Sick
A Buddhist monk has submitted the following essay and asked that we share it here on our platform. It is based on an actual nightmare he had recently, and the belief that many more in Myanmar are today having such nightmares.
“I was dreaming, stuck between realities. In the dream my chest was covered with a thick layer of organic matter. The thing was itching and clearly made by insects, because it had little compartments resembling a bee hives superstructure. Every night it grew bigger and bigger in size. Finally, I saw one of the nest builders crawling up on me: a kind of mushy green larva. The larvae were using my bare warm chest as a place to cocoon, and I realized I had to do something before they would all start to hatch. I called Dagagyi [monastic supporter] to come and help me remove it, to find some kind of cure for what was happening to me. By now, my chest was completely covered by the larvae’s nests, the sick thing looking almost like an armour plate.
Dagagyi came, and went online to search for an instruction video on how to treat my hardened chest, how to remove the joined cells and its metamorphosing larvae under the protective layer. The connection on Dagagyi’s phone was painfully slow, adding to the distress. I gave him different ideas what to search for, like “How To Remove Chest Larvae Disease Safely” but somehow we couldn’t make the phone work. His screen was just white, totally blank. I took over the phone, and installed the only new app available, which had a lion as its logo. It worked, and by now I’ve also started to feel some nausea. I then managed to see some small video previews that looked very similar to what was itching and growing on my chest. There was a popular video called “LARVAE HATCHING! MUST SEE” but I tried to focus on finding something helpful to watch instead.
It felt like I was using the phone forever during this time. Again and again a screen popped up: “How do you like our new government?” I didn’t want to give it any stars so I pressed “Next time”. “How do you like our new government?” Give me a break! Tired of doing nothing else than clicking “Next time” again and again, I now gave it one star. But it didn’t matter. “How do you like our new government?” I gave it two stars, just to be able to focus on finding something about the disease, which now felt like a throbbing wound. Time was running out. “How do you like our new government?” I realized the only thing I needed to do, to stop it from popping up all the time and distracting me, was to give it five stars. “This isn’t reality” I told myself and pressed the five stars, the button they wanted. I could then find the information I needed, and gave the phone back to Dagagyi.
Finally, I got to work, dissolving the larvae’s sticky superstructure on my chest with hot water, as I actually thought I should do all along. It was a real mess inside the nests, the different cells oozing out a terrifying liquid when I washed my way through, destroying and revealing disgusting looking half-transformed insects I’ve never seen before, now dying outside their protective cell-like pupas with agonized shrieks.
“Have you heard the news? Lion is now the best rated and most used app in Myanmar” Dagagyi told me. “A dream of tomorrow, I suppose” I replied, knowing the reason why. What I wanted to know though, was how many others that had also got the disease I was now relieving myself from, and if many people knew about the cure that worked so well. But there were no videos anymore, Dagagyi informed me. No disease. No cure. Nothing. Slowly getting awake again, I wondered “Where’s reality in all of this?”