The big question

Subject: The big question

Discussions range over topics and often lead us into strange places. The root of all our understanding is the mind, without the mind there can be nothing. The question of what makes the mind so central to our reason for being is of course tied up in our experiences throughout our lives. If I were a bushman my mind would be different. It would be sharper in terms of survival but perhaps less sharp thinking out of the box bound by experience. 
Part of my experience is moulded by education, part from the environment, part from the love and protection I received when growing up and part genetic, the information passed down from our ancestors through the chromosomes which provide a way of interpreting the world around me and in essence the worlds past which form the genetic blue print for me to operate.
The slightly mechanistic series of chances which form my background and give me the stability in my mental well being are the bricks and mortar on which I build my personality the me you think you know. 
The question of life and death came up and especially the question of suicide, whether it was ever right for a person to take their own life. This led us to ask another question what is life and what is its importance viv a vis death. Was the life we lead so precious and if it had become extremely difficult through say illness, what was the objection to ending it.
From a religious view, life is given by an act of God and only god can take it away.
From a Buddhist  point of view life is a work in progress and the mind, which to all intents and purposes is the way we see the individual we see as ourselves, this mind is the crucible which can not be brought to an end by suicide because there is always an answer to the suffering which might have brought us to seek suicide.
The atheist has a rather black and white view of life. Without the religious responsibility for our actions and without the Buddhist training to try to seek answers (answers which may not be there) the atheist has to ask, what immediate value is a life which has physical pain and suffering, surely life has lost its value and the only alternative is death.
The question of life having more meaning than the beating heart (other and than the influence your life and death has on others) seems to the atheist only a matter of form since the connection to a pre life or an afterlife is discounted. 
This life we have and the events we experience, which play upon our minds and allow us to think we are more than flesh and blood, is a fantasy. In a way it is surreal since it is a creature of our own making. We place ourselves as some special case where we believe in our immortality because we can't get around the thought that we are nothing more than cells on a Darwinian conveyor belt called natural selection. Perhaps we should congratulate ourselves with the thought that at least 'we haven't died out'.