How do we know…

[Ryumon]

How do we know that what we consider to be our waking life is not a dream? And that our dreams are not reality?

Gassho,

Kirk


(Posted from my iPhone; please excuse any typos or brevity.)

[Juki]

The Buddha touched the ground.

Gassho,
Juki

[Daitetsu]

Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.


Gassho,

Daitetsu

[Mp]

Are they not the same? Reality is but a dream until we see it as it is?

Gassho
Shingen

[Sekishi]

Are they not the same? Reality is but a dream until we see it as it is?

Suffering is real, no matter what the nature of the dream / reality. Sit with all things at rest!

To run with Shingen's matrix reference, the suffering of someone unable to feed their child is real, even if they and the child are jacked into the Matrix. It might be "simulations" all the way down, but suffering is real. Work to free yourself and all beings!

Gassho,
Sekishi

[Myosha]

The mother red-hawk screams at the fledgling.


Gassho,
Myosha

[Myoku]

I think we can only do as best as we can, no certainty anywhere,
maybe in the end its more about what we do and less abut what we know.
Gassho
Myoku

[Jundo]

Dogen said that we live in a dream within a dream ... a dream so dreamy, one might thus say it is as real as real can be ...

... but such is our dream, so best dream-live it well!

Gassho, J

PS - Dogen's Shobogenzo Dream Within A Dream is Dogen at some of his dreamiest, word and mind-bending best if anyone wants to go along for the wild ride ...

Every dewdrop manifested in every realm is a dream. This dream is the glowing clarity of the hundred grasses. What requires questioning is this very point. What is confusing is this very point. At this time, there are dream grasses, grasses within, expressive grasses, and so on. When we study this, then roots, stems, branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits, as well as radiance and color are all the great dream. Do not mistake them as merely dreamy.

However, those who do not wish to study buddha dharma believe that expressing the dream within a dream means speaking of unreal dream grass as real, like piling delusion upon delusion. But this is not true. When you say, “Within confusion is just confusion,” still you should follow the path in the vast sky known as “delusion throughout delusion.” You should endeavor to investigate just this thoroughly.

The expressing of the dream within a dream is all buddhas. All buddhas are wind and rain, water and fire. We respectfully maintain these names of buddhas, and also pay homage to those names of other buddhas. To express the dream within a dream is the ancient buddhas; it is to ride in this treasure boat and directly arrive in the practice place. Directly arriving in the practice place is riding in this treasure boat. Meandering dreams and direct dreams, holding and letting go, all freely flow like gusting breezes.

More of the dream-within-dreaming Dogen here (Tanahashi-Leighton Translation) ...

http://www.parabola.org/index.php?view=article&id=272%3Aqseeingq-by-zen-master-dogen&tmpl=component&print=1&layout=default&page=&option=com_content&Itemid=249

For anyone new to reading Dogen oh-so-dreamy way of expressing the Teachings ...

SIT-A-LONG with JUNDO: Dogen - A Love Supreme

http://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?9332-SIT-A-LONG-with-JUNDO-Dogen-A-Love-Supreme

[Risho]

Kirk,

At first I was like "what the hell?". But then I thought about it, and that's a really good question! Thank you very much for this.

I think it gets to the heart of practice. Practice is about waking up from a dream into reality -- which like you said could just be another dream. Reality, or what we perceive, is based on the mind. Of course there is reality, but our experience is only a very small part of it. So much goes on that we can't perceive, and it's probably a good thing; if we could experience everything, without filter, we'd likely not be able to live.

Dreams are states of mind created by the mind, not based on current experiential phenomena. For example, you are dreaming that creature is stalking you. That is created by your mind, a scenario in your mind.

"Reality" is a state of mind also created by the mind, based on perceived phenomena (and limited to what can be perceived by our faculties) at the current moment. Obviously what we see as "reality" is completely limited to our organs of perception. For example, we can only see specific frequency of light (if we can see) or hear a specific frequency of sound (if we can hear). So we construct or "see" things in our mind based on our capability of perception from the various sense organs.

