The Dreamer And The Dream

I was trying as hard as I could to wake up out of the dream but I couldn’t. It just wasn’t working out for me – I was getting nowhere fast, you could say. The fact that I was trying so hard to wake up just goes to show how deluded I was! There was no such thing as the dream so obviously I couldn’t wake up out of it – there was no one in the dream to wake up. That pretty much goes without saying, really. It goes without saying so I can’t think why I bother to say it; if there’s no such thing as ‘the dream’ then very clearly there’s no such thing as ‘the dreamer’…

 

I was trying so hard to wake up out of the dream that I was in danger of bursting a blood vessel! I was in danger of doing myself a mischief. All to no avail of course since the more I tried to wake up the more I reinforced the pernicious illusion that there was someone who needed to wake up! You can see how hopelessly deluded I was. Samsara is such an insidious trap, isn’t it? Just as soon as I worked out that there was such a thing as samsara I started trying to get free from it; no sooner had I learned that I was in fact in a state of sleep I started making consistent and concerted efforts to exit the samsaric realm and all its attendant sufferings. You can see how much good that did me! I’m suffering worse than ever now…

 

Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn’t have been better off never hearing about samsara. As I say, it doesn’t seem to have helped me any. All that’s happened to me as a result is that I’m now caught up in second-order samsaric traps. That’s what happens when you try to escape from samsara – you create second-order samsaric delusions because you have put all your money on there being someone who wants to escape, someone who needs to escape, someone who ought to escape… Now that I come to think of it I can see that hearing that there is such a thing as samsara is synonymous with wanting to escape from it or believing that one ought to escape from it. You can hardly know about samsara and all the sufferings that are to be encountered there and not wish to be liberated from it!

 

As I say, sometimes I think I’d be a lot better off if I had never heard about the Big Old Dream which is samsara and how we’re all lost in it. I’ve gone from being an ordinary fool (and there’s safety in numbers as regards ordinary fools, as I’m sure you would agree) to being a socially isolated fool, a fool no one wants to talk to, a fool no one can relate to. I can’t even relate to myself anymore, for god’s sake. My head’s completely tied up in knots. I’m suffering way worse than I used to be back when I was completely unaware that there was any such thing as samsara. Life’s gone from bad to worse. I’m not just saying that for effect – that’s the honest truth. Or at least it’s as honest and truthful as anything can be when you’re trapped in a self-perpetuating dream! Which is I suppose another way of saying that it’s not honest or truthful at all since neither of these things can exist in a dream. How can the dream be honest, how can the dreamer speak truth, when there is neither dream nor dream?

 

Sometimes I feel that I’m cracking up completely from thinking about all this samsara stuff so much. Well maybe I’m being a trifle over-dramatic there – primarily – I suppose – I just feel irritated with everything. I’m annoyed, if I were to be honest (which I can’t be, as I have already said). And when I look around me and see everyone enjoying themselves (as far as I can tell, at any rate) whilst being completely unaware that they are dreaming, it really annoys the fuck out of me. It really pisses me off. That’s just plain unfair, in my book – it’s as if they are actually being rewarded for their ignorance, whilst I have to go around feeling permanently at odds with myself…

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *