dream-like nature of reality

The most important journey of our life

5.5 mins read.

Attachment, or uncontrolled desire, is all about going “out there” and trying to bring stuff – people, things, situations – back “over here”, toward us, to feed the need. If we observe our body and mind carefully when we have attachment, we may even notice our inner energy winds flowing outwards, away from our heart.

Carrying on from this article.

When we drop into our heart and develop faith, love, wisdom, and so on, we can feel our energy winds drawing inwards, toward our heart, instead of flowing outwards. We immediately start to feel less dualistic – less of a gap between “in here and out there” – and more peaceful. This is a training, of course, but we may as well get started because it is all good.

In How to Transform Your Life Geshe Kelsang points out a choice we currently have between worldly attainments and enlightenment, using the example of possessing a magical jewel that can satisfy all our external wishes versus the happiness that comes from a pure mind. (Bit like Aladdin’s Lamp, only you get more than 3 wishes.)

Feeding the need

With attachment we are set up from the get-go in a state of need, in lack. We have never managed to satisfy our desires with attachment in any lasting way. As soon as we satisfy one longing — convinced at the time that this is going to solve my problems and make me feel content and whole — it is mere days or minutes before another need arises to take its place. We are all addicted to trying to solve our problems and find happiness through attachment, which is why we are chained to the prison walls of samsara and have made no attempt to escape.

We may try to find happiness in relationships, for example, by controlling the other person or allowing ourselves to be controlled. But with the confident self-contained happiness that comes from within, we need be neither puppet nor puppet master. We can just enjoy each other in each moment.

Careful what you wish for

One of the other problems about desiring things outside us is that these wishes are often contradictory, as Buddha pointed out. For example, we want to lose 10 lbs but also eat pizza, we want to be adventurous but also not wait in line at the airport, we want to be promoted but also not have all that extra work, we want to be rich but also not have to worry about taxes and other complicated financial stuff. Etc etc. Our wishes cancel each other out half the time!

The happiness that comes from a pure mind, and above all from enlightenment, is the only thing that won’t ever deceive us. Wishing to find happiness outside ourself does not get us any closer to lasting happiness – it just keeps us scratching itches all day long.

What have I been working for all this time?

And this example of the jewel also makes me think about what it is that we’ve been striving for since beginningless time. What exactly does it amount to? Where exactly has it gotten us?

Close your eyes and think about this for just a moment, if you would. If you were offered the choice of (1) having the most beautiful dream you could imagine, arising seemingly out of nowhere but lasting for ages and containing everything and everyone you’ve ever longed for, or (2) always knowing that you were dreaming …

… which would you choose?

Waking life is dreamlike. Even the most sublime waking dream, however long it lasts, is still fleeting and ephemeral. We have bought into every dream we have ever had, asleep or awake, invested in it all our hopes and fears when the truth is, as it says in How to Transform Your Life:

Impermanence spares nothing and no one; in samsara all our dreams are broken in the end.

Because we have believed that dream-like reality is not dream-like at all but can be found outside of our mind, from its own side, we have also not had any real control over it. Bottom line, this is why we suffer, even when our dreams have been good.

When we come to realize how mind is the creator of reality — that everything is mere projection and mere name with no existence from its own side, unfindable upon analysis — we can create any dream we want any time we want. And then help everyone else do the same.

This really is what Buddha is helping us understand through his teachings. He is saying we can gain control over our minds and our reality.

Escape to reality

Some people have the notion that finding all this peace and freedom from within is escapist navel gazing – we get all blissed out while the rest of the “real” world just muddles along having to take care of itself (or not, as the case may be). But nothing could be further from the truth. The deeper we go within, the deeper becomes our understanding of the reality of interconnection and non-duality. We become closer and closer to everyone and everything until our experience of self and other is non-dual. We are not separate from others, but they are us and we are them.

This growing realization of love and compassion suffuses our mind with more and more actual happiness and ability to benefit others, like a sun naturally radiating wider and wider. Without going within, it is hard to gain those deep insights into the real nature of self and other, and to exchange self with others, understanding that our sense of “Me” can cover all living beings.

We are instead stuck trying to feed the black hole of need, ie, catering to our tiny but rapacious limited self, the real and only and most important Me. The Me whose desires can never end because we have set this up all wrong out of ignorance and attachment – Me over here and everything I want over there.

Imagine healing ourselves and becoming a source of light and healing for everyone we know. Sounds good, right? But for this to work we need to think about changing direction – going inwards not outwards to find the happiness and freedom we have always longed for.

