Suppose you dreamed last night about being a newborn infant. In the dream, you grew up. Later on, you saw your aunt get old, fall into sickness, and die.

In this dream, you came to believe and feel that your life was unfolding within the temporal domain bounded by birth and death. You felt, above all, that you had a life to lead and that you wanted to live it well. (Perhaps–to confirm this belief–you began reading about eudaimonia in classical philosophy.)

Therefore, in this dream, you felt staked to the idea that you were real, and, in turn, that your life was real, that the world–“the arena” in which your life was to take place–was real, and that time–the “parameters” between birth and death–was real. You were very staked to all of these concepts–not the least to the basic one (i.e., the sense of being a separate self) upon which all the others were delicately hanging. You made love to these concepts, so to speak.

And then what happened?

When you woke up from the dream, you realized that everything you dreamed about was actually unreal: birth, aging, illness, and death; the existence of a separate self with a life to lead; the sense of doership; other beings; space, time, and causation. Because “all this” was actually unreal, you knew that none of it really mattered.

At this point, something even more amazing took place: you felt that you, the one in the waking state, were (are) definitely real! And, moreover, you felt that the world, others, space, time, and your life were thus also, and obviously, real!

Yet what if the you in the waking state is no more real than the you that appeared in the dream state? Indeed, what if the waking state is just another kind of dream?

If the waking state you isn’t actually real, then you don’t really have a life to lead. Perhaps, your life in the waking state is just as unreal as that in the waking state you. Moreover, because you (the waking state you) are unreal, it’s no longer possible to confer reality upon the world, time, space, and so on. In which case, “all of this,” including and starting with you, is likewise unreal.

If this is true, then everything occurring within the waking state dream, being unreal, doesn’t ultimately matter either. This is not nihilism (the latter is an ego conception) but boundless freedom, the freedom experienced by true saints and sages.

“Then is nothing really real?” Yes (no-thing is really real) and no: the only “thing” that’s really real is awareness, or being, or nameless, silent fullness, and “this” has never actually become anything, including and most notably a separate self. Then to say that “nothing ultimately matters” is to say that nameless, silent fullness is always only itself, is never perturbed, and is absolutely desireless. Abiding as itself, it is peace.

There is, in truth, no dream or any thing in it; there’s only this abiding, wordless, thingless reality.