Around the Campfire, Book 3
Tall Tales from the Dreamtime
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Within a far-away galaxy, there is a revolving planet far bigger than this Earth, completely covered in water. The whales there are massive behemoths compared to our much smaller earthly ones, and far more advanced on the evolutionary scale than the human species we might typically encounter at the supermarkets, voting booths, political rallies, temples and churches, or on social media, which is, more often than not, all of the aforementioned.
Within the realm of possibilities, I have been traveling to this distant planet — don’t ask me how. I can explain a couple of things, but I won’t even venture a guess at that. Though time and space seem real enough to us while we ply our trades and charades in dreamland, they can serve no meaningful purpose on this voyage, and thus whoever sails this boat with me today has already arrived before we have even departed.
Those who have accomplished the breathless state through diligence in recognition and surrender, those who have no trace of resistance lingering in any of their fibers or files, they are the ones who make good companions on the tour craft as we delve below the tranquil alien surface to see what lurks, what blushes, what astonishes, and what mirrors its joy through the waves to infinity as we lose ourselves in the folds of its welcome.
Emanating from all directions, we’ve been listening to a rare and captivating water music, the kind that replaces the dull grainy fluids in the neural canals with some sublime silky nectar, compassionately obliterating all causal seeds, and rendering the perfect bliss of impersonal liquidity a palpable reality.
Abandoning all hope and fear, those humble enough to enter here drift mindlessly along as currents of subtle sea sounds and beguiling fragrances, permeated through and through by a rainbow radiance of glad illumination beyond the ken of mortal men (though perhaps secretly familiar to mortal women, even if they speak little of it).
Whatever the case, when faced with our own oceanic face before we were ever born, to which words then could we possibly resort? Silence has its nuances. Below the surface, we hear with our whole being, as silence sifts through our fluttering gills, enveloping us in its profound dominion.
Within the enormity of this watery domain, there is no place for our anxious ambition to gain as much as a futile foothold. Immersed in the natural molecules of consciousness itself, the generous boon of the grander imagination, we fish have ceased our search for water, and now glide serenely in the prior freedom of non-dwelling, the selfless enjoyment of rivers perpetually emptying into the sea, released of all impediments.
I record this journal now during the super-dry drought times, when water has become a precious though fast-dwindling commodity. Even as I fill the water bowls for the honey bees around the Crepe Myrtle blossoms, the water quickly evaporates. I’d rather not even talk about the oceans — when they die, so do we. When we die, perhaps we will take a collective journey to that water planet of huge wise whales. There, we may become like krill, moving about in great masses, waiting meals for the great gods swimming joyously towards us from the measureless depths below.
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1.
We’re living in a time when even the sky people open their windows and look down, amazed. This is the time when human beings find their dreams more realistic than their waking lives, which are also dreams. In their waking dreams, which are their lives, what they fear emerges from their own imagination.
It assumes a life of its own, like an old dream wearing new garments, mind-woven in fear factories, coalescing around a matrix which has no actual substance, as in dreams which dissolve when the dog barks and sleeping eyes flutter open, heart thumps, but there’s nobody there.
In whatever custom-fashioned and transient universe one momentarily appears to exist within, fantasies of interpretation on perception still colorfully parade down the neural boulevard in a caravan called “Endless”.
The number of views one might entertain about any or all of it are as numerous as grains of sand on an infinite shore, though employing the mind to comprehend the mind itself just adds delusion to delusion. That is, attempting to figure things out with the human intellect merely compounds one’s own delusion, in turn only spawning further delusion.
Nor does it cease at that. Accordingly, it is called “Samsara” by those who favor that particular verbal description for the peculiar octave we collectively resonate at here in this sizzling psycho-physical circus attraction called “the world.”
2.
There, by the crumbling banks of an ancient river, an early dusk sky was still ablaze with the glowing embers of the dying day. I saw you hunched over the burning funeral ghats, inhaling the smoky perfume of charred flesh and bone like a macabre dope fiend, then go drunkenly staggering through the sewer-lined streets of the night-time town, brazenly juggling flaming batons of birth and death like some crazy carnival clown on a grisly spree.
Behold, in the temples and shrine rooms your devotees are offering gilded gifts at the makeshift altars of their salvific superstitions, but I can see you, Devi, and I know that you’re only doing your job, so no praise or blame will escape my lips, just get on with it now: this world is dry tinder, and you wield the match.
3.
In the aftermath of the inferno, boatloads of souls are disembarking, typically looking a bit singed and dazed. Some of them may try to pray, others might want to curse. They stare back and forth at each other — something’s familiar, but still hard to sort. Eventually Her deputies show up, silent and smiling, to wheel them away before the next group sails into port.
