In Zen practice we talk a lot about awakening. I notice there can be such a preference for wakefulness/alertness in zazen and in life, that we label sleep and dreams as the stuff of delusion. Living at the monastery, I have witnessed this great stigma we sometimes place on sleepiness when it arises in meditation.

As humans it is so easy to turn everything into a set of dualities. If you set up this goal of awakening, awakening becomes good and anything that is not awakening becomes bad. And then what happens? I know from my experience that I can start to ignore, judge or subtly deny what I label my unawakened states of mind. 

The Awakening we talk about in Zen is all-inclusive, meaning not in opposition to anything. Not in opposition to anything! I think this can be difficult to appreciate, what is not opposed to anything? Rubert Spira uses this analogy: “Is the sky in opposition to the clouds, to the weather?” Awakened awareness is just like this. Besides, let's look at sleep for a moment, isn’t sleep a form of no-self, emptiness, the great mystery? Who is it that sleeps? Where do you go when the head hits the pillow and the outer world dissolves?

We do this amazing thing for 5-9 hours a night. We let-go into the unknown. We lay down as an act of surrender--and temporarily release the roles, plans, regrets, responsibilities, personality structure of our day-lit world. We let go of our identities. We dissolve into this mysterious realm of sleep and dream. Living out completely different lives, in our dreams. Lives that are mostly wordless. 

If awakening is our basic nature--which is what the dharma teachings point to. Then sleep and dreaming must be a part of our awakening.

Dogen Zenji says in his fasicile Muchu Setsumu, Within a Dream, expressing the Dream:

Because awakening is seen within awakening, the dream is expressed within a dream.

In this dream, there is gratitude for technology.

In this dream, there is peace.

In this dream, there is acceptance.

In this dream, there is love.

What are you dreaming about? 

Fragments of thought creating a dream narrative of a separate self in a dream world, created by dream beliefs.

How does this dream begin?

If the dream of life is happening, always happening. Mustn’t it be co-created? Co-dreamed. 

Joan Sutherland says it this way:

Perhaps there is a dreaming going on underneath everything, a great river of co-creation where our individual dreamings, our individual lives, touch and are touched by the dreamings of others. Perhaps the dream each of us lives inside is made up of events, memories, genetics, and our communal dreamings, the dreaming of landscapes, of those dearest to us, of art that moves us, and of the pains of the world. 

Perhaps our personal stories are our attempts to interpret the dreaming to ourselves. And so perhaps sometimes the dreaming of our life is actually out ahead of the story we tell about it, without our being aware that this has happened. We might be telling a story that no longer fits the dream, and so is constricting something that has already grown larger, already grown past, what we think about it. Sometimes we might be holding onto stories whose time has come and gone; sometimes we might be unaware of the expansiveness, the richness, of our own dreaming, because we are looking with yesterday’s eyes.

And sometimes we suffer the dream. Perhaps we forget that we are a part of the dreaming, but not the sole dreamer. That our wishing and hoping, wanting and rejecting, ignoring and reacting is a layer of the dream, but not the whole dream. 

Like in a night dream. We are asleep and out of vast nothingness, images appear, actions happen, scenery morphs, some images take the forms of people we know, others animals, objects of our day-lit world. One character though we call, me--the dream ego. So we go about living in that dream world, with our dream aversions, dream fears, dream anxieties--battling dream monsters, being thrown into dream pits, flying through dream space. 

Yet in the moment of waking, this whole scenario fades. Wait, who was that dream ego? Where is this sense of I in the dream? Was it not made of the same stuff as all the other dream characters, dream scenes, dream clothing?

What is a dream made of? What is the dream ego made of? These are crucial inquiries for a person on the path of liberation, the path of awakening, the path of dreaming.

Similarly we have the self-centered dream of waking life. The dream ego of waking life, separates itself out through its self-centered thinking.

In this dream I am listening to a dharma talk

I am wishing for something else

A lunch, a better dharma talk

One that is funny or has a poem by Mary Oliver

Or gives me a spontaneous awakening experience

And then i will be happy--Free, content.

I can dream of awakening and so, it always remains a dream, a dream plastered onto this dream-like reality, both ungraspable, both utterly mysterious. Awakening always out of reach. A dream of something else. In some future time, that will never dawn. For it is a dream image, in a dream person's dream reality.

Another way to see this dream of awakening though is-- awakening right here, the moment the aspiration to awaken for the benefit of all beings arises, as Dogen Zenji says practice/awakening also arise.

“Between aspiration, practice and enlightenment there is not a moments gap.”

I have been reading this book by the African Shaman Malidoma Some called Of Water and the Spirit. One of the views of his people, the Dacara, is that the thinking world and the material world are intimately connected. To think something is almost the same as doing the thing, and a thought has the power to manifest in the material world in its own time. We see this with intention. In the Dzogchen tradition they say, the view is the meditation, the meditation is the conduct. The aspiration to awaken, is awakening itself--in that moment of genuine aspiration.

