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BUDDHISM AND DREAMS

Tony Crisp

The story of Gautama Buddha's life (567- 487 BC) starts at
preconception when his mother, Queen Maya, is said to have dreamt
that a six-tusked elephant pierced her side with one of its tusks. This
produced an immaculate conception. She understood the dream to
mean the resulting child would become a monarch whose domain was
the world. The Buddhist scriptures contain mention of five of the
Buddha's dreams, and also include dreams of his father, King
Cudhodana, and his wife, Gopa.

The fundamental aim of Buddhism is to find liberation from the things
that bind consciousness to illusory concepts of oneself. This goal,
called Liberation or Nirvana is sometimes described as the blowing out
of the sense of self or ones ego. This should not be thought of as a
killing of oneself psychologically, but rather an untangling of our
fundamental self from the many influences it is usually enmeshed in.
Part of this is the illusory view we have of the world. The world is not
thought of in itself as an illusion, but the emotions and concepts we
hold which provoke our responses to the world are seen as the illusion.
Therefore dreams are not seen as being illusions, but are expressive of
illusion in a similar way to our everyday experience of life. Also, the
very  nature of dreams are expressive of the complicated realm of fears,
longings and mental concepts we are deeply enmeshed in. Nightmares
especially show how deeply involved our waking self is with the
internal world of passionate feelings and imagery.

Example: I am trapped in a bricked room with no way out and I
shout for somebody to help me. Then either a big bird or a
creature with long arms tries to catch me, and I scream. My flat
mates used to help me, as I would wake the whole house with
my screams. They describe my screams as blood curdling. When
I awoke I would be extremely upset, heart pounding and
sometimes crying. Twice I woke up sitting on the windowsill
trying to open the window, and as I was three floors up you can
imagine this was not a very pleasant experience.  Another
dream I have is that somebody is chasing me or attacking me,
and I try to scream but nothing comes out of my mouth. I try
and try to scream but nothing happens, when in fact I am
actually screaming the house down. Karen S.

Example: I was walking around alone when I found myself in a
graveyard which was half under water, like a paddy field. It
was dusk and as I looked at the grave stones each one had engraved on
it S.J. SMITH - my name - nothing else. The dark water moved slowly
between the stones - lapping round them. I woke terrified and couldn't
stretch out my hand to turn the light on. Sarah S.

Example: Three men with clubs were chasing me but never
actually caught me as I believe I woke in terror. I was
determined to tell myself it was only a dream and the next night
ass they were chasing me I remembered it was only a dream
and lost all fear - stopped running - turned to face them and
said "This is only a dream, you can't hurt me," and with that as
they came closer they faded into nothing and I never saw them
again. Mr. S. C.

The examples show the sense of reality existing for the dreamer at the
time of the nightmare. In fact the terror is often only banished slowly by
the dreamer telling themselves that it 'was only a dream'! The last
example in a simplified way shows the liberation that arises by
recognising the source of what we had taken to be reality. Buddhism is
saying is that much of the workings and influence of our inner world
goes unrecognised, so we are an unconscious prisoner of our mind and
emotions.

In Tibetan Buddhism the way to enlightenment or Nirvana is spoken of
as being a path on which one penetrates the illusory nature of waking
consciousness, dreams and dreamless sleep. To do this with waking
consciousness one must arrive at a state of awakening from ones usual
'dream' of, or response to, everyday life. In other words a radical shift
occurs in how one sees life. Usually one takes all ones emotions, ones
thoughts and physical sensations so personally, and as a sort of reality.
Yet no thought is ever the thing it is about. We think of the future
sometimes for instance and go through agonies of worry. But the
thoughts are not the events that follow. And the events themselves we
can respond to in countless different ways. Therefore to take thoughts
and emotions as if they were real in a stable sense is an illusion.
Recognising this not as a philosophical concept but as an experience is
like waking up.

Another form of awakening occurs within the experience of Liberation.
It is the awakening from the experience of thought and the mental
world. This also pertains to dreams in that within dreams we are totally
immersed and identified with this internal mental life. The following
example explains this.

