(© HKU Press, 1965)I don't believe that there is anyone to wake up! Sentient beings are not there at all as such - as the Buddha pointed out in the Diamond Sutra, so how can they wake up? And what is there to wake up? They are concepts or thought-forms, objects - and objects cannot either go to sleep or awaken! What nonsense all that doctrine must be! It all begs the question, for phenomenally they are appearances, and noumenally they are not asleep.
The subjective element of mind is awake, and always has been, untouched by any concept such as that of time. But the dreamer seems to become identified in split-mind with his own dreamed object. So the identified personal dreamer always has to wake up: it is always the individualised dreamer which awakes - not his dreamed objects. There can be no awakening for dreamed objects in any kind or degree of dreaming.
Dreamer, Awake!
Living is dreaming too. The 'dreamer' becomes identified with his object and snores loudly. 'He' and his objects dream and dream, in which every act of the objects is in-formed by the dreamer. In the degree of such in-forming by the dreamer the dreamed objects 'exist'. But they are totally dreamed, totally in-formed; therefore they partake totally of the 'existence' of the in-forming dreamer.
In fact, however, the appearance that is dreamed is nothing but the source thereof which is dreaming. But it is only the in-forming source which can awaken: the objects as such have never slept, and cannot awaken; of themselves they have never been at all, for they cannot have any nature of their own. Nor has the in-forming mind of either dream any nature of its own, for mind, whole or split, is non-entity.
Note: Objects are purely imagined in all kinds of dreams. They are ropes seen as snakes, in the old analogy, when even the ropes were never there non-phenomenally. That is all we are as objects.
