"So what are you trying to say, Dzogvi?" I asked.

" The word NOUN  is an abstraction", he said. " The word has no separate, palpable existence. It only points to the reality it represents. The reality is always the very thing pointed to."

" Try to be a little less abstract, " I said. "Please."

Dzogvi held up the cat.. "What is this?", he demanded.

"It is a CAT, of course, " I replied.

"Wrong!" he shouted, throwing the cat in my face. " THIS is a CAT."

"Now do you feel the difference between the noun CAT and the REAL CAT?" he asked.

"Okay, " I said, rubbing my scratched nose, but your point is ..."

"Do not be dense, Pisant, " he said. " Could I throw a Soul in your face?

" I've never seen a soul, " I said. " Its a spiritual thing."

"THING?" he said. " A real thing is something that points only to itself. It represents nothing but itself. It is not a symbol or a representation. It just IS."

"Just IS WHAT?" I asked.

"You are beginning to see." Dzogvi said. " A soul is not a what.
it is not a thing, a noun, that can be thrown or felt, because it is a verb. It is an event, a continuing event."

" So Is my soul eventing instead of being?" I asked.

"Your question shows the root of the problem:   you think in words, which are themselves symbols which point to other symbols which point to other symbols, but never are themselves real."

" Sort of like standing between two full-length mirrors and seeing

myself reflected over and over to infinity. Is that it?"

" And the question is, Which is the REAL reflection?" He said.

"Only the first one, " I offered, tentatively. "all the others are reflections of reflections of reflections."

"And if you step out from between the mirrors, what remains on the glass?" he asked.

"Well, nothing, " I said, "unless the glass continues to reflect itself."

"So exactly what would be the nature of that reflection, pisant?"

"Just photons bouncing back and forth, signifying nothing, " I said.

"So if Your mind is a mirror which reflects the immediate input from your senses, which reflection is the REAL reflection?, " he asked.

"Only the first one, " I said. And I'm not real certain about that one, because it now appears that my sense impressions are themselves symbols in my memory. I give up. Which illusion is the real illusion?

" What you see is what you get, " he said. What you hear, what you smell, what you taste, what you feel -- that is what you get. These are first order reflections in the present moment. All the rest is reflections of memory being recalled in the present."

"What has become of the Soul in all this? I seem to have lost it somewhere."

" Soul is an activity of the mind in the present, which is the only time there is. Likewise, the mind is the activity of the biological brain in the present time. No biological brain, no mind; no soul.

" You have just just destroyed the underpinnings of religion, " I observed.

"Have no fear, " Dzogvi assured me. " By the time I get through disquisitionizing this delicate dogma, no-one will have the vaguest notion of what I'm talking about, including, no doubt, me. Now hand me back the cat."

"Scratches too?" I asked.

"Keep them. " he said.  " My Treat,"