Salvation
The world is my dream. Every event and character that takes shape unfolds in the world of my own making. Thereby, every happiness that I seldom experience in fleeting moments and every sorrow that I endure on a daily basis are all part of the same illusion, of the same dream that seems unending. Taking a walk in the streets, on the campus, through the hallways, or right past the lobby, the cacophony of noises that leaks through in each and every room, noises emanating from a mass of beings separate from myself, are but the noises made by phantoms in the drama of my dream. Consequently, all my suffering, all the inconvenience I’ve had to endure for so long, has finally and once and for all been shown to be the machinations of an unending nightmare. How might one survive this hell? Can I survive this hell? It is easy. I have only to open my blind eyes and focus the hearing of my deaf ears, in order to recognize the unreality of this world. For all shapes that take hold of my consciousness, all emotions provoked in me, and all characters that oppress me, can never truly harm me, but can only frighten me, as one is temporarily frightened in a violent nightmare, and then realizes after waking that none of it ever happened. I can never be harmed in this world, only distressed. Therefore, true salvation is to recognize this dream for what it really is: an illusion and nothing else. To treat with suspicion the machinations of this dream world. To soberly arrest myself from the seductions of phenomena. In such a way, I can never be distressed, can be delivered from suffering, while I remain in my quiet and temporary existence in this dream. The world is a dream, and I must wake up from it as soon as possible. To recognize this world as pure illusion is to save oneself from the hell of other people.