Emptiness and Dreams (by Danaeah B.)
It seems like most of us in the discussion group have a working concept of many key Buddhist terms. We kind of get “impermanence,” whether we want to or not. And the classic inquiry, “Who am I?” can spark an experience of “no-self,” because every answer is dwarfed by the unknowable awareness that holds it. In time I may realize that “what I am” can never be named or grasped. But one term remains elusive for me, and that is “emptiness.”
Thich Nhat Hahn describes it as meaning “empty of a separate existence,” and gives examples of how everything is entwined together. Part of “what I am” is the sun and rain that grew the wheat that made the cheerios I ate for breakfast – “I” am not separate from anything else. I get what he’s saying – sort of – but I’m still not satisfied.
A big hint for me was Pema’s comment that many Buddhist’s believe physical death is like waking from a dream. This leads to an obvious question; just how “real” was last night’s dream? Where are the father and mother, the child and the lover, the shadow and villain and even the dream-ego now? They were never as solid or real as they seemed when they drove me to laughter or tears. Even the “I” that laughed or cried has vanished. There is just that unfathomable awareness from which they rose and to which they returned. Could that be what “emptiness” means? Not that the dream was unreal, but that its reality was that of a morning mist?
Is this how Awareness will view my current life when it’s over?
“What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes (James 4:14).
Back in more new-agey days, I tried some past-life regressions. While most of the impressions were muddled, one was so vivid I wrote a rather haunting poem about it. It was as “real” as anything in my dream journals, but now that “I” has vanished too, along with the people it loved and the way it died (I saw that too).
A while ago I had a spontaneous “lucid dream.” I became aware I was dreaming in the dream. It was a very realistic but ordinary dream of being at work, yet the knowledge that I was awake made everything marvelous. I could act with a kind of joyous confidence, born of the certainty that there was nothing to worry about.
Is that a decent analogy to the kind of “awakening” we pursue through meditation? Maybe “emptiness” is the best description those people who are awake to the dream nature of “real life” are able to give us.
(Incidentally, in my lucid dream, I started toward an outside courtyard, thinking to observe some arrangement of stones or twigs in a pattern my daytime self could look for in the morning. Unfortunately, I woke before I got there.)
Gassho, Danaeah
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