ONE: Hello! How are you getting on?
TWO: Pretty rapidly, I think. I have understood a lot recently, and the old ego is getting slimmer every day. One of these fine days I hope to get rid of it altogether.
ONE: You are modest.
TWO: Why?
ONE: You call that getting on rapidly. I call it a miracle.
TWO: How so?
ONE: To reduce, or to get rid of, something that does not exist sounds to me like a chemically-pure miracle.
TWO: It does not exist really, of course; we all know that. The Buddha and his buddhies made that clear. But to us, and as far as we are concerned, it is there all right.
ONE: The Lord Buddha and all his bodhisattvas not only made it clear, they also explained to us how and why it could not exist. How, then, can it be there all right?
TWO: Let us say that it appears to exist. We are thoroughly aware of it.
ONE: We are thoroughly aware of our dream-life when we are dreaming it. Does it exist? We are thoroughly aware of a mirage in the desert. Does that exist? We are thoroughly aware of every mental image we make. Do they exist?
TWO: I see what you mean. It is only an idea.
ONE: Just so, technically referred to - in order to avoid confusion, or perhaps to make it? - as a concept.
TWO: Can you tell me how such a tiresome, foolish, accursed concept ever arose?
ONE: Tiresome and accursed it may be when we are seeking to go beyond it, but foolish it certainly is not.
TWO: How so?
ONE: We may assume it was the first concept we ever had. When first there arose awareness of form, of perceptions, of feelings, impulses, and awareness of awareness itself, known in the East as the skandhas, that awareness became identified with that of which it had become aware. Immediately it assumed attributes and became conditioned. That was the 'I-concept'. Quite inevitable. Anything but foolish. A necessary element of the life-dream subject to time.
TWO: Necessary to evolution too, I suppose?
ONE: That is an element in the life-dream - perfectly imaginary, like the rest.
TWO: If it was an advance, progress, what is wrong with that?
ONE: Nothing whatsoever. As long as you are content with your dream, it is the very axis of that dream.
TWO: But we are all striving to wake up.
ONE: Those who have that urge must strive to wake up.
TWO: Where does the urge come from?
ONE: Reality.
TWO: Their reality?
ONE: There is only reality.
TWO: Why should that concept be particularly false?
ONE: It is not. All concepts are equally false - in the sense of unreal. But if you succeeded is abandoning all concepts but that one - you would still not wake up. That is the concept that keeps you asleep.
TWO: I have been denying its existence as reality, but not as a reality in my dream. If I can succeed in denying its existence in any form whatsoever - shall I wake up?
ONE: Even denial implies an assumption, if only an assumption of something that is unreal.
TWO: So what?
ONE: Of something erroneously conceived nothing whatever that is true can be said.
TWO: So what? So what?
ONE: Stop talking. Act.
TWO: What action can be taken?
ONE: Make the inexistence of an ego a living reality.
TWO: But how?
ONE: How? By non-action, of course. By understanding that what is not - is not. Only as reality can you act, and the action of reality is non-action.
