Dreams
We all remember our dreams from time to time. Perhaps they are the first thing that comes to us in the morning upon waking, when the images and stories flood our minds for a few moments before they disappear like mist in the rising sun. At other times they revisit us at some point during the day, and we grope to gather up their threads and make some sense of them.
Most of us take our dreams seriously, they appear so real, even hyper-real, and often thrust us into the search of their relevance to our lives. What did it mean? How could it seem so real and bring together so many disparate parts of my life?
Or, if it was so strange and fantastic, it surely must be important. In short, it is easy to have a bit of a romance with our dreams. The irony is that a day or even a few hours later, what was so real usually cannot be remembered at all.
A Zen Story
There was a famous Zen master in seventh century China named Isan, a follower of the sixth patriarch Hui Neng. A story goes that he was sitting one hot and humid summer's day in his small hut, and one of his disciples walked by.
Isan beckoned him to come in, and the student sat down beside the master. Isan turned to him and said, "I had the most wonderful dream last night, would you like to hear it?" At that the disciple rose from his seat, went to the wash basin, and brought back a cool wet cloth for Isan to wipe his face with.
A few minutes later, another disciple happened to walk by the opening of the hut, and Isan called him inside, "Please join us!" This student sat down, and Isan asked him the same question, "I had such a fantastic dream, would you like to hear about it?"
The new student stood up and went to the kitchen to prepare some tea. In a couple of minutes he returned with some hot tea for the master. The three of them drank together in silence.
At first it seems that the students were acting a little strange, if not a touch rude, to their master. When someone asks you a question, you reply. Even if you are not so interested in his or her dream or topic of conversation, well, decorum dictates you listen to what they have to say.
This would seem to hold all the more for one's spiritual teacher, for whom one holds in utmost respect. In fact, in Zen the relationship between a disciple and master is based on a deep faith and trust far beyond what is normally experienced in our interpersonal relationships.
The truth is, however, that the two disciples of Isan were honouring their master more than any words could express.
Waking Up to Truth
The Buddha compared our whole world and reality to a dream. He didn't mean that the world doesn't exist, but that we create all sorts of illusions and live by them, as if in a dream. The effort of spiritual practice in Buddhism is to awaken, and the ancient Sanskrit word Buddha is derived from the root buddh which means "awake." Thus the Buddha is "the awakened one".
The realized person, or enlightened being, in Buddhism is one who is truly awake in the world - awake from ignorance and delusion. Just as in a moment the dreams of our night sleep can evaporate and disappear forever, so too, through the spiritual practice of meditation, can our illusions about the world be revealed for what they are - the smoke and mirrors of our conditioned minds.
Understanding The Story
This position is where Isan was coming from. When he asked his disciples, "You wanna hear my great dream?" he was actually testing them. He wanted to know if they were still interested in the illusions of the world. Are you still wrapped up in dreams, or do you want to awaken?
The students understood the true meaning of Isan's question, and got up to do something useful for their master. It was a hot day, so one of them got a cool cloth, and the other prepared tea. Their response to the question was in compassionate action. Here, they said with their gestures, let me show you what I'm really interested in. I want you to be comfortable, I want to respond to the needs of this moment.
What was needed was a cool cloth and a cup of tea. Not much dream analysis going on there, just being in the moment.
We take the dream of this world very much to heart. The way it appears seems so real to us, and the ways we think of it, our opinions and concepts, seem to express the way things really are. Though we often find other people's dreams at times tiresome, we want them to listen to our own.
Being In The Moment
The great modern Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi was famous for saying, "in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind few."
When we let go of some of our fixed ways of seeing things, our expert opinions, we open ourselves to many more possibilities. That is what is called beginner's mind. It is the state of mind that strives to awaken from our habitual way of viewing the dream of this world, and to open to the moment as it is.
When we open our hearts and minds to the present moment, we find not that everything is different, but that we feel much less resistance to what makes up our reality. We become less defensive and grasping, and we can respond to others in a more natural and spontaneous way. This is the heart of compassion, the natural response to the real needs of another.
It may be to offer a cup of tea, a kind word, a cool cloth, or even to hear them talk about their dreams. We can't know unless we encounter our present moment as a new beginning.