Page 18 - The Pains of the False World

THE PAINS OF THE FALSE WORLD

red to the Hereafter, the life of this world resembles "the blink
of an eye," as in the following example:
Imagine that you are sitting happily by the banks of a ri-
ver one lovely spring day. Imagine that a light breeze makes
the air cool and refreshing. Can you hear the delightful sound
of the bubbling waters? Can you see the wonderful flowers,
each more lovely than the last? Imagine that you are talking
to a dear friend as you enjoy these beauties; imagine you are

smelling the pure scent of the flowers on the air and listening
to the sweet chirping of the birds. Imagine that as you are en-
joying all these sensations you then wake up and find your-
self lying in bed. In such a case, you would realize that
everything you imagined to be real was in fact nothing but a
d ream: a figment of your imagination, which suddenly eva-
porated.
Let us now imagine the same situation after you have wo-
ken up. Let us assume that you really are talking to a dear fri-
end, enjoying all those sights and sounds by the banks of a
sublime river.
If someone were to ask "which of the two would you pre-
fer?" after you had experienced both, you would of course
s a y, "the one after I had woken up." The reason is that what

goes on in our dreams remains in our dreams and benefits a
person nothing in real life. Nobody can seriously feel sorrow
at what he or she has lost in a dream since he or she knows
that these have no effect on real life. No matter how much de-
light a person takes in a dream, this can never give as much
pleasure as when he or she is awake and in the real world.

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