Episode Details

Dream as Analogy for Reality

This world is psychoactive. So much so that we don’t even realize how are fundamental beliefs and unquestioned assumptions shape our sense of who we are and what the world is.

One of those assumptions is the referent to this simple, and often thought/spoken phrase I am.

Its innocuous, we think it constantly. I am hungry, I am tired, I am sad, I am lonely, I am scared, etc.

When we say “I am” —this thought or sensation goes unquestioned, and so we build our life or our sense of self on these unquestioned thoughts and feelings.

Sometimes the shape of the I AM, is really negative or painful, I am not good enough, I am bad at this, I am unworthy.

Or it takes the shape of shame, anger, fear, desire, anxiety, hatred.

We usually get totally bought in to those feelings, sensations or thoughts being who we are— we suffer them. We become trapped in the world that is created through believing them or identifying with them.

In the dharma practice, we are practicing looking into these basic assumptions, to ask well what does this I AM refer to?

We can do this now, notice the sense of I am. How are you experiencing it? Is it a thought, a feeling, a sensation, something else?

And if so, what is the nature of this thought, sensation, belief or emotion?

When we look, with non-judgmental awareness and genuine curiosity what we begin to see is — the I Am is ungraspable, it changes, its spacious, flowing, here only in the moment of its happening, non-referential.

So, the encouragement is to look, to really look, to see what happens in your own experience.

Often we don’t look back into the sense of I AM, we let it be a given, so this kind of inward looking, turning our awareness around, can feel strange and unnatural.

Nothing happens—or there is nothing there, or its just this.

These are actually profound experiences, but subtle, we are expecting some big fireworks experience of no-self or emptiness, and don’t appreciate the profundity of verifying for ourselves the ungraspable, spacious nature of our sense of self.

The openness of not-finding, is the openness of being. The openness of pure possibility.

The dream-like nature of reality is one way of describing the ungraspability, the spaciousness, openness and the insubstantiality of direct experience itself .

Any word is imperfect.

So we have a lot of different analogies. Dream is a good one. There is also illusion, magic show, echo, reflection in water, phantom. Modern practitioners sometimes say, like a motion picture or a hologram.

I feel like dream is particularly evocative, it shows up most in the Zen teachings.

And its’s a practice. An invitation to see through the assumptions or reactions we paste onto reality.

This is a Dream

To practice seeing the insubstantiality of thoughts, feelings, emotions, reactions, fears, we can invite this slogan or phrase:

This is a dream, am I dreaming?

To work with this as an inquiry or koan, doesn’t mean that we are carrying it around all the time, zapping things that we don’t like into dreams.

Its a living question, its about inviting curiosity.

So maybe you are standing in line, and frustration is building—and your mind starts thinking about all the things that you need to do, or how you are going to be late, or how you don’t want to be here. You can inquire:

What if this is a dream?

And really entertain it, what changes?

When its a dream, we are usually present.

So you might notice the other people, these characters in your dream—who are they? You might notice other things in the room, the colors, smells,