.Huh? I have never dreamed a dream in which I was dreaming. So for me this is a non-issue.
I appreciate that even before the time of Shakyamuni Buddha (c. 563 - 483 BCE) “enlightenment” was considered to be a kind of waking up. A little poem characterizing one of the insights acquired from Enlightenment is attributed to the Buddha is in the Diamond Sutra “All composite things are like a dream, a fantasy, a bubble and a shadow…they are thus to be regarded.”
It’s just a an analogy or a metaphor show a parallel in consciousness. Dreaming to to wakefulness as wakefulness is to Full Enlightenment.
In China another allegedly “enlightened” fellow made similar observations, less poetically but more to the point:
“Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense!“
Chuang Tzu (c. 369 – c. 286 BCE) is most famous for his recorded tale about a dreaming man. It concludes roughly in this way
“Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
Given our more advanced studies of brain chemistry and psychology such poems, stories, analogies, and metaphors may not be suitable inspirations for “bodhicitta.” But such literary devices still may have some usefulness.
.Huh? I have never dreamed a dream in which I was dreaming. So for me this is a non-issue.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate that even before the time of Shakyamuni Buddha (c. 563 - 483 BCE) “enlightenment” was considered to be a kind of waking up. A little poem characterizing one of the insights acquired from Enlightenment is attributed to the Buddha is in the Diamond Sutra “All composite things are like a dream, a fantasy, a bubble and a shadow…they are thus to be regarded.”
It’s just a an analogy or a metaphor show a parallel in consciousness.
Dreaming to to wakefulness as wakefulness is to Full Enlightenment.
In China another allegedly “enlightened” fellow made similar observations, less poetically but more to the point:
“Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense!“
Chuang Tzu (c. 369 – c. 286 BCE) is most famous for his recorded tale about a dreaming man. It concludes roughly in this way
“Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
Given our more advanced studies of brain chemistry and psychology such poems, stories, analogies, and metaphors may not be suitable inspirations for “bodhicitta.” But such literary devices still may have some usefulness.