But a lot of times, the mind also adds commentary and perceives what it expects to see based on previous experience, so it could be a dream in that sense, a figment of one's imagination; racism, fear of something that may not even happen, happiness at some perceived future that is not real, happiness that someone complimented you, sadness that you were taken for granted, etc. All dreams.... You are the same, no more, no less, but its perceived different.

There's also the limitation of what we can perceive based on the limits of our sense organs and brains, so in that way it's like a dream because what we experience is a recreation based on how we "work" so to speak. But that may not really be how things are at all. Things might just be energy surging around -- but we have evolved to perceive that energy in a means to best ensure our species' survival and procreation.

This practice is a way of getting rid of that extra mind crap and just experiencing.. it's more of zoning in than zoning out. But again, it's really limited to us being human, so it may still be mind created in a sense, but the bullshit is stripped down so that we can be fully human. However, that bullshit that we dream while dreaming and awake also makes us human, so it should not be discarded either... just not clung onto so firmly I guess.

I don't know -- this got confusing. lol

Gassho,

Risho

[jeff_u]

Some philosophers and scientists think we may all just be self-aware parts of a computer simulation (http://science.slashdot.org/story/14...e-a-simulation). True or not, it wouldn't make this reality-dream-simulation any less real.

[Ugrok]

I wonder if this is not one of the few metaphysical questions the buddha would refuse to answer (like "do i exist" or "when did the world begin" etc). What's the point in knowing if this is a dream or not ? Does it help alleviate suffering ?

Maybe not knowing is where real freedom is found.

Or not.

[Jundo]

Well, actually, Buddhism 101 is that even in the so-called "real" world, we are living in a kind of mentally created dream, hiding behind our imagined "self-images".

Traditional Buddhist psychology was way ahead of its time in attempting to describe how the mind creates, in the brain, a 'virtual' experience of the world and of your 'self'. Modern science, though still so incomplete, understands this process better every day: Your experience of your self and of the world is ultimately a fiction created when brain, sense organs and the 'outside world' (everything that is "out there" in the world really, whether you experience it or not) come together ... much like a movie you call "me and the world" created when the world is 'virtually' recreated inside the brain via data that is collected by the senses, passed by chemical-electrical signals to neurons, then (in processes we still barely understand) mixed with all the inner emotions, instincts and everything else the brain has learned about interpreting, organizing and responding to the world since you were a baby. The result is the inner movie you call your "experience of life". In fact, you have never actually seen "the world" at all ... you have never actually even directly seen or touched any of the people in it you love ... only a virtual recreation inside your head of light that entered your eyes, somehow recreated and interpreted within the lobes of the brain as objects that, for example, you stick names on and find pleasing, displeasing or neutral.

Your sense of "MYSELF" is already an "avatar" of sorts, hiding what we call our "True Face". A key aspect of Zen Practice is to reveal that "True Face" (which, by the way, does not mean that one also completely loses all sense of one's avatar ... because, like in the movie of the same name, we could not function in this world without our "avatar" ... however, that is a topic for another time). A key aspect of what we do in this Zen Sangha (and all Zen Sanghas in fact) is to help us realize that our so-called "real" world "sense of self" Avatar is an avatar, and to see thru and gain some control over the mind theatre that is at work in our heads to help create it (our whole experience of "reality" is light and other data, input through the senses and recreated on the "holodeck" of the brain and, while I think something is actually "out there", so much of the experience is created, added to and subtracted from, and interpreted by "you" in the process of creating "your" experience of the world in "your" Brain separating "in here" from "out there" ). Part of the holo-deck self-image created in the human mind is the sharp separation of "me" and the "not me/world outside", and a key aspect of our Practice is to see through and pierce that divide, realize the Wholeness that transcends subject and object ... whereby you and the whole rest of the universe are found to be more one whole, flowing dance beyond and right through the self-other divide than we can usually experience or imagine!