A few imagine they know what to expect: streets of gold for the righteous and lawful, while for the rest, seven descending levels of awful. They read their bible, were sure of the facts, but they were wrong, it is nothing like that. Those ideas and beliefs, like hope and fear, are among the props that get left behind. Nobody expects what they actually find — to cut to the chase, we get our own mind. Welcome to yourself, your own just reward. If you think it’s unfair, take it up with your Lord!
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It’s April in the endless drought, but in my mind I am at the water’s edge. Here in the desert, mere proximity grants the blessing of anticipation — more thrilling itself than the actual thing. Like the body I inhabit and the thoughts I mistake for mine, that thing itself — whatever the experience, person, place, or event — is transitory, and so to be regarded as I begin to wade out deeper and deeper into this ephemeral liquidity.
Eventually the cold water rises to my shoulders. In a chilly spasm, I shiver something out of me, maybe fear, maybe regret, maybe an obsolete identity. It ripples into oblivion’s welcoming vastness, and I become very still. Everything has slowed down, and there are long spaces between breaths. This intriguing spaciousness pulls me into myself. Years, whole lifetimes pass like April breezes within an immense emptiness. I was the life that swam before land, and now I’m the ghost of moisture.
We all learned how the desert gradually swallowed up every drop of water, leaving only the mirage we now take for the sea. As it was, the desert only mirrored our ravenous consumption. We saw what was coming but merely shrugged and continued indulging our selfish appetites, cocooned in hopeful lies. Here, I can no longer deceive myself, so at last I inhale and go under.
It’s another world, though there is no other. All compounded phenomena dissolve into their source, but some retain a sort of shadowy existence as memory fragments of the forgotten days, and even this atrocious desert which we inherited from the old ones seems more and more like a distant dream, though when I surface and emerge, this water world will be the dream, and I will still be thirsty.
I want to be done with dreaming, with deserts, with thirst. I am sick of complaint, we did this to ourselves. It’s Springtime, but no rain falls to nourish the dry crust of wasteland where I stand and dream of water. Lines and lyrics from the old songs sift through the dry and airy vacancy of my own mind. That vanished life, the time before the monstrous deserts — how poignant now to recall the impossible luxury of a simple glass of cool clear water, and though it’s April here in an endless drought, in my mind I am at the water’s edge.
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The woman standing over me exclaimed “Stay awake, you don’t want to miss this!” I opened my eyes. It took a while for them to work. Things aren’t like they used to be. They hurt more now, and start-up takes longer. Where was I? Who was this barking woman?
Gradually, I recognized the inside of a cabin, and as I glanced out the window I could see the Earth ball swiftly receding in the distance. You were still asleep and dreaming next to me. Our little dog was curled up on the soft blanket you remembered to grab at the last minute.
She was now looking up at me accusingly, as if all of this was somehow my sneaky fault — the arrival of the craft, the invitation, the planets speeding by the big window as we plunged into quantum hyper-space.
What could I say that she would understand? That the Existentialists were both half-right and half-wrong, that nothing is as it seems, that she should thank us for the blanket and take responsibility for her own happiness? Instead, I chose to be silent and just stare out the window as we entered some kind of shimmering worm hole, vanished from the previous material dimension, and began our next grand adventure in earnest, together.
You were starting to shift in your chair and rouse from the trance, and when you finally became fully conscious, you handed me the dog, stood up, walked into the kitchen and made some coffee. I was hoping that you would make two cups. You did. It was good!
I remarked, “Even though the course of existence may be wobbly, and even though things seldom work out as planned, there is still so much to be grateful for, like those ordinary little things which tend to go unappreciated as we zoom through the multiverse, making new friends and collecting great memories on the way.”
Here, in that timeless realm where night doesn’t necessarily follow day, you yawned, because that’s what you do until the coffee kicks in, and of course our dog yawned too, because yawns are so contagious. Soon the whole immense cabin was collectively yawning in a symphony of oxygen.
That was a sign that the time had finally come to close the book for now and kiss goodnight. Someone had kindly left the night light on in the hallway, and the door slightly ajar. Nobody had to explain to us, we already knew: tomorrow would be a big day!
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Overnight the mushrooms had grown to such enormous proportions that their circular hoods blocked out the very sky. When the people came out of their houses in the dim morning light, they were paralyzed with fright and bewilderment. Nobody could account for what had happened, neither the scientists, priests, or television personalities had an answer for the startling development. A kind of melancholy descended over the populace, a sad nostalgia for the days of old when mushrooms knew their place.
Eventually a few intrepid and enterprising individuals cut into one of the mushrooms and then painstakingly carved a spiral staircase within the stalk all the way up to the very top. Once they finally broke through the cap, they were amazed to see swarms of dragonflies as big as jumbo jets flitting from mushroom to mushroom as far as the eye could see. What a tale they now had to tell!
