“Where does all the running after wealth, fame, knowledge, and spirituality take us to? Where does the running take us? Where does our ambitious running mind take us to? When I think of this, I remember a dream…

“I have never forgotten this dream. When I used to dream, I saw this not once, but again and again. In the dream there was a ladder. The top of the ladder was disappearing far into the clouds. It seemed as if the ladder would lead right to the sky. And, in a great desire to reach the sky, I would start climbing. Even to go beyond a single step was very difficult: breathing took so much effort, and my forehead was dripping with sweat. But because of the desire to reach the sky, I kept climbing. Slowly, slowly breathing got harder and harder, and the heart was almost giving up. But then I realized that I was not climbing alone: my ladder was not the only one. There were so many other ladders just like mine, and so many people climbing those ladders. Looking at them, a great sense of competition would arise, and I would start climbing even faster. The race to climb that ladder became such a total effort.

“But the end of the dream was always the same: there would be a rung beyond which there was no ladder. And looking back down, I realized that no ladder existed there either! And then the fall began, down from that great height, and worse even than the effort of climbing. It felt as though death itself was coming. And then death came – and the shock of that death would wake me from my sleep.

“That dream gave me a glimpse of a great truth. And then our whole so-called life seemed like an expansion of the dream. Does the dream not show a vision of the end of all the running that we do our whole life? Does death not come at the end of every race that we are running? What else does death mean? – doesn’t it mean that the ladder has no more rungs to it? Death is an end to all the running. Death is an end to the future. Death is when no more possibilities are possible. What is death, if not a fall from the height that the running mind takes one to? Where there is ambition, there is death: that ambition may be for wealth, or for religion, or hedonism, or for spirituality. And where there is ambition, there are dreams.

“Truth is where there is no ambition – when the rushing mind is not there. And life is there: a life which has no death.