Example: For some weeks I had been practising a meditation in
which I slowed my breath. Then suddenly one day my thinking
stopped. What this felt like is extremely difficult to describe
because all of us have lived in this world of thoughts and
emotions all our life. We are so immersed we don't even
recognise it - rather like the story of the fish who doesn't know
what you are talking about when you mention water. It only
knows it has been in the water if it jumps or is lifted out one
day. This is how it was for me. I had never known that 'I', 'me'
could exist without thoughts. The freedom was wonderful,
almost as if I had arrived at a different world or universe, and
was looking back at what I had thought was the only way of life.
To have this alternative gave me a new way of responding to
life, because thoughts are so clumsy and can only deal with tiny
pieces of experience. So our view of things is limited to what we
can think with words. Beyond that are immense spreads of
experience not limited to defining concepts. Mary P.

Dreams often express this theme of an awakening, especially in people
using some forms of self inquiry. The following dream and description
depicts this.

Example: Have just woke from another of my recent unusual
dreams. In it I was first in a street being manhandled by a
group of rowdy men. I did nothing to defend myself or fight
back, and they pushed me onto the ground and poured spirits,
alcohol, over me and into my mouth - saw this in the film The
Elephant Man.

Then I awoke alone in a room. Or perhaps it is more correct to
say I came to, because I felt as if I had been unconscious for
some time. I didn't know the room or where I was. I had the
sense it was partly to do with business or a shop. The phone
kept ringing and the calls were for me, and I wondered how
people knew where I was because I didn't know myself.

This dream may not seem much in itself, but in linking with
some powerful feelings I am meeting in everyday life it becomes
part of some inner process working in me. This is because I
keep experiencing the feeling of having woken up. The only way
to describe this is to say that I honestly thought I was Pete who
has been born, grown up, had children. I took all his worries
and pains, all the events of his life so seriously. I was totally
involved in it all. But now I feel as if I am something that has
always lived. It went to sleep and its dream was Pete. While it
dreamt of being Pete it was utterly involved in the events of
Pete's - my - life as if they were real. But now I wake up to
realise the importance given to them was unreal. This is almost
exactly like waking from any deeply experienced dream. On
waking the dream is not unreal in that it was an experience, but
the attitude toward what happened is quite different. Pete W.

Various forms of meditation or practice are used to aid this process of
waking up in life and in dreams, principal among them is Vipassan,
which aims at constant self-awareness. This form of self witnessing
gradually allows one to catch oneself in the act of getting lost in
fantasy, in thoughts, in the ever shifting tides of emotion and sexual
drive. It is not an act of denial, but an awareness that enables insight
into behaviour to arise. See: example under prison.

Such self-awareness enables one to slowly avoid getting caught in the
waking 'dream' of long sojourns into such things as guilt, depression,
and emotional pain arising from childhood patterns. This is because
one becomes aware of just how such internal events arise or are
triggered, and one can make a choice of whether one wishes to 're-
play' them again, rather like deciding whether to play a cassette.
Perseverance with the process cannot help but produce an entrance into
areas of experience that had been deeply unconscious. Ones life history
is brought to consciousness piece by piece. There is also the attempt to
remain in the self-aware state even while dreaming. This is not an
attempt to control or repress the action of dreaming, but to 'see
through' it to the underlying processes creating the images.

In the Buddhist literature the story of Milarepa tells how he meditated
for eight years alone in a cave. Through these years of discipline he
was able to remain lucid while asleep and dreaming. He says, "By night
in my dreams  could traverse the summit of Mt. Meru to its base - and I
saw everything clearly as I went. Likewise in my dreams I could
multiply myself into hundreds of personalities, all endowed with the
same powers as myself. Each of my multiplied forms could traverse
space and go to some Buddha Heaven, listen to the teachings there, and
then come back and teach the Dharma to many persons. I could also
transform my physical body into a mass of blazing fire, or into an
expanse of flowing or clam water. Seeing that I had obtained infinite
phenomenal powers even though it be but in my dreams, I was filled
with happiness and encouragement." See: yoga and dreams.

The awakening and the penetration of consciousness into what were
the dark places of our being, leads to the realisation that in a way that is
difficult to accept until we experience for ourselves, we are the Creator
of our own inner life, and Co-creator in the external world. Our dreams
are created unconsciously out of mental and emotional factors that are
usually deeply buried. For instance a person may have had a traumatic
experience in childhood which leads to their constantly being afraid of
closeness in a relationship. But the memory of the original event, and
the powerful emotions leading to decisions about behaviour, are no
longer conscious enough to review. They therefore give rise to
reactions and dreams which may be puzzling, but are usually
rationalised by the dreamer. The dreamer may say something like 'I
don't like men - or women. I don't like to be near them.' If they were
aware of the sources of their reaction they would rephrase it to say, 'I
had an experience in the past that was painful, and out of this I now
avoid relationship. Beyond that pain though, I want to be close and
loved.'

