at the place of worship and nowhere else. They cannot ascertain who is in what position in devotional service, nor can they tell who has realized the Supreme Lord. Such devotees follow the routine formulas and sometimes quarrel among themselves, considering one type of devotion better than another. These kaniṣṭha-adhikārīs are actually materialistic devotees who are simply trying to transcend the material boundary to reach the spiritual plane.

and

http://vedabase.net/sb/3/29/10/en
explained in detail here

 

I'm an existential nihilist. Ironically, though, when your board game is missing a rule sheet then the rules that you devise objectively BECOME the rules. Love and sunsets and babies are beautiful, not because of some external Truth, but because I declare them to be.

 

I see several problems with this:

1. The numbers don't add up:
If the classifier "devotee" is to be applied as liberally as your link suggests, then a considerable percentage of the human population gets to be counted as devotees.
So where or who are the 99.9% of the human population who are supposedly all naradhamas?

2. Those links seem to suggest that God organized the world in such a manner that numerous kinds of people get to have or at least express certainty about God, regardless of their behavior and value system.
Don't you think it is odd to think that God organized the world that way? I do. Surely knowledge of the Absolute Truth should be radically transforming, should it not - so that those who actually have such knowledge, behave characteristically different than the rest of the population?

3. Given that I am not a theist, not a devotee, why do I feel hurt when someone who claims to know God despises people?