That is why the most important journey we can ever make is the journey into the heart.

Next and final installment is here.

Your comments, as always, are appreciated (scroll below).

The relevance of inner peace

Moving from the head to the heart

What is life according to Buddha?

Mahamudra meditation

Can you find anything?

It seems to me from Buddha’s teachings that we need to help others locally and practically, with what and who is under our nose, whether we work in business or a caring profession or whatever, and whatever our personal circumstances. But our thoughts about it all need to change. Our thoughts are not fixed; we can learn to think whatever we want.

(Continuing from this article.)

Selfless

Thoughts conducive to freedom and happiness are selfless ones — both in terms of unselfishness and in terms of the wisdom understanding there is no self. We, our body, and everyone and everything else cannot be found to exist in and of themselves. As Shantideva, an emanation of Wisdom Buddha Manjushri, says in Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life:

Living beings are like objects in a dream
For, when analyzed, they have no ultimate identity, just like a rainbow.

Paradigm shift

So, if we want to free ourselves and others from suffering in any lasting way, it is very important to understand emptiness – undergo a paradigm shift. Otherwise we are restricted to two inadequate options, it seems to me:

(1) We can continue trying to fix stuff out there, all externally, without taking our mind and intentions into account at all. This is like trying to move the furniture around in a dream, or trying to get the cowboys on the screen to stop shooting the Indians. Lots of expended energy, limited results.

(2) We can change our states of mind and intentions, and this is good and important – we can make our projections and karma better by using love, compassion, and so on, as explained in this article. However, we can only patch things up this way. We are still in samsara, so the hallucinatory dream appearances continue unabated, and we suffer.

To stop suffering once and for all by pulling the plug out from the ocean of samsara, we have to realize that we, others, suffering, and everything else is mere appearance of mind, unfindable, empty of inherent existence.

The disappearing flower trick

Now for the disappearing flower trick — hopefully a helpful way to see what’s meant by the unfindability of everything. It would be good to have a video of this, any volunteers?! Until then, you’ll just have to imagine.

Imagine I’m holding up a rose. Where is the rose? “It is there”, you say, as you point in the direction of the rose, maybe waving your hand around a little.

Where, though, exactly?

Why, somewhere in its parts – at least that is where it seems to be.

So, now imagine I am pulling the petals off one by one – is this the rose? No. This one? No. That’s just a petal. Perhaps it is this green bit then (forgive my lack of botanical knowledge)? No.

So the rose is none of its individual parts.

But maybe it is the collection of these parts, then?

So imagine I am holding the collection of petals and green bits in my palm. Is this the rose?

No.

So where is the rose? The only other possibility is that it is somewhere else, other than its parts.

Imagine I now put my hand full of rose petals behind my back. Where is the rose?

Nowhere.

We thought there was a real rose out there, existing in and of itself, from its own side. But there never was. That was a projection of our mind. We decided there was a rose there, we imputed “rose”. And then we believed in our own imputation as if it had nothing to do with us. Rather like believing our dreams have nothing to do with us and then reacting to them as such.

Depending on how attached we are to roses, we may or may not get too upset that I have seemingly pulled this one apart. But we are being deceived in a similar way by all those people and objects that we are deeply attached to and irritated on behalf of – our body, our self, our partner, our job, our computer, etc. Nothing is out there existing from its own side. Nothing at all. But we react to everything as if it was.

If you find it, you can have it

Sometimes I like to say to myself: “If you find it, you can have it.” I go looking for the places, enjoyments, and people of samsara that I feel attached to – they have to be either in their parts or separate from their parts or somewhere else; and, if they are not, then what exactly am I so attached to?! As Shantideva says:

With objects that are empty in this way,
What is there to gain and what is there to lose?
Who is there to praise me?
And who is there to blame me?

This is a way to enjoy without grasping. For, if we cannot find these things, we surely have to ask ourselves, “What am I doing spending so much time thinking about them?!” We lighten up and start having more fun. As Shantideva says:

I beseech you, O reader, who are just like me,
Please strive to realize that all phenomena are empty, like space.

These wisdom teachings of Buddha are very profound but I hope you have gotten a bit of a taste in these last eight articles and want to read more. Please pick up Geshe Kelsang’s books, for he is the Wisdom Buddha, a total master of emptiness, and he teaches it all the time. (Any vague understanding I have of this subject comes entirely from him, and any mistakes in talking about it are very obviously my own.) As he said in 2006:

I’ve told you this hundreds of times, and I will keep telling you this until my final breath – the world you normally perceive does not exist.

