Dear Friends,
I read that Chuang Chou (the Taoist) once said;
“Not only so. There is a great awakening, and then we shall know that all this (present experience) is a great dream. Fools, However regard themselves as awake now-so personal is their knowledge. It may be as a prince or it may be as a herdsman, but so sure of themselves! Both the Master (Confucius) and you are dreaming; And when I describe you as dreaming I am also dreaming. And these words of mine are paradoxical: That is the name for them. And a myriad of generations will pass before we meet a sage who can explain this, and when we meet him it will be the evening of our little day.”
If we are dreaming then it means that there is a great purpose to our being here. When we awake from the dream we will be enlightened from our dream. Our dream (lives) have meaning.
What meaning and to what end. There are as many answers to that question as there are askers. But to ask and ponder is close to getting it right. Perhaps the meaning… is to question the meaning. To live the lives we wish and fulfill the prerequisites of the dream. Maybe if the dream’s goals are not fulfilled we must re-enter the dream and try again. (Isn’t that close to what Buddhist’s and Hindu’s believe?)
But I ask you… How does you dream affect the other dreamers? Does the logical outcome of your actions improve the experience of the other dreamers or diminish the experience? We all have an effect on the experience of the others whether we admit it or not.
Coriolanus (Gaius Marcus) was a man who wanted the admiration of his fellows. But he disdained doing anything to bend to their needs. He was responsible almost single handedly for the taking of the Capital of Volscia, Corioli. Then turned the same day to attack the elite center of the Volscian relief Army. Smashed them and ran down, badly wounded, the survivors. He then refused any money, gold or booty from the ransacked city, except for a horse and clemency for a Volscian friend. That is where he got the surname “Coriolanus“.
He then ran for Consul… and lost. (Due to his arrogance). This turned him bitter. When he tried to get the People’s Tribunes ejected from the Senate during a time of famine… the people were incensed. They charged Coriolanus with usurpation. He answered the charges with such arrogance that the people were further ired and voted to exile Coriolanus. As a result he was ostracized from Rome fled to Volscia. From the head of a Volscian Army he rained ruin on Roman interests. After the war, he was murdered, by a partisan Volscian crowd, at a meeting to make account of his action’s, against the Romans, in the late war. His murderer’s then started a new war with Rome and died in it. A war in which Rome retook all the land Caius Marcius took from her… and avenged his murderer. The circle was complete. Plutarch compared the life of Coriolanus with Alcibiades.
Looking at this story from the perspective that we are all simply dreaming… We see that Coriolanus visited ruin on his brothers and sisters. Simply from a feeling of revenge. Although Coriolanus would have been livid were he treated the way he treated the Roman People he had no sense of irony that he should get revenge on people that he would have treated much harsher had he been in their position. He expected better treatment from others than he was willing to give.
His dream was short, violent, and he met a bad end. All because he held others to a different (Higher) standard than he held himself. (Except in war). He and many others paid the price for his nightmare.
There are many like him alive today. They only await the opportunity to avenge themselves on society for a slight that they give out daily… So personal is their knowledge…
