Assessing the Views of Abu Saeed Abu al-Khair and Krishna Murti on Resolving Meaning Crisis

Abstract

In contemporary times, man has faced deep existential crises after experiencing great historical shocks—the Renaissance, the religious reform movement, the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, and the First and Second World Wars. The main crisis is the crisis of life being empty of meaning that gives purpose and value to human life. In this research, the ideas of Abu Saeed Abu al-Khair (357-440 AH) and Krishna Murti (1895-1986 AD) have been studied descriptively-analytically to find solutions for getting out of the crisis of meaninglessness. The focal issue of this research is to find the meaning to live, with a focus on the teachings of Abu Saeed and Krishna and analyzing the differences and similarities of their views in this regard. The results show that Abu Saeed Abu al-Khair considers selfishness, absence of love, and lack of a genuine life as the main causes of existential crises in human life, especially the crisis of meaninglessness. His strategies for overcoming this crisis are avoiding narcissism and showing sincerity and genuine love. According to Krishna Murti, a conditioned mind loaded with knowledge, absence of love in life, and not discovering the individual truth are the causes of the crisis of meaninglessness in human life. Krishna saw freedom from knowledge and the known, creation of love in life, and discovery of personal truth as the solutions to this crisis. According to Abu Saeed, "selfishness" and "not having a genuine life" and according to Krishna, "absence of love" and "failure to discover individual truth" are, in fact, different interpretations of the same reality. The presence of God in Abu Saeed Abu al-Khair’s teachings and His absence in Krishna’s thoughts is the main difference in the views of these two mystics.

Keywords

• crisis of meaninglessness
• abu saeed abu al-khair
• krishna murti