Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Dream World

This life is a dream… a lucid dream, in which no matter how one tries to “wake up” from the dream, one just cannot. Specifically due to the heavy load of karma that renders one into a state of identification.

When people describe the Buddha as "One Who has Awakened," they describe the event in terms of a dream metaphor. But this is missing the actual realization that we truly are existing in a dream-like reality, that is essentially empty of self-nature. Although one does experience something, a reality as it were, it is ultimately unreal.

This life is an illusion. Our relationships are an illusion. The people in our lives exist to us now, as inherently real; after all, we do experience ourselves in opposition to others, but it is truly like the dream metaphor. When we wake from a dream, we know for certain that the people we interacted with never actually existed outside of our thoughts.

I see it clearly now, yet… I still can’t wake up.

If I were to loose a loved one in a dream, I experience the pain of loss, yet, there was really no loss at all, since the loved one never really existed. So the experience was real, so to speak, but the loss was not.

This is how the relative world is, Ultimately.

There is nothing left to do but practice with diligence; Like Samantabhadra Bodhisattva says in his Admonition: “practice like your head is on fire.”

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