When they at last returned to the land down under, the people below seemed indifferent to what the explorers had to share. Apparently hundreds, if not thousands, of years had passed while they were off on their adventure. Humans had been forced by circumstances to become their own light source. Many had become telepathic, and developed other latent powers that had always lain dormant within the human psycho-physical mechanism.
War had become obsolete, along with any previous national boundaries or religious predjudices. In the course of events, people had realized their essential unity, and set aside the old grudges, fears, and ignorance. They had learned to be thankful for the advent of the immense mushrooms, and had even named that first fateful day “Fungus Friday” to celebrate the grace of that evolutionary push.
Just so, as mysteriously as they had once appeared, the mushrooms gradually disintegrated, leaving a clear and sparkling sky view for the first time in ages. It was as if they had accomplished their mission, and were no longer needed. Nevertheless, the gigantic dragonflies still roamed the heavens, and they certainly were a sight to behold!
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The river that once flowed here dried up long ago. The reason doesn’t matter. Things change, what more needs saying? We’re standing in a long broken highway of stones and boulders, all baking in the sizzling ambience of another summer scorch. We could make up a convoluted story about how we got to this moment in the midst of timelessness, but why bother? We don’t even know what or where we really are, even with all of our intricate narratives.
Just so, the river bed is silent. Is it sleeping, dreaming? Are we sleepwalkers following an empty stream in this part of the dream? To the animal eye, rocks are mere rocks, but here is an interesting secret: open, aware spaciousness without name or any limit. Likewise, every stone is consciousness itself in its temporary rock suit. If we have learned to be quiet, we can enter into anything, even any stone. Let’s do it now.
Within this rock world, which is not anything like we may have imagined in our story, everyone is mysteriously present. Moreover, there is no greater or lesser — we are all equal here. Remember when we used to long for more, different, better? Not here. We want for nothing, require nothing, have no need to connive, construe, cheat or steal, lie or exaggerate, crave, starve, hate, or war. It’s so relaxing to discard all of that and just be. What a great relief to leave the hungry animal suit by the river bank and bathe in this impersonal rock serenity!
A thought may occur that we should do it more often, but thoughts have no substance, mind has no shape to grasp. Below the ground, the trees which populate the lush land are sharing their observations in a harmonious language which every rock understands. Above, a warm breeze brushes over the stones. Somewhere there is a great sigh, as if the whole world was gratefully relaxing on the seventh day, the final day.
At a certain time, the water may return, but we’re in no hurry. We’re the rock of ages — we look neither forward or back. We are light slowed down to an easy pace. We’re the open, aware space of vast unqualified emptiness, with nothing to crow about or regret. When the river flows again, we will gleam and sparkle in the liquid transparency of pure delicious wetness, and because we are water beings too, we will wear down every stone.
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The master teacher sat before the gathered students on the first day of the meditation retreat. After a few moments of silence, he opened a book and read a poem by Ryokan: “Like the little stream making its way through the mossy crevices I, too, quietly turn clear and transparent.”
After another period of silence, he asked aloud: “Who can say something about such clarity?”
One person spoke up: “A temple bell struck at dawn.”
The master nodded.
A second student offered: “The first morning bird song.”
“Indeed!” replied the teacher.
Another voice joined in: “Pure water from a high mountain spring.”
“Very true,” said the master.
Another: “The starry sky on a cool and cloudless desert night.”
“Ah yes,” the teacher replied.
“The eyes of a newborn child,” chimed in another.
“Certainly, all very clear,” the master responded.
“Anyone else?” he asked.
After a moment, a voice replied, “Awake in the space between thoughts.”
At that, the master closed his eyes. Silence again descended on the assembled devotees. It was as if both teacher and students were settling into that clear and transparent spaciousness, the awake awareness at the source of consciousness itself. Clearing, clearing, clearing, clear.
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I lay back and close my eyes while the mystery parade marches by on little silent sand feet. I can barely catch a random word or phrase — the Sandman is beckoning persuasively, and I am fading fast.
Whatever happens next may just as well not have, for all I can remember. Slowly, I am awakening in what appears to be a desert. My sleeping bag is nearly buried in sand blown over by last night’s desert wind. The sky is mute, the ambient air is still fresh and slightly chilled.
I rise and brush the sand off. 360 degree view of sand, with no distinguishing landmarks to interrupt the tawny parched expanse — how did I get here? An unremembered past can render no help now.
Rolling up my bag, I find a liter jug of water tucked within. As I raise it to my parched lips to take a drink, I hear an insistent disembodied voice: “Work the program, work the program!” Am I in a holographic simulation, or is this what’s actually happening? To the brain, it doesn’t seem to make a difference — it’s all real.
Around the Campfire, Book 3 