I was a tourist in Samsara, checking out all the famous sights, trying to get the very most out of the experience. Keen to get my money’s worth. No one wants to return from Samsara feeling that they have somehow failed to do all that there was to do. To do the other things that they were supposed to do. ‘What on earth were you thinking of?’ your imaginary audience will demand of you. ‘You mean you went to Samsara and you didn’t get to do the special thing?’ Special things are so special, aren’t there? We all want to do them, naturally enough. Can anyone blame us? That’s human nature, as everyone knows, and there’s no point in us getting all sniffy or snotty about it. Although getting all sniffy about it is human nature too, of course. It’s very natural. You are a tourist, doing your very best to stick to the itinerary, but you simply can’t take the pace. You are falling by the wayside, getting stuck in the doldrums, losing out on the experience.
And what an experience! Full of lies, full of enticements. ‘Bully the Robot Self’, that should be our motto. ‘Bully the robot self and make it do our will! Twist its arm behind its back and make it cry! Control it and manoeuvre it every step of the way!’ We all know we have to make the stupid Robot Self do our will. It’s fun to do that! It’s fun to bully the hell out of that stupid old Robot Self and make it hop and skip. We make it hop and skip, hop and skip, and then we abuse the hell out of it, no matter how it did. We’re going to abuse the hell out of it anyway, you see. No matter whether it obeys us or not we’re going to abuse the hell out of it – that’s where we get our kicks after all. We can’t get enough of it. That poor stupid old Robot Self will hate and despise itself like crazy after we have finished with it! Boy will it hate and despise itself…
What an experience, huh? What an amazing once-in-a-lifetime experience fabulous. A chance to feel that supreme buzz! We’d all like a bit of that, I can tell you, and it’s no good you pretending that you wouldn’t. You aren’t fooling anyone, least of all yourself! ‘Was that a real thing or was it just Samsara?’ you want to know. ‘Am I good or am I bad? Am I wise or a fool?’ It’s important to express oneself, or so I was always told. Communication, and so on. Use nuances, don’t be generic, don’t speak in cliches. Don’t use buzz-words. Entertain, but at the same time educate. A moral in every story. ‘What exactly are you trying to say?’ the guy asks you. You tell him. ‘Oh, I get what you mean now,’ he replies. That’s communication for you. The art of communication. It’s as simple as that. What’s not to understand? What an experience, right? Every picture paints a thousand stories.
The world is full of unkind mechanical energy. I don’t know if you have noticed that. It’s everywhere, it’s around every corner. It can get into your head. It will get right into you, you see if it doesn’t. It’ll mess with your head. That unkind mechanical energy it will have its fun though, won’t it? It wants to trash you. We mustn’t grumble, though. Indeed we mustn’t. We must let that old Robot Self do its thing. Indeed we must. ‘Strut your stuff, you robot self,’ we say, ‘Strut your stuff for all you’re worth.’ We’re nothing if not generous, you see, we’re nothing if not generous. A horn is blaring. You’re late – the tour bus is about to set off any minute! We hurry to get on, the driver berating us angrily. We board sheepishly – we don’t want to get left behind and miss out on the sights.
Exquisite times, of course. Exquisite, exquisite times. Times no man may remember – times of wonderment and joy. Our dreams are full of intimations of these times, are they not? Only they aren’t, of course. Intimations of such times are conspicuous by their absence. We never think to question their absence – the absence itself is absent, as all the cognoscenti know. The jolly old cognoscenti – what can we say about them? What characteristics can we credit them with? What habits and mannerisms might we imagine them to possess? These are the questions we always have to ask ourselves, are they not?
