the real game is out there, around you.
people think the truth is their own personal drama. could be your ambitions, desires, humiliations, sicknesses, anguish, delights and so on. everyone has their personal drama - it is the brick in the bottom of their bag, which they will only tell to trusted friends. it is their consuming preoccupation.
people will talk superficially, but inside they know what the real issue is - the one they think about constantly.
eg. one person will have lingering and consuming desires to prove they are better than some others whom they seek to see humiliated. another will have an illness which causes frustration and pain. another will be obsessed with feelings of unworthiness, another by guilt, another by shame, another by hatred, and another by love.
these are the games we play out in our mind, in our life, and on forums. when asked what is the truth for them, they will point to their consuming issue.
you should all be aware of the teaching story of the man hanging by a ripping branch over a cliff - enemy above, and lions below. then he sees a ripe strawberry next to him, and eats it - delicious!
or the story of the old man who on returning to his hut in the woods, finds a robber inside. feeling sorry for the robber as he has no possessions, he takes off his clothes and gives them to him. then he sits outside and watches the rising moon, saying "I wish I could have given him this moon".
our obsessions glaze across our world like cataracts. we are so preoccupied that we fail to notice the world is passing by.
Camus once stood at the shore line, thinking his thoughts and idly watching children playing. he picked up a small stone - it was wet underneath, and when the wetness touched his skin, he woke up - the world broke through, and the stone stopped him. he called it existentialism.
illness can break through, and make us aware of something outside our mind - our body. having children can break through as we focus on them. a lover can break through, a job can break through. But only till the illness becomes part of our obsession, children become self-extensions and preoccupations, lovers cause consuming thoughts of pleasure and pain, a job becomes an identity. all these things only work at first, when they break through our 'shell'.
we can't remove ourselves totally from this mental and emotional prison - they are the chosen and un-chosen stuff of our lives. but we can know they will pass, they are only fleeting clouds across the landscape that is always around us.
entering into that landscape is the beginning of the real game. being able to see it, while we pass by in our clouds of obsession. that is the real game. look at the little things around you - the string hanging from the picture frame, the stain on the coffee cup, the ruffle at the end of the shoe lace, the colour of a wall, the sounds of a car driving by - millions of little doorways.
when enough have been taken, and our personal dramas are seen for what they are, then we can begin the real game - the realisation of who we are, where we are, why, and the mystery of impermanence.