It is so worth persevering in this listening (or reading), contemplation, and meditation on the subject, now that we have this rare opportunity, because with a realization of emptiness we can do anything. When we realize the true nature of things, there are infinite possibilities. We can purify our mind and our world, experience freedom from suffering forever, and help everyone else to do the same.

So, please don’t stop until you get there! And good luck 🙂

Previous articles on this topic

(1) Body image: a Buddhist perspective

(2) There is nothing out there, out there

(3) Reasoning our way into reality

(4) Meditating on the emptiness of our body

(5) Our bodies barely exist

(6) The building blocks of the universe according to Buddhism

(7) Pure mind, pure world

Pure mind, pure world

This is the seventh article in a row on this subject of emptiness, and p’raps you’re thinking, “Hey, this is all well and good, and interesting pure mind pure world and such, but rather than sitting around on our butts trying to get to the bottom of things (or not, as the case may be, seeing as there is no bottom), shouldn’t we be out doing more stuff to help others practically?!!”

Carrying on from this article.

I have just been stopped on my bike in the King Sooper’s parking lot to sign a petition for the Environmental Protection Agency. And yes, I believe that man-made climate change is a problem that needs addressing. I have lost track of the amount of petitions and good causes I have been asked to sign up and pay for, especially since last November. My in-box and mail box have never been this inundated – how did everyone find me?!

And I do my best. But it is drops in the ocean compared with changing our minds and getting rid of our ignorance and selfish intentions, which alone will lead to lasting good results — a purification of the entire ocean.

Taking time out to ponder the bigger picture and master the mind is the opposite of Me Time because, when we don’t, our old habits naturally lead us to self-cherishing and wasting time yet again trying to make this non-existent real me happy. Which in any case is impossible, so it’s frustrating even just trying. As well as leading to a Them and Us mentality, and self-centered actions.

We remain part of the problem, ie, deluded. So, if that is the case, if delusions are the problem for each one of us, the question would seem to be, “What can I do to be part of the solution?”

The answer is to increase our wisdom. Wisdom is the way to destroy our common enemies of the delusions once and for all.

Just look at this video to see the scale of human and animal suffering in this world. How are we going to even make a dent in this without becoming a Bodhisattva and increasing our wisdom?

In any case, if recent studies are anything to go by, we are not running around helping each other all the time; we are spending something like 40 hours a week just stuck to our Smartphones!

So, if you find yourself too glued to your screens these days, can I make a little practical suggestion? I like to have one or two Kadampa Buddhist books on the go at any time, and I keep one next to my bed. Twenty minutes reading one each day = 20 minutes less time on the internet. Not saying we have to stop Netflix and Instagram altogether, just 20 little minutes?! Go to bed a little earlier and spend the last 20 minutes of the day all tucked up reading?! We’ll definitely sleep better as all studies show that we need to turn off our screens earlier; and we’ll likely get enlightened a lot quicker as well 😁

Conventional reality

Normally we think that the physical world and everything in it comes first, and that we are conscious beings who then arrive and bump into everything – enter stage left, move around for a lifetime, depart stage right. But it is the other way around. The world and everything in it, including ourselves, is a projection of mind, like a dream, arising simultaneously with our awareness.

Wherever and however hard we look, we cannot find anything existing from its own side, independent of our consciousness. Our hand, for example, exists only as the object of an idea, an imputation. No imputation, no hand. Our hand functions as a hand, we can call it a hand, and many people will agree that it is hand. (Maybe not the wild boar I was warned about the other day when I was wandering in South Carolina, who bit someone’s fingers off, presumably imputing something like “Rare meat sticks”.) mere name bike

So by agreement or convention we can say this is a hand – this is conventional reality. But it is a mere label created by conceptual thought. It is mere appearance — nothing more than appearance. If we look behind the label, we’ll find nothing.

To requote Ven Geshe-la from this article:

It is almost as if our body does not exist. Indeed, the only sense in which we can say that our body does exist is if we are satisfied with the mere name “body” and do not expect to find a real body behind the name. If we try to find, or point to, a real body to which the name “body” refers, we shall not find anything at all.

