Here and now

For most people, life is a mixed bag. The longer one lives, the clearer it gets that there are inevitably events and conditions that conspire in a unique way for each one of us to result in an overall condition that seems unsatisfactory. The Buddha noted this in the first noble truth.

However the amount of suffering that is generated is dependent on how identified one is with oneself as a separate body/mind entity. This suffering manifests as resistance to a condition. A shift in perspective can loosen this identification and the suffering correspondingly drops. The shift in perspective happens when one reaches the realization that “life is a dream”. External conditions are an illusion that appear to be real, when in fact they are only relatively real.

To quote the Diamond Sutra,

So I tell you - Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

One wakes up to the fact that life is a dream at the end of life as one transitions to post-death states. However waking up when one is alive is really the purpose of life. In a sense, if you can experience life as a “lucid dream” wherein you wake up during the dream process, then you no longer are trapped by the dream. In fact, a natural playfuless emerges and you find you can do anything and are not a victim to arbitrary circumstances that are unchangeable.