Every contest is covered with a veil of deceit. The lie is that winning equals living and losing equals dying. The participants in the contest incorporate the whole world within the confines of their self-made arena. The contest is the thing, but there is also, O Monks, the no-thing beyond the walls of the contest. There is a whole world of experience that is not confined within the family drama; there is a whole body beyond the corporate genital organization.

Is it a necessity that I experience my dying as losing a contest with an adversary, an enemy? And is it a necessity that I experience my living as that same contest? I can imagine a world without my penis but I can't conceive it. Dying then becomes an imaginal process; to move out of the contest is to move toward imagination. I am weary of the contest.