Dream hands

Hands in dreams also work as hands and can be called hands. It doesn’t mean they are real. This is true for the body, self, living beings, mind, planet, stars, everything. Things appear and perform a function, but they don’t exist from their own side. Everything is imputed by thought. A dream object only appears for as long as the dream awareness appearing it exists, then, Poof!, it’s gone.

Create a pure world

And the same is true for everything in the waking world. Once we have reasoned our way into reality and realized this:

We shall realize that we can cause all the unpleasant things that we dislike to cease simply by abandoning impure states of mind, and we can cause all the good things that we desire to arise simply by developing a pure mind. In this way, we shall be able to fulfill all our wishes. ~ Understanding the Mind

When we realize that we are creating our world with our thoughts, we understand at the deepest level what Buddha is always telling us — that if we want happiness and freedom from suffering we have to change our mind. For if we change our thoughts, we literally change our world. This is utterly radical and utterly mind-boggling — but also utterly true.

It’s also a good idea to get into practice this meditation on the emptiness of our body before our body gets too sore or unhealthy, because we’ll be delighted to have this knowledge when it does. I had a splitting headache the other night and I was able to remember that there was no head there to grasp at. It really helps.

Continued in the next and final article on the emptiness of the body.

Previous articles on this topic

(1) Body image: a Buddhist perspective

(2) There is nothing out there, out there

(3) Reasoning our way into reality

(4) Meditating on the emptiness of our body

(5) Our bodies barely exist

(6) The building blocks of the universe according to Buddhism

There is nothing out there, out there

At the moment, if we haven’t thought much about emptiness, we are probably thinking that our body is a lot more real and important than it actually is.

Carrying on from this article.

Everything is as insubstantial as a dream, even our own body. Even our own self. Even our own mind.

Our mind keeps trying to go out there, as if to grasp onto things out there. But there is nothing there to grasp at, we come up as short as someone trying to drink a mirage.

Unfindability

In the Condensed Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, Buddha says:

If you search for your body with wisdom, you cannot find it.

my-body — Experiment: Point to a body without pointing at something that is not a body.

As I plan to examine a bit more in the the next article, we normally see our body within its parts, such as in the hands and head. But this way of seeing our body “out there”, or even “in here”, findable within its parts, is mistaken, because if we look for our body in its individual parts we won’t find it – it is not the head, not the hands, etc. And if we look for it in the collection of its parts we won’t find it, only a collection of things that are not it. The more we look, the less we’ll find it. We will only ever be able to point at things that are not it.

And if we look for our body other than its parts, which is the only other option, we won’t find it either. We’ll be left perceiving an absence of the findable body. This in fact proves that the body we normally see does not exist.

There is nothing out there, out there, as I have heard some people say.

Our mind also tries to go “out there” in a dream, but where is it actually going?! What is “out there” in a dream?

(Wiser to bring our mind inwards whenever we can, towards our heart.)

So, given that I have one, and it is not out there, what the heck is my body?!

The other side of the coin of unfindability is that our body (and everything else) exists as mere appearance to mind, or of mind; and how it appears depends on our karma. As a musician put it in the comments to this last article (I’m sure he is exaggerating a little but you get the point):

Listeners sometimes enjoy and sometimes don’t enjoy hearing our voice. We are like karmic conductors when we sing. Barbara Streisand is loved by some and she is hell-realmish for me to listen too, as is Whitney Houston.

And as I replied:

Depending on karma, we see different things. Mistaken karmic appearances. So we need to rely on our relatively non-deceptive minds of love and compassion, and definitely on wisdom, as I tried to explain in this article called Beneficial believing.

One common illustration: someone can be attracted to our body one week out of karma and attachment, and then not interested the next week when their karma and attachment has changed — at which point no amount of dieting or make up or plastic surgery will help 😜 I wrote this article as a lead up to a couple of articles on the emptiness of our body because that is a very effective way to stop being so hung up with body image if we can learn to do it.

If we realize the emptiness of our body, we can dispatch our own convoluted unsolvable suffering related to that conceptual grasping at mere appearance as a real body, leaving us feeling a lot more spacious and free. And we will find we have a lot more energy for others. Before too long we can attain liberation and enlightenment. So it is not just a philosophical curiosity to think about this; it is a BIG deal.

Where does your body go at night?

This body that you are sitting in right now, by the way, the one you might be really quite fixated upon, thinking “My gorgeous body!, My flabby body!”, are you even bothered about it when you fall asleep and dream? Are you even relating to it as “My body!” at that time? No. It seems that at that time we are using another body, a dream body, quite possibly feeling all bent out of shape and suffering distorted body image about that one too.

