Confusion - Dreaming

In the morning there's the occasional, "Oh thank God (or Buddha?)! It was just a dream, relax." Or sometimes, "Oh how unfortunate, it was just a dream."

Then there's the situation, where you want someone to pinch you and tell you it is just a dream, but no, it doesn't happen - it seems to be really real. Damn it. Can't believe it. And on rare occasions you wonder if this is really happeneing to you right now. Normally things like this just happen in a dream (or a movie, or to other people), but it's real, isn't it? Cool:).

One night last week I had two dreams. In the morning I thought, well, that was a weird one. Then when I came around a corner in the office to my desk I saw someone (from the dream) and realized, "Oh, that other thing was just a dream too." Had just immediately forgotten the second one in the morning was a dream and must have filed it straight and wrongly in memory under real.

So?

Confusion - Dreaming (TAN01) (from TAN01: Then and Now (class) 00:52:28.00 - 00:55:35.00)

(download into iTunes)

How can we understand this confusion? How many of you remember your dreams? Okay, in a dream does everything appear real?

Students: Yeah.

It may be somewhat more fluid than it is right now, but while you’re dreaming it appears real. One of the great teachers of the 19th century had a dream in which he was being chased by a lion. And he ran into a temple where one of the ancient heads of that tradition was sitting on a throne laughing his head off. He said to this guy, “You can’t be any great lama if you don’t even know that you’re being chased by a lion in a dream and you’re this frightened.” And then he woke up from the dream. But during the dream it feels very real.

How do you know you aren’t dreaming right now? This actually is a deep philosophical question. There is no way to know. How do we know we aren’t a dream in the mind of God? We don’t know. There is no way of telling. That may be a little disturbing to you, but there is no way of telling.

When I was in the three-year retreat, this was made very, very clear to us, because the retreat schedule is pretty demanding, and basically you’re functioning on four or five hours of sleep a night, six if you’re lucky.

You’re meant to be resting in your meditation, but you get tired. And several of us experienced this: we’d wake up, and we’d set up the offerings which was part of the morning ritual, and start doing our prayers and things like that. We’re all in our individual rooms.

It would be going quite nicely, and then we’d wake up [laughter], and we’d go, “What?” Because the offerings wouldn’t be done. Several times I had to wake up twice. In the first wake-up I was actually dreaming, but I had no idea that I was dreaming. And then I’d wake up and go “huh?”

So we don’t know. And that’s what this confusion is like. We experience all this stuff. It feels so real, we act as if this is it, but we really don’t know what the hell’s going on, at all. And the only thing we know is that we struggle. There are a couple of other things we know, but I’ll get to those in a minute.

Progression

Progression (from TAN16 Then and Now (class) 00:57:47.50 - 01:03:52.00) (download into iTunes)

Ken: Most of you here, and I know you have, Susan, have been exposed to teachings of mahamudra and dzogchen. These are advanced teachings, even they're given out to all kinds of people. But a lot of people who receive them don’t appreciate their subtlety or where they fit in the progression that I'm describing.

I can describe the progression in another way and that is in terms of attachment to ideas about the world.

So, we start off, think, well, you know, life isn’t bad, but I'm having a certain kind of difficulty and if I could just learn a few skills then everything would just be great, you know. If I could learn not to react so much, then my life would be great. So, sit down and learn how to meditate. And it's true. I learn how not to react so much. But in the process of learning how not to react which is basically letting go of thoughts and feelings as facts and just experience them as thoughts and feelings.

In developing that ability we become aware of a much deeper problem. That all of that reactivity is organized around a sense of self, and serves to protect that sense of self. And so we go, "Ah, there's more of a bigger problem here, didn't realize this. Well if I could just let go of the sense of self, you know, then I wouldn't react at all. That'd be so cool."

So, now meditation and one's practice takes on a different tenor. And you begin to develop not just a calm mind, a mind which is less reactive, but you also develop a certain ability to see into the nature of things because an intellectual understanding that there is no self doesn't change anything as you well know. It has to be a direct experience. So you're beginning to move into the realm of direct experience and direct awareness, which is a beginning to approach rigpa and awareness and all of those things. And so, you come to a point where you go, “Wow, I don’t exist as a thing.” Then, that’s a very definite experience. Some people say, “That’s totally cool,” some people say, "This freaks me out.” People have different reactions to that experience. But, it opens up more possibilities.

But again, it reveals a deeper problem. And that is "Well, if I don’t exist as a thing, then what is all this? And where does confusion arise? And where does being awake arise? If there's no entity which is me what do all of these things mean?" That's a really difficult question. This leads to another level of exploration which is basically what bodhicitta, and mahamudra, and dzogchen, middle way is more bodhicitta, are about is: there is just this experience which is simultaneously vivid and empty. When one can actually experience that moment to moment in a completely non-conceptual awareness that's what you're calling rigpa. That's what mahamudra and dzogchen. Now, that's the progression as a progressive letting go of more and more.

This Gampopa's writing when you get The Perfection of Wisdom you'll see he does write about mahamudra and matyamaka. He doesn't write explicitly about dzogchen. It's implicit in this approach but here this is a path, a graded path, a step-by-step path where the dzogchen and mahamudra teachings in the vadjrayana take the perspective this is present in us right now. It doesn't have to be grown, you don't have to go through a process, you can relate to it right now. That’s a different approach. It's a very effective approach. And usually in the Tibetan tradition one worked with both approaches simultaneously because there were abilities that needed to be cultivated, as you well know, one has to have a certain ability in attention otherwise one simply can't practice dzogchen. One can think one's practicing dzogchen but you're not. That's where a lot of people are today. Does this answer your question?