Nevertheless, in the widest sense, one is creating ones own life and
dreams, even though being unconscious of how and why. The
penetration of consciousness into these realms of hidden behaviour
enables the process of creativity to become more directed.

Of course this self-formation needs to be understood in connection with
Buddhism's aim of dissolving the rigid boundaries of the ego, and
finding insight into the illusory nature of our self image. We therefore
need to realise that self-formation means not only creating our own
inner life and responses to the external world more capably, but also the
ability to dissolve what we have created, to realise that the source of all
form is the Void.

Example: I felt a very real power working in my body, but could
not define it. The result was that my breathing slowed down
until it stopped - how long for I do not know. This produced an
experience of personal thoughts and feelings slowing to a stand
still also, leaving stillness. Accompanying this was the sense of
myself being in an ocean. As I floated in the ocean I began to be
lifted by a large wave. I expected to get to the top of the wave
and plunge down again. At this point the breath was taken in
and it stopped. So when I came to the top of the wave it was so
immense I floated at its peak on and on forever.

In trying to describe this I have to use the image of a great
mural painted on a cliff face. The mural has trees and grass,
animals and humans. I am one of the humans and have stepped
out of the mural to become three dimensional. Being three
dimensional is everyday life. When I reach the top of the wave
and the usual ebb and flow of breath and consciousness stops, I
step back into the mural again. I fade into the background of
life again and disappear. This is wonderful. I sense this is what
happens when one dies. The personal sense of self recedes and
there is a blissful merging with all things. I want to stay there
forever. I want to go to sleep into this ocean of blissfulness. I
feel that I could stay there for a hundred years, and if I then
took a breath I would emerge from the mural again and take up
my everyday life just as I left it off, except that events will have
moved on. I want to do this. P.D.


The dissolution is Nirvana. The ability to dissolve self in this way may
not be possible until we can master or penetrate the processes that work
toward our formation. The secrets of our creation are in the
unconscious, the mysterious world of dreams. Thus the need to wake in
sleep, or if not that, wake up from the dream of our life. See: dream as
spiritual guide.

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The See: references in this feature are connected with other sections of The New Dream Dictionary. Yoga And Dreams can be found in the CompuServe New Age Forum.  Further information on the ideas presented in this article can be found in
Tony Crisp's books:-

DO YOU DREAM. Published by Spearman in 1971. By Dutton in USA 1972.
By Lubbe in Germany 1972 as Traume Sind Mehr Als Traume. Still in print
in USA. Describes how to work on ones dreams, with a short dictionary
of dreams.

THE INSTANT DREAM BOOK was published by Spearman in 1984. Instead
of attempting to explain the lengthy process of interpreting ones dreams,
techniques are described which can be used for a more immediate
understanding and influence. Later chapters explore the relationship
between dreams and little-used mental abilities, ESP and spiritual
experience.

MIND AND MOVEMENT. Published by Daniel in 1987. There is a process of
self healing and growth within each of us, that most people tend to either
suppress or not know how to cooperate with. The book describes what the
process is, how we can unlock it through simple body movements and then work
with it. It is a process venerated in many cultures and some religions.

DREAM DICTIONARY and a new revised edition as THE NEW DREAM DICTIONARY in
1994. Published by Little Brown in the UK. Also published in USA by Dell;
Sweden by Viva; Holland by Uitgeverij het Spectrum; Japan by Dobutsu Sha;
Spain by Ediciones Apostrofe SL; Hungary by Hunga Print Publishing; Russia
by Popourri. It is a full dictionary of dreams with many features dealing
with dreamwork, the history of beliefs about dream, and long features on
connected subjects.

LIBERATING THE BODY by Harper/Collins 1992. A more popular format of
Mind and Movement, describing how to use Inner Directed Movement to find
healing, personal growth and intuitive insight into ones own spiritual nature.

BOOK OF THE HAND A joint work written by Neal Criscuolo and Tony Crisp.
Published by Optima in December 1994. Published in USA by Dell. The book is
a full guide to hand analysis, with a section on using intuition for
hand analysis and gaining access to ones own inner insights.

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