Episode Details

Are you dreaming? How is your experience, like a dream?

In one sense, the words you are reading, the sounds you are hearing, the thoughts racing through your mind and the ones seeming to linger in the background, the worries, and any other emotion that you might be experiencing, including experience itself—all are un-pin-down-able, you can not grasp them, you can not even find a single unchanging sensation that you can call yourself.

All appearance is as ephemeral as a dream.

In Zen practice we are encouraged to inquire into this dream-like experience. To really taste and know experientially the empty-yet-apparent nature of all experiences.

Such an inquiry can revitalize wonder in our living.

For if this were a dream, then these characters, these people you seem to meet, the environments that you traverse, the feelings and thoughts that arise—are all part of the dream.

Blue Cliff Record Case 40: Nan Chuan’s As a Dream

An officer from the monastery was talking with Nan Ch’uan and said, “The Great Teacher Chao said, ‘Heaven, earth, and I have the same root; myriad things and I are one body.’ This is quite marvelous.”

Nan Ch’uan pointed to a flower in the garden. He called to the officer and said, “People these days see this flower as a dream.

We can practice seeing the dream-like nature of reality and open to the oneness of experience.

If heaven, earth and yourself have the same root, if the myriad things and you are one body.

What is this root, what is this body?

What is our shared nature?

Meeting the Characters in This Dream

I want to share a practice I have been exploring as a way of meeting the characters in this waking dream, as if they were characters in a night-time dream. I have found that when I entertain that this is a dream, and meet the characters and myself fresh, with compassion and curiosity. I can step outside of my projections and strategies of protection, and see the mystery of who and what we are.

I would like to share the practice here. If you would prefer to listen to the guided meditation version. Click the link above. Today’s audio is just the guided meditation of this exercise. You may want to have a journal as you listen or read along.

* Recall a situation in your life where it feels stuck, this could be a relational conflict, work situation, impasse, your experience of the political situation.

* See the different characters in this waking dream, see the environment where this situation is occurring from a zoomed out position. Remind yourself that this is a dream and notice if anything changes in how you are seeing and experiencing the situation.

* Now see the dream of yourself in this situation, notice what feelings, beliefs are alive in you—what do you want? What are you afraid of?

* Zoom out again and see the whole scene. Next imagine stepping into one of the other characters in the dream, this could be a person with a different belief or position, someone who is not you. What do you see from their vantage point? What feelings and beliefs are alive in them? What do they want? What might they be afraid of?

* Zoom out again and see the whole scene. Now see if there is another perspective, maybe that of a third character, a pet, or part of the landscape of the dream (sky, chair, wall, floor) What is it like to step into their position? What do you see from their vantage point? How do they feel about this situation? What might they want for you? What wisdom might they have?

* Come back to seeing the whole dream, the whole scene in this situation. Notice if you see anything you didn’t notice before. What is it like to come back to the situation itself, after having stepped into the dreams of the various char