Author Topic: Buddhism and Dreams  (Read 8836 times)

yontenjamyang

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Buddhism and Dreams
« on: July 19, 2012, 06:00:53 AM »
I found this article very interesting and will like everyone to discuss this topic of Dreams from the perspective of Buddhism.

Buddhism and Dreams
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 image from the many influences it is usually enmeshed in. Part of this is the illusory view we have of the world. Buddhism does not see the world 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 thought of as being illusions, but depict the illusions of our everyday experience of life. 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 as 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 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 might go through agonies of worry. But the thoughts are not the events that follow. And when the events themselves arrive, we can respond to them 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 itself. 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 Vipassanâ, 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 calm 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 standstill 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, to wake up from the dream of our life.

Positive Change

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Re: Buddhism and Dreams
« Reply #1 on: July 20, 2012, 03:43:27 PM »
What are dreams? What is the dream state? Is it a separate reality? Here is an interesting article which I would like to share:

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 karmic energies accumulated in the past. Sometimes, when a karma 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.

buddhalovely

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Re: Buddhism and Dreams
« Reply #2 on: August 23, 2012, 05:26:15 PM »
Dreams as a simile for emptiness.

The most common use of dreams in the literature of the Mahayana, or “Northern School” of Buddhism in China, Tibet, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam is to see dreams as a simile for sunyata, (emptiness) the hollow core at the heart of all component dharmas (things). For example, in the well-known Vajra (Diamond) Sutra, the Buddha taught that:

“All conditioned dharmas, are like a dream, like an illusion, like a bubble, like a shadow, like a dewdrop, like a lightening flash; you should contemplate them thus.”

Dreams symbolize the changing and impermanent nature of all things known to the senses. Sights, sounds, smells, flavors, sensations of touch and thoughts are all dream-like, fleeting, and ultimately unobtainable. By pursuing and grasping material things or ephemeral states, we create the causes for misery and suffering. Those desire-objects are not real and permanent. When they break up and move on, we will experience grief, if we can’t let go. The hallmark of living beings is that we are “sleeping, “ unawakened to the truth of the emptiness and impermanence at the nature of conditioned things. This covering of sleep and lack of awareness is called “ignorance,” and it makes us in our waking state, from the Buddha’s viewpoint, look as if we are dreaming.

Bubbles burst, shadows run from light, dewdrops vanish by noon without a trace, lightning roars and vanishes, and dreams leave us at dawn. To continually perceive such things as real locks us into the endless cycle of birth and death. The Buddha was not simply giving us an evocative metaphor, a literary device or a philosophical point. He felt related to all beings, and in his compassion he was pointing out to his family a way to escape the prolonged misery of affliction and death. The dream simile occurs over and over in the sutras to teach about emptiness.

In the Ta Chih Tu Lun dreams occur as a didactic teaching device. Sariputra, the foremost Arhat in wisdom, learns the true application of the emptiness theory through the simile of dreams. Dreams are like ordinary waking reality in that both are empty and false. There is nothing gained by seeking out or clinging to any thought or mark that distinguishes the two states.

With the exception of message-dreams and portent dreams, two categories that we will look at below, for the Buddha’s monastic disciples who were intent on cultivating the mind full-time, dreams were considered as illusory and false, no different from the illusions of waking-time reality.

Ensapa

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Re: Buddhism and Dreams
« Reply #3 on: August 24, 2012, 10:37:35 AM »
Connected with the topic of dreams, is dream yoga. This is apparently a very powerful method for realizations. It does take a very strong mind to take control in a dream situation, however...

Quote
bout the Dream Yoga teachings — an interview with Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
On February 19, 2008, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche offered a brief overview of his October 2008 dream yoga teachings.


Voice of Clear Light: You have been teaching dream yoga many times over the past few years since the publication of your book The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep. What will your teachings emphasize at this fall's retreat?

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche: As always, the core information remains the same, but the approach to the information, and particularly how the information is applied, changes from retreat to retreat. The longer I have been teaching and the longer my students have been practicing, the more simplified, direct and effective the teachings become. Hopefully, I can emphasize some of the more essential elements of the teaching with more effective ways of relating the practice to the modern lifestyle and modern individual. Basically, this fall I will be emphasizing the cream of the teachings, the nectar of the teachings.

VOCL: What is a new person likely to gain from attending this retreat? What is an experienced practitioner likely to gain?

TWR: For people who have been practicing, of course this is an opportunity to understand and connect more deeply, to apply the practice of dream yoga in a quintessential way. They can further explore what doesn't work for them and what can work for them. It's an opportunity to reinforce their practice.

