On Setting Another Free.

Today is Christmas and traditionally, a gift is in order, from me to you. After reading, and digesting this post, you may come to question this opening introduction. The wisdom contained herein will shake you to the core and that may be the final straw that breaks your back of being imprisoned and never suspecting that you are. 

With that said, unwrap your gift by reading. It ain’t pudding but it may be delightful to the spiritual ear. And like anything sweet, that sensation is only possible by comparing it to sour.

“Subhūti, what do you think? You should not claim that the Tathāgata thinks, ‘I will save sentient beings.’ Subhūti, do not think such a thing. Why? There are in fact no sentient beings for the Tathāgata to save. If there were sentient beings for the Tathāgata to save, it would mean that the Tathāgata holds the notions of self, person, sentient being, and lifespan. Subhūti, when the Tathāgata says ‘I,’ there is actually no ‘ I.’ Yet immature beings take this to be an ‘I’. Subhūti, as far as immature beings are concerned, the Tathāgata says that they are not immature beings.”

“Then Subhūti addressed the Buddha, saying: ‘World-honored One if good sons and good daughters would like to arouse the aspiration for peerless perfect enlightenment, in what should they mentally abide, and how should they gain mastery over their thoughts?’ The Buddha said to Subhūti: ‘Good sons and good daughters who want to arouse the aspiration for peerless perfect enlightenment should think like this: ‘I will save all sentient beings.’ Yet when all sentient beings have been liberated, in fact, not a single sentient being has been liberated. And why not? Subhūti, if a bodhisattva holds the notion of a self, the notion of a person, the notion of sentient being, and the notion of lifespan, then she is not a bodhisattva. Why? Subhūti, there is actually no such a thing as peerless perfect enlightenment.’”—The Diamond Sutra

“In this world whose nature is like a dream, there is place for praise and blame, but in the ultimate Reality of Dharmakaya (the true mind) which is far beyond the senses and the discriminating mind, what is there to praise?”—The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra

“When there is no clinging to any of those three periods (e.g., past, present and future) they may be said not to exist. When memory and reverie are cut off, past and future cease to exist. The present does, of course, exist in a firmer sense than either of the others, but it is not present except when thought of in relation to past and future. The state of mind of an illumined person is independent of time-relationships.”—Zen Master Hui Hai, known as the Great Pearl:

“Life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves.”—Bill Hicks

“The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.”—William Shakespeare.

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like a snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like a furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation,
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”—As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII [All the world’s a stage], William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, Jaques to Duke Senior

Comment: If life is just a dream, then ambition is just one Netflix episode of an infinite series of other dreams, all delivered virtually to virtual beings who don’t exist at all, except as what we make of ourselves, given the deck of cards we have been dealt.  We have never been separated from the indefinable wholeness that joins us all together in Moksha—The divine source of infinite unity. When finally attained, and we are free of samsaric misery, then we wonder the purpose of the dream? Why, of course, to awaken. There is no waking up to another previous awakening. True Nirvana comes, only, by traveling the path called, “Saṃsāra”—The seeming, never-ending dream of being enslaved within another dream called “imprisoned by our thoughts and actions.”

By many vantage points, the entirety of life is a dream, which we all see as real. And it isn’t! It’s all an illusion when removed from the matter of comparison, which is not possible—except when we awaken from the dream and understand we (impossible to define apart from the united whole of Moksha) are moving to another dimension of the infinite, “compared to what room.”

So I end my gift with an insight: Life is just a dream. Merry Christmas, from the spiritual ocean.