I do not have much concern for the philosophical debate about how much is really "out there" and how much "in here" or (as seems most likely in my belief) a combination of both in a great Out-In-Wholeness . HOWEVER, ONE FUNDAMENTAL TEACHING THAT MOST ALL BUDDHISTS AGREE ON IS THAT THE WORLD THAT WE EXPERIENCE (INCLUDING OUR EXPERIENCE OF OUR OWN LIFE AND SELF) IS MUCH MUCH MORE CREATED BY OUR PERCEPTIONS, THOUGHTS, EMOTIONS ETC. THAN MOST PEOPLE REALIZE. Thus, change those thoughts, emotions, etc. ... change the world (or, at least, our experience of it).

Did I blow your mind, man?

Gassho, Dream Jundo

PS -

I wonder if this is not one of the few metaphysical questions the buddha would refuse to answer (like "do i exist" or "when did the world begin" etc). What's the point in knowing if this is a dream or not ? Does it help alleviate suffering ?

I would say that it is, in fact, one of the few questions ... the central question ... that he addressed again and again throughout his teachings and, yes, understanding his "we do not really exist as we think we do as separate selfs" is the medicine to alleviate suffering. As we chant in the Heart Sutra regarding the sense created worldview ...

No/ eye/, ear/, nose/, tongue/, bo/dy/, mind/;

No/ sight/, sound/, smell/, taste/, touch/, nor/ ob/ject/ of/ mind/;

No/ realm/ of/ sight/, no/ realm/ of/ con/scious/ness/;

No/ ig/no/rance/, no/ end/ to/ ig/no/rance/;

No/ old/ age/ and/ death/,

No/ ces/sa/tion/ of/ old/ age/ and/ death/;

No/ suf/fer/ing/, nor/ cause/ or/ end/ to/ suf/fer/ing/;

[Risho]

I wonder if this is not one of the few metaphysical questions the buddha would refuse to answer (like "do i exist" or "when did the world begin" etc). What's the point in knowing if this is a dream or not ? Does it help alleviate suffering ?

Maybe not knowing is where real freedom is found.

Or not.

The Buddha may have said that, but just from a perspective of being human it's just natural to want to know things. I believe we are explorers at heart.


Jundo, you blow my mind all the time. hahhhah


Gassho,

Risho

[Jundo]

See my response I added to Ugrok above ...

Buddhism 101 (in a nutshell, from Barbara's column at "About Buddhism") ...

The Buddha taught that an individual is a combination of five aggregates of existence, also called the Five Skandhas or the five heaps. These are:

Form
Sensation
Perception
Mental formations
Consciousness

...

What's most important to understand about the skandhas is that they are empty. They are not qualities that an individual possesses, because there is no-self possessing them. This doctrine of no-self is called anatman or anatta.

Very basically, the Buddha taught that "you" are not an integral, autonomous entity. The individual self, or what we might call the ego, is more correctly thought of as a by-product of the skandhas.

On the surface, this appears to be a nihilistic teaching. But the Buddha taught that if we can see through the delusion of the small, individual self, we experience that which is not subject to birth and death.

Two Views

Beyond this point, Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism differ on how anatman is understood. In fact, more than anything else it is the different understanding of self that defines and separates the two schools.

Very basically, Theravada considers anatman to mean that an individual's ego or personality is a fetter and delusion. Once freed of this delusion, the individual may enjoy the bliss of Nirvana.

In his book What the Buddha Taught, the Theravadin scholar Walpola Rahula said,

"According to the teaching of the Buddha, the idea of a self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of 'me' and 'mine', selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism,and other defilements, impurities and problems."

Mahayana, on the other hand, considers all physical forms to be void of intrinsic self (a teaching called shunyata, which means "emptiness"). The ideal in Mahayana is to enable all beings to be enlightened together, not only out of a sense of compassion, but because we are not really separate, autonomous beings.

http://buddhism.about.com/od/whatistheself/a/skandhasnoself.htm

[Ryumon]

No one experiences the world in the same way as you do.

Gassho,

Kirk


(Posted from my iPhone; please excuse any typos or brevity.)