For people coming for the first time, the dream yoga teachings may be a way to discover in their sleeping and dreaming hours a hidden time, a hidden space, a hidden way to practice meditation in their life — and through that opportunity, to further their spiritual development. Many people think to themselves, "I don't have time to practice." But if you are able to use sleep and dream as a way of practicing, it is like discovering many more years of time in your life for practice. We spend one-third of our life, or an average of 20 to 25 years, asleep. Depending on how much time you have left in your life, suddenly you have discovered 10 or so more years to do practice.

If you don't use this time for practice, you will be using it instead for the wrong things — for dreams of ignorance, for nightmares.  If you can take over that time, clearly it's a great opportunity for change.

VOCL: How can engaging in dream yoga support the other meditation practices a person may be doing?

TWR:  Many other practices we do, including forms of tantric visualization, require a foundation of feeling clear within oneself. Before transforming into the tummo goddess, for example, we engage in practices to clear our obstacles and obscurations. If I can feel clearer than before, then I can undergo a more complete and vivid transformation. I think dream yoga can be very helpful in that aspect of clearing.

Of course, one must also have a measure of clarity in order to practice dream yoga. That is why we engage in preliminaries like the practices of tsa lung and the nine breathings of purification. You need to have clear, open attention to the four major chakras as you fall asleep.

But dream yoga itself can be very clearing. For example, when you draw attention to the heart chakra while falling asleep, any pain you have been feeling in your heart will be the cause of manifestation in your dreams. Thus, your dreams will manifest in a way that reflects the pain you feel in your heart. During lucid dreaming, then, you are working with the heart chakra in physical, energetic and mental ways to clear that aspect of pain. Once you've cleared it, then the next time you draw your open attention to the heart chakra as you fall asleep, it will have another effect.

VOCL: Who is most likely to find dream yoga practice most accessible and have the best results from it?

TWR: People who have some more sense of light sleep, who have clear dreams, who are able to detach from the stresses of the workday as their evening begins … these people are most likely to be able to connect to the practice with good results.

Tammy

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Re: Buddhism and Dreams
« Reply #4 on: August 25, 2012, 03:39:27 AM »
Just thinking out loud.. Buddhists believe reincarnation in transfer of our midstream from physical bodies. We pick up and accumulate imprints, possitive and negative karma along with our midstream when we live our lives again and again indifferent forms from beginningless time.

Hence, when we are resting; emotions, encounters, people , places and incidents that we had lived through, especially those that had left a strong emotional footprint in our mind might have 'surface' in the form of dream.

This can be supported by accounts of those people who remember their past life and often dream of people, places and incidents that are beyond their ability, even spoke languages that they were not trained in thei dreams.
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ilikeshugden

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Re: Buddhism and Dreams
« Reply #5 on: August 25, 2012, 06:44:42 AM »
Dreams are something important in every culture and religion. It does not matter whether it is monotheistic religion or polytheistic religion, christianity or buddhism. The Buddhist perspective of dreams as I see it is similar to the christian view point, dreams are usually like prophecies, signs that something great is coming or something bad will happen. Dreams in Buddhism also shows our mind's true self.

RedLantern

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Re: Buddhism and Dreams
« Reply #6 on: August 26, 2012, 02:00:13 PM »

For Tibetan Buddhist,all experiences are illusion.One way to achieve awareness of the illusory nature of reality is through work with dreams.
Dreams symbolizes the changing and impermanent nature of all things known to the senses.Sights,sounds,smells,flavors,sensation of touch and thoughts are all dream-like fleeting,and ultimately unattainable.
By pursuing and grasping material things,we create the cause for misery and suffering.Those desire objects are not real and permanent.When they break up and move,we experience grief,if we can't let it go.The hallmark of living beings is that we are "sleeping" unawakened to the truth of the emptiness and impermanence at the nature of conditional things.The covering of sleep and lack of awareness is called "ignorance"and it makes us in our waking state,from the Buddha's viewpoint,look as if we are dreaming.
The Buddha was not simply giving us an evocative metaphor,a literary device or philosophical point.He felt related to all beings,and in his compassion he was pointing out to his family a way to escape the prolong misery of affliction and death.The dream simile occurs over and over in the sutras to teach about emptiness
For Buddhas monastic disciples who were intent on cultivating the mind full-time,dreams were considered as illusory and false,no different from the illusions of waking time reality.











ratanasutra

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Re: Buddhism and Dreams
« Reply #7 on: August 26, 2012, 08:48:57 PM »
I view that laypeople dream come from delusion minds which can be emotion or feeling ie too full, too hungry, anxious, excited, worry, fear etc

But high lama dreams is a sign or significant of something going to happen. As high lama is a practitioner who act with compassion towards other beings to relief beings from suffering so their dreams are to the signs of something which can be warning of some bad incidents or achieving in some projects which will benefit others.

Most of people whom i know are believe in dream that there are meaning and significant behind it according to their believes and their culture.