‘Validate the thought-created ego, validate the thought-created ego, validate the thought-created ego,’ my mind barked at me, like some kind of tyrannical monomaniacal monster. My mind was vicious, pure vicious. It was full of vitriol. What the hell is wrong with this crappy old mind of mine, I sometimes wonder. What’s got into it? There are an awful lot of songs on YouTube either called ‘Samsara’ or about ‘Samsara’, I’ve noticed recently. One song is called ‘Samsara – the cycle begins’. Another, ‘Strangers in Samsara’. I like that one – Strangers in Samsara. Very good. Or of course it could be someone you know. That would work too. And as for ‘The Cycle Begins’, well that’s a bright and breezy notion, to be sure. Somewhat incongruous too, of course. It’s like having Christmas every day, which you could if you wanted to. Nothing to stop you. We could celebrate every moment as the very beginning of the Cycle of Samsara and this would feel rather momentous. I can imagine trumpets blowing and flags waving wildly. Oh my god – Samsara has started. The cycle has begun. How stirring. Or it would be if it had a beginning. When there is no beginning and no ending that puts a rather different perspective on things. That’s a bit more drab, I would say. That’s a bit more humdrum. Somewhat lacking in appeal. It’s really just ‘blah’. ‘Blah, blah, blah’. Something which you are repeating that doesn’t deserve to be repeated. Something that really doesn’t warrant being repeated. It didn’t start and it won’t end. No flags, no fanfares. Nice try however – it certainly has a ring to it. I’m afraid I’m rather far into this present cycle – very far into it in fact. So far into it that I fear I’ll never get out. My mind runs on and on in the background. I’m so sickened by that old mind of mine. What’s the bloody point of it, after all? ‘Strangers in Samsara’? How about that? Kind of like ‘Strangers in the Night’ only it’s ‘Samsara’ instead of ‘night’, if you take my meaning. If you get my drift. Which you undoubtedly do since is not a particularly subtle point that I’m making. Or even subtle at all, come to think of it. My mind is still on to me to validate the ego of course (it never stops) but at this stage it’s turned into some kind of maniacal but utterly meaningless refrain. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that Samsara sounds kind of exotic, kind of glamorous. It’s like an an expensive perfume. It is an expensive perfume – the ad men have already thought of that. When we see the adverts for it that transports us into a world that is so, so different from the one that we actually live in. Not to beat about the bush too much, it’s the world that we would be living in if we happened to be millionaires. Not only millionaires but good-looking millionaires into the bargain, and what could be better than that? That would transform everything you see – money and looks make the world magical, as we all know. We can but dream of course, we can but dream. Winning sounds sweetest to the ears of a poor old loser, isn’t that what Emily Dickinson says? Winning never sounded sweeter than it does to the ear of an inveterate, no-hope all-time loser and that’s a fact. I know she didn’t put it quite like that of course but it comes to the same thing. Ego-validation is a very seductive dream when our status is right down to the wire, when our status has hit rock bottom in a big way, and that’s Samsara in a nutshell. That’s what makes us run out and buy the perfume, expensive and horribly toxic as it no doubt is. What must it feel like to be a good-looking millionaire with lots of good-looking millionaire friends, that’s what I want to know? That surely is a dream worth chasing. You’d be walking on air, wouldn’t you? Or at least that’s what I imagine. Good old Samsara, right? What could be more tantalizing than that? You don’t know the meaning of the word ‘yearning’ until you are being tantalised by Samsara, I’m telling you. This all just goes to show what ridiculous pathetic assholes we really are of course. The fact that we think that Samsara is glamorous and that we make a perfume out of it. That’s how limited our thinking is, that’s how farsighted we are. That’s how superficial our culture is. Was there ever a civilisation as obnoxious as ours, I wonder? Was there ever? There’s no beginning and no end to it really, as I’ve already said. It never started and it’ll won’t stop. No matter how much you might wish that it would it won’t. No sir it won’t. You might be sickened to the very core – you probably are sickened to the very core – but it never is going to stop. It’s on repeat forever and that’s precisely what’s so bloody sickening about it…