purpose of life

[Guest guest]

I have heard that the purpose of life is to serve the Lord Krishna,

Vishnu, Narayana.. based on the tradition one belongs to. But what

intrigues me is that why would an all merciful Lord would create a bunch

of beings only to serve Him? (I could almost hear somebody saying Why not?

Don't we create machines to serve us) That aside, What is the Vedic or Sastric

view of the purpose of creation? The Gaudiya Vaishnavites explain it on these

lines...

 

God is a repository of all qualities. One such quality is

independence. When parts of of the Supreme being wanted to be independent and

"enjoy" the Lord in His infite mercy created the material world for them

to enjoy and realize the folly of material enjoyment. The created beings are

supposed to realize the folly return to Godhead by serving him to get rid

of the material contamination they are in. This process is made

difficult by the play of Maya which makes the beings forget their true

identity and hence the purpose of life. I may not be stating the

Guadiya point of view correctly and possibly some one can correct me in this.

 

I am specifically interested in knowing the Sri Vaishnava point

of view and I suspect that this quetion of serving the Lord does not

arise at all from the point of view of the Advaita philosophy which does

not admit duality.

 

 

K.P.Sridharan