Dharma Dreams Tashi Nyima | September 19, 2011 at 9:34 PM | Categories: Dharma View | URL: http://wp.me/p17iwB-lq

Recently, three Dharma friends independently have asked questions regarding Dharma-related dreams and meditation experiences. Typically, they want to explore whether such experiences are valid, and if so, what is their basis. Are they memories from previous lives? Are they communications from Teachers, Buddhas, or Bodhisattvas? Or are they simply mental elaborations based on bits and pieces of accumulated information? 

Whether we’ve had those very experiences in a previous life, we are recipients of deliberate teachings from the Enlightened Ones, or our minds have developed particular narratives to manifest existing karmic tendencies does not make much difference.  

Those experiences, and the karmic seeds that inform them, are in our ground consciousness (alaya vijnana), and through the coming together of causes and conditions, are appearing now to our mental consciousness (mano vijnana). 

The dream, actual memory, or mental elaboration is just a vehicle for expressing an awareness. It is an internal mental representation of an existing karmic tendency or disposition. It is no less than that, but it is also no more. We must avoid the extremes of deprecating or exaggerating its importance. 

If an experience of this type leads us to turn inward, to practice the Dharma with greater enthusiasm, to develop more compassion, then it is extremely positive. However, it is important to accept the message, without dwelling on the narrative. If we dwell on the story, we run the risk of developing an acquired fixed view or an afflicted emotion.  

The teaching on the Four Reliances warns us to beware of becoming entangled in mere forms, mere words, mere logic, and mere concepts. Rather, we should seek for the intended meaning of each lesson received, and allow it to manifest as non dual wisdom, whatever the source.

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Please call me by my true names by Thich Nhat Hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh| Please Call Me by My True Names by Thich Nhat Hanh (1929 - ) Timeline Original LanguageEnglish Don't say that I will depart tomorrow -- even today I am still arriving. Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive. I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river. And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly. I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond. And I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog. I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands. And I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people dying slowly in a forced-labor camp. My joy is like Spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans. Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion. 1989