My body in my dream last night, for example, felt very real and solid. I remember it had blue eyes (my waking body has green/brown eyes.) If a tiger had bitten it, I would have freaked out. If someone had told me I was ugly, I would have been sad. At that time, I wasn’t using this body I am using now – I was not even aware of it, as it lay prone in the bed. It could have been as ugly as it wanted and I wouldn’t have cared.

During our dreams, the body that is an appearance of our waking mind disappears for us. This endless coming and going, this sheer appearance and disappearance, in itself might be telling us something. How real and solid is this body that we cherish and worry about so much? How important is it?

The cosmetic industry knows how much some people can be fooled by an apparently fixed idea of their body, so much so that they will spend thousands of dollars on “correcting” the slightest wrinkle or jowl – well, I reckon we are all doing it to a greater or lesser extent. We are all being fooled by our own permanent- and inherent-seeming mental images or projections, imagining our body to be far more solid and unchanging than it actually is, and disapproving of — sometimes even loathing — what we think we see in the mirror.

The purpose of photoshopping

Where did last night’s dream body go, the one that felt so real when we were using it in our dream? If it was as real or objective as it felt at the time — existing from its own side independent of the mind — we could expect it to go somewhere, it couldn’t just disappear. But it went nowhere because it was mere appearance to our dreaming mind. When our dream mind ceased, so did our dream body – other than that there is no reason why our dream body should cease.

Likewise, where did yesterday’s seemingly solid, real body go? If it was real, existing objectively or outside the mind, surely it has to be somewhere? But yesterday’s body, too, went nowhere because it was also mere appearance to yesterday’s mind.

My dream body was only ever dream-like appearance. It was never really there. It was just an idea of my dreaming mind. Any Nutribullet diet I embarked upon would have been a waste of time. And I knew this for certain the moment I woke up.

And the same is true for my waking body sitting writing this, now. It is just an idea or imputation of my waking mind. If I want to accept and like my body I don’t need to diet, cut bits out of it, or Photoshop it — I just need to change my ideas of what “My body” is. And I will know this for certain the moment I wake up from the sleep of ignorance.

This really works once we understand it. We can contemplate how our dream body is unfindable outside the mind — and therefore exists as mere appearance to our mind, mere projection, mere label — and then apply that understanding to our waking body.

With this we can let go of grasping so tightly at this waking body in a fixed way, as a limited deficient thing. See how much freedom we now have to relate to our merely projected body in a different way altogether – to re-label it, for example, as a vehicle for enjoying this precious human life or as a vehicle for helping others. Moreover, we are more likely to want to keep it healthy so that it feels stronger and lasts longer for our own and others’ sake – eating right, sleeping enough, exercising.

Through the Tantric teachings we can even come to see that our actual body is not the one grown from parts of our parents’ bodies, but our own very subtle wind that we have had since beginningless time, along with our very subtle mind. We can learn to identify with this purified into an illusory body, and see this fleshy outer thing as just like an old overcoat that we keep in good nick as far as we can, but without freaking out when it doesn’t look as new and perfectly tailored as it once did.

So instead of sucking in your stomach and smiling oddly at yourself every time you look in the mirror, or quickly removing the Facebook tag when people post a photo of you from the wrong angle (or is that just me?), when we see our body we can recognize how lucky we are to have a human body at all and what we can do with it. We can clean our teeth and brush our hair not out of a worry about how we look, but simply to take care of our body so that we can use it to help others. Check out that powerful parallel scene in Schindler’s list that I write about here.

You know what I think? I think the self-confidence that comes from this acceptance, and from taking control of our own perceptions, makes us appear far more attractive than ever before. The ability to help others grows exponentially. And this attractiveness and fulfillment will never fade.

Next time, reasoning our way into reality, more meditation on the emptiness of our body. Meantime, please share your thoughts on any of this.

Related articles

Am I dreaming?

What just happened?

There is nothing there to grasp at

Are we hallucinating all this?

Mere karmic appearance of mind

Feeding the need

Careful what you wish for

What have I been working for all this time?

Escape to reality

Related articles

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Selfless

Paradigm shift

The disappearing flower trick

If you find it, you can have it

Previous articles on this topic

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Conventional reality

Dream hands

Create a pure world

Previous articles on this topic

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Unfindability

So, given that I have one, and it is not out there, what the heck is my body?!

Where does your body go at night?

The purpose of photoshopping

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