What
Buddhists Believe
Venerable K. Sri Dhammananda Maha Thera
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Dreams and
Their Significance
'Life is nothing but a dream.'
One of man's
greatest unsolved problems is the mystery of dreams. From the very
earliest of times man has tried to analyze dreams and has tried to explain
them in prophetic and psychological terms, but while there has been some
measure of success recently, we are probably no nearer the answers to the
baffling question: 'What is a dream?'
The great
English Romantic poet William Wordsworth had a startling concept: that
this life we live is merely a dream and that we will 'awake' to the 'real'
reality when we die, when our 'dream' ends.
'Our birth is but
a sleep and forgetting:
The Soul, that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.'
A similar concept is
expressed in a charming old Buddhist tale which tells of a deva who was
playing with some other devas. Being tired, he lay down to take a short
nap and passed away. He was reborn as a girl on earth. There she got
married, had a few children and lived to be very old. After her death
again she was born as a deva amongst the same companions who had just
finished playing their game. (This story also illustrates the world is
very different from time in another plane of existence).
What has Buddhism to say
about dreams? Just as in every other culture, Buddhism has had its fair
share of people who claimed to be skilled in interpreting dreams. Such
people earn a lot of money exploiting the ignorance of men and women who
believe that every dream has a spiritual or prophetic significance.
According to Buddhist
psychology dreams are ideational processes which occur as activities of
the mind. In considering the occurrence of dreams it is relevant to
remember that the process of sleeping can be regarded as falling into five
stages.
- drowsiness,
- light slumber,
- deep slumber,
- light slumber and
- awakening.
The significance
and the cause of dreams were the subject of discussion in the famous book
'Milinda Panha' or 'The Questions of King Milinda', in which Ven. Nagasena
has stated that there are six causes of dreams, three of them being
organic, wind, bile and phlegm. The fourth is due to the intervention of
supernatural forces, fifth, revival of past experience and sixth, the
influence of future events. It is categorically stated that dreams occur
only in light slumber which is said to be like the sleep of the monkey. Of
the six causes given Ven. Nagasena has stated positively that the last,
namely prophetic dreams are the only important ones and the others are
relatively insignificant.
Dreams are mind-created
phenomena and they are activities of the mind. All human beings dream,
although some people cannot remember. Buddhism teaches that some dreams
have psychological significance. The six causes mentioned earlier can also
be classified in the following manner:
Every single thought that
is created is stored in our subconscious mind and some of them strongly
influence the mind according to our anxieties. When we sleep, some of
these thoughts are activated and appear to us as 'pictures' moving before
us. This happens because during sleep, the five senses which constitute
our contact with the outside world, are temporarily arrested. The
subconscious mind then is free to become dominant and to 're-play'
thoughts that are stored. These dreams may be of value to psychiatry but
cannot be classified as prophetic. They are merely the reflections of the
mind at rest.
The second type of dream
also has no significance. These are caused by internal and external
provocations which set off a train of 'visual thoughts' which are 'seen'
by the mind at rest. Internal factors are those which disturb the body
(e.g. a heavy meal which does not allow one to have a restful slumber or
imbalance and friction between elements that constitute the body).
External provocation is when the mind is disturbed(although the sleeper
may be unaware of it) by natural phenomena like the weather, wind, cold,
rain, leaves rustling, windows rattling etc. The subconscious mind reacts
to these disturbances and creates pictures to 'explain' them away. The
mind accommodates the irritation in a seemingly rational way so that the
dreamer can continue to sleep undisturbed. These dreams too have no
importance and need no interpretation.
Then there are prophetic
dreams. These are important. They are seldom experienced and only when
there is an impending event which is of great relevance to the dreamer.
Buddhism teaches that besides the tangible world we can experience, there
are devas who exist on another plane or some spirits who are bound to this
earth and are invisible to us. They could be our relatives or friends who
have passed away and who have been reborn. They maintain their former
mental relationships and attachments to us. When Buddhists transfer merits
to devas and departed ones, they remember them and invite them to share
the happiness accrued in the merit. Thus they develop a mental
relationship with their departed ones. The devas in turn are pleased and
they keep a watch over us and indicate something in dreams when we are
facing certain big problems and they try to protect us from harm.
So, when there is
something important that is going to happen in our lives they activate
certain mental energies in our minds which are seen as dreams. These
dreams can warn of impending danger or even prepare us for sudden
over-whelming good news. These messages are given in symbolic terms (much
like the negatives of photographs) and have to be interpreted skillfully
and with intelligence. Unfortunately too many people confuses the first
two kinds of dreams with these and end up wasting valuable time and money
consulting fake mediums and dream-interpreters. The Buddha was aware that
this could be exploited for personal gain and He therefore warned the
monks against practising soothsaying, astrology and interpreting dreams in
the name of Buddhism.
Finally, our mind is the
depository of all kammic energies accumulated in the past. Sometimes, when
a kamma is about to ripen (that is, when the action we did in a previous
life or early part of our life, is going to experience its reaction) the
mind which is at rest during sleep can trigger off a 'picture' of what is
going to happen. Again the impending action has to be of great importance
and must be so strongly charged that the mind 'releases' the extra energy
in the form of a vivid dream. Such dreams occur only very rarely and only
to certain people with a special kind of mental make up. The sign of the
effect of certain kammas also appears in our minds at the last moment when
we are going to depart from this world.
Dreams can occur when two
living human beings send strong mental telepathic messages to each other.
When one person has an intense desire to communicate with another, he
concentrates strongly on the message and the person with whom he wishes to
communicate. When the mind is at rest, it is in an ideal state to receive
these messages which are seen as dreams. Usually these dreams only appear
in one intense moment because the human mind is not strong enough to
sustain such messages over a long period of time.
All worldlings are
dreamers, and they see as permanent, what is essentially impermanent. They
do not see that youth ends in old age, beauty in ugliness, health in
sickness, and life itself in death. In this dream-world, what is truly
without substance is seen as reality. Dreaming during sleep is but another
dimension of the dream-world. The only ones who are awake are the Buddhas
and Arahats as they have seen reality.
Buddhas and Arahants never
dream. The first three kinds of dream cannot occur in their minds, because
their minds have been permanently 'stilled' and cannot be
activated to dream. The last kind of dream cannot happen to them because
they have eradicated all their craving energy completely, and there is no
'residual' energy of anxiety or unsatisfied desire to activate the mind to
produce dreams. The Buddha is also known as the Awakened One because His
way of relaxing the physical body is not the way we sleep which results in
dreams. Great artists and thinkers, like the German Goethe, have often
said they get some of their best inspiration through dreams. This could be
because when their minds are cut off from the five senses during sleep,
they produce clear thoughts which are creative in the highest degree.
Wordsworth meant the same thing when he said that good poetry results from
'powerful emotions' recollected in tranquillity.
-ooOoo-
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Source: Buddhist
Study and Practice Group, http://www.sinc.sunysb.edu/Clubs/buddhism/
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Layout: Chan Duc - Nguyen Thao
Update : 01-11-2002
