Life is but a dream

Constantine's Dream, Piero della Francesca

A recurring dream-theme of mine is of trying to get away from something but being unable to move faster than a crawl. I need to run, but my legs are so heavy I must drag myself along, digging my fingernails into the pavement. What I’m trying to escape from (which doesn’t reveal itself) never catches up with me. It’s nothing more than a vague threat, but I’m fearful and unable to get away fast enough. I don’t know what it means.

I don’t know what any of my dreams mean, and I’ve never put much effort into trying to find out. I don’t know what I’d do if I were able to figure out my dreams – assuming they mean anything in the first place. Analysis of dreams aside, dreams are not reality. Reality is what reveals itself when I awake.

Or is it?

While meditating under the Bodhi Tree 2,500 years ago the Buddha had his moment of awakening. It was not an awakening from the dreams of sleep, but from the dream of common, everyday existence into the reality of the way things really are, unclouded by delusion.”Bodhi” and “Buddha” come from the same root, which means to awaken, to understand.

“Life is but a dream,” sings the the nursery rhyme. The Diamond Sutra – which predates the rhyme by almost 1,000 years – backs up the relatively contemporary refrain:

“So I say to you –
This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world:

“Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream;
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.

“So is all conditioned existence to be seen.”

Thus spoke the Buddha.

Diamond Sutra, Chapter 32

Contemplating the nature of delusion – my own included – I  see how delusion is the perfect condition for people to create such a mess of things. There is no better illustration of this than the national news – especially when it involves politics and religion.

Coming to awakening, enlightenment, nibbana, nirvana – whatever you want to call it -means transcending the dream of reality and the reality of truth. So I make my way slowly along the path, fearing only the effects of my own ignorance.