Brian Crane's Pickles comics (8-16-2012)

The Meaning of Life Grandson asks Grandpa to take him to the park in the comic strip Pickles but he's reclining in his easy chair contemplating the meaning of life. Grandson tells Grandpa— "Have you tried googling it?" If you search "what is the meaning of life" in Google, there are 28,000,000 results— you'll need a lifetime to read them all. Bill Moyers protested "Not true! Not true!" when Joseph Campbell told him on PBS— "Life has no purpose— it's just protoplasm." The bard said "we're not seeking the meaning of life but the experience of being alive— Follow your bliss and you'll find the radiance." At the 1936 World Congress of Faiths in London on "The Supreme Spiritual Ideal"— bishops, rabbis, gurus, and swamis sprouted their messages and volumes of hot air. The last speaker was D.T. Suzuki who introduced Zen to the West. He said "I do not know what Spiritual is, what Ideal is, and what Supreme Spiritual Ideal is." Instead Suzuki showed slides of his house and garden in Japan contrasting them with the life of London and the audience gave him a standing ovation. Grandpa would have found his answer to life's meaning had he taken his Grandson to the park, for during that walk he would have bonded with his Grandson, birds, flowers, trees and the beauty all around him— experiencing the Love that moves the Sun and other stars.             — Peter Y. Chou                 Mountain View, 1-30-2013