Only an object can be bound. Subject can neither be bound, nor freed. Hurt, nor flattered. Touched, nor neglected. I cannot possibly be an object. Ever. Anywhere. In any circumstances.
I can only be subject, always, everywhere, in every circumstance. But, as subject, there is no always. For there is no time. There is no where, for there is no space. There are no circumstances, for there is no movement. I am only eternal subject, and neither in eternity nor in apparent time, could I be known. Nor could there be anyone to know me. For no such entity as I could ever be.
I, subject, cannot see, hear, feel, smell, taste or know. For only an object can have organs or attributes. And there is no one, and no thing, to be sensorially apprehended.
The apparent universe is a dream structure. Informed by subject. And therefore can be nothing but I-subject. For that reason, nothing that happens therein, can touch or reach the subject, which it is.
Both seer and seen, hearer and heard, injurer and injured, are subject. Not as dualities, but as unities. The man who hates me, and hits me, and the me that is hated and hit, are both I. Not as two, but as one.
I who hate him and hit him in return, and he whom I hate and hit back, are both I. For every possible phenomenal manifestation is informed by I-subject. And every possible phenomenal manifestation is objective, whereas I am totally devoid of any element of objectivity.
Then I am pure subjectivity? Indeed, no. Subjectivity is a state. Some kind of conceptualized condition, if not an entity. And therefore an object.
I am nothing of the kind. No thing of any kind whatever. I cannot be conceived or stated. Supposed or suggested. Indicated or known. As that I am, I am not. Yet there can never be a moment in which I can be anything but I. Nor you anything but I. Nor the beetle anything but I.
I am eternally awake, and I am a non-entity.
There has never been a hen who laid an egg, but vast numbers of eggs have been laid by hens. There has never been a man who wrote a book, but vast numbers of books have been written by men. No body has ever done anything, but innumerable actions have been performed.
Being, or living numinally, subjectively, is not ceasing to objectivize, for that is the functional aspect of subject. But ceasing to objectivize oneself, and thereby ceasing to regard one’s objects as independent entities, as other than an aspect of oneself as their subject; that of course implies that one is profoundly aware that one is not at all as any conceptual object, even a being. That integral absence, both phenomenal, and numinal, is the necessary awareness of “is as it is”-ness, commonly called awakening.
The sought is the seeker. The observed, is the observer thereof. That which is heard, is the hearer of what is heard. The odor is who inhales it. The tasted is who savors what he tastes. That which is touched is the feeler of it. The thought is the thinker of the thought. In brief, the sensorially perceived, is the perceiver whose senses perceive. And no perceiver of any sense perception, or performer of any action, is to be found.
Let us take an example: you enter a restaurant, you see a table, you hear people talking. You taste what is on your plate. You smell the aroma of the wine in your glass. You feel the knife and fork in your hands. And you know that you are having lunch.
All this you sensorially perceive, and I have just pointed out to you, that all this only took place in your mind, whose senses appeared to perceive it. And therefore, that none of it actually happened, as a series of external events, experienced by you. And finally, I have stated that you yourself, as an independent entity, whose senses appeared to experience these events, cannot be found anywhere.
How can this be? Let us recall the answer of the sixth patriarch, Hui Neng, to the monks who were arguing whether it was the flag, or the wind, that was flapping. He pointed out to them, that it was their mind, only, that was responsible, and they recognized at once that he had understood the truth. As Huang Po said, “there are no sentient beings to be delivered by the Tatargata. If even Self has no objective existence, how much less has other than Self? Thus neither Buddha, nor sentient beings exist objectively.”
There is no such thing as a dream or a mirage, an illusion, an hallucination. The dream as a thing in itself, is not such. There is a phenomenon, an apparant dreaming, just as there are ten-thousand phenomena, due to apparent seeing, apparent feeling, smelling, tasting, apparent knowing, but the objects apparently perceived by the senses, are not entities at all. There is only a perceiving of apparent objects moving in apparent space in the apparent seriality of time.
In daily life, the apparently other sentient beings, who sensorially perceive the same phenomena that we perceive, synchronized in the same apparent time, are themselves also phenomena. Mutually perceived or mutually not perceived. But there is nothing but the perceiving. As in a dream, there is nothing but the dreaming. If the dreamer awakes, the dreaming ends. And there is no question regarding the beings, or other phenomena in the dream, as to whether they are still pursuing their dream activities, or are awake also.
So in living, the awakened does not consider whether their fellows in the living dream are awake, or carrying out their living dream. For they now know that neither these, nor that one of them that appears to be themself, was anything but a phenomenal object, of the supposed dreamer. In both cases, the apparent reality of the event dreamed, has disappeared forever.
Where second-degree dreaming is concerned, this is obvious to all of us. For we were the supposed dreamer, and we are now awake. But in the first-degree, or living dream, which is essentially identical, we have difficulty in seeing it. For we are still participants in our dream, and as such, we are unaware that we are being dreamed. However in our first degree, or living dream, we have the possibility of becoming aware of this. And then each of us who does so can recognize that they are not the apparent entity in their particular dream that they believe themselves to be, but the apparent dreamer of their own dream. That recognition too is called Awakening.
But they cannot then awaken the others in their late dream. For they were only the objects, and were not entities in their own right, any more than the person was in the dream.
Therefore, each dreamer can only awaken from their own dream, from the dream in which they themself participated, as themself. For even if their living friends appeared in their dream, they did so only as their objects, which is, as they happened to visualize them. Others, therefore, are nothing but our objects, as we know them. They are not entities in their own right, and they only appear to be such, each as dreamer of their own dream. That is, subjectively.
Awakened, however, each dreamer finds that they were the apparent subject of all the objects in their late dream of living. But now is still not an entity. For they no longer exist as an object, except in the living dream of others.
They are the pure unconditioned subjectivity. By means of which they were dreamed. As all other apparently sentient beings are dreamed. And whose apparent sentiency is nothing but that.
When the dreamed awakened from their sleeping dream, they were never the dreamer, but was themself still being dreamed. There has never been a dreamer at all. There is just a phenomenon of dreaming.
That, then, is what the living dream is: an objectivization in mind, in which the apparent entities are not such. And whose dreamer has never existed as an object, and can never be an object in their own right. For there could never be any such thing.