This is part of the reason we put so much emphasis on vows. And why dream yogis, people who attempt to bring practice to the night world of dream focus on aspiration prayers and connecting with Bodhisattva’s as they fall asleep.

Dogen Zenji says, This is the dream expressed within a dream, prior to all dreams.

THIS is the dream expressed within a dream, prior to all dreams.

Prior to this sense of self, this dream of separation, this dream of awakening, we are dwelling in our nature. We are always dwelling in our nature. All beings are always dwelling in their nature--freely expressing, freely colluding in the dream of the universe. 

Prior to this dream of “I, me, mine”--we are buddhas, sitting in a room with other buddhas, sitting in a universe, intelligent, awake and compassionately sharing the secret joy of being. This dreaming universe, continuously creating, continuously manifesting newness, life.

We sometimes call this awakening, but we could just as well call it dreaming.

Dogen Zenji also says: The expressing of the dream within a dream is all buddhas. All buddhas are wind and rain, water and fire. We respectfully maintain these names of buddhas.

This buddha we call kisei, this one word, this one computer, this one light, this one you.

What makes a manifest buddha? Its mystery, as well as its expression. Its emptiness inseparable from its form.

Angry Buddha, grieving buddha, sickness buddha. Anything that appears is part of the dream, is the dream-body and is also buddha. So we respect it. We respect its arising.

I know for myself there are some dreams I would like to wake-up from. Like the COVID dream, the delta variant dream, the dream of violence in Afghanistan, the dream of hatred and intolerance. The dream of my mother’s cancer and its side effects. The dream of the climate crisis.

Probably you have your own dreams, your own “day-mares.” 

Yet, this is the dream of human life. The forces of greed, anger and delusion play out in our dreams at night, in our own hearts/thoughts and on the world stage. The truths of impermanence, suffering and inter-connection also play out in our night-time dreams, in our own hearts/thoughts and on the world stage.

To want to wake-up from it all--is the impulse of Bodhicitta--Great Compassion, the all-inclusive Heart, true love, where again waking-up is a form of changing perspective. Awakening grows to allow all the dreams, the heart-wrenching ones, the violent ones, the ones where there is death and destruction--as well as the ones where love is discovered, hope is seeded, care is extended forth.

Let’s look at that act of waking up from a nightmare--there is often a sense of ease, oh--that was just a dream.

But what is this-- just a dream?

Our nightmares reveal, sometimes in exaggerated forms, the fears, doubts, angers and griefs we may not be willing to see. And often give us a key to how to integrate these elements of the shadow into our sense of wholeness. If we ignore them, they continue or get louder, more frightening. If we face them, or treat them with love and respect, or even curiosity, they transform.

A friend shared with me a dream about this dark, hooded figure who would come into their room and stand over the bed. It was a frequent recurring dream. Once, she asked the figure--what do you want? The next time the figure came, it was friendlier, this friend started seeing it as Mary, the mother of god, she felt comforted by it as it sat on the edge of the bed. She realized this was a protector who was always watching over her. And…then the dream stopped reoccurring. 

Sometimes the change in behavior; the orientation of inclusion, of curiosity, love and respect happens in the dreamworld, sometimes it happens in the daylit world. These two worlds we begin to realize are intimately connected, perhaps even--made of the same stuff.

We train in love, attention, respect and curiosity. These are the ingredients of a heartful life, in my tradition we would say, the elements of Zen practice.

What daymares are wanting your love, attention, respect and curiosity? Which relationships, which situations, which aspects of the world stage? What if you simply inquired from one of your favorite recurring daymares (delta, the climate crisis, afghanistan, mother, difficult relationship/work scenario, grief, depression, anxiety. A sking, genuinely--what do you want? 

Oh visitor in my mindspace, oh feeling in my heart, oh tremble in my voice? Who are you really? What do you want from me? May I help you?

We experience this dream through the senses. It's so intimate. Not-knowing who is dreaming this dream and yet, we go on dreaming it together.

In my Zen community we have been studying dream together and we have been sharing our dreams with each other. Which is really sharing our deepest fears, confusions, insights, reconciliations, places of hope and tenderness. Dream work is intimate in the sense that it is often wordless. The dreams of night speak in the space before words, intimate as they are not hindered by our egoic tendencies to control, manicure and landscape our presentations of ourself for the world. When words do come, they often have a directness to them, like a Zen koan.

Perhaps sharing a dream is the closest we get in sharing something true with another. Perhaps when we share a dream with another, we are acknowledging that these nighttime visitors don’t belong solely to us. We are inviting someone else, or a group into our dreaming. Perhaps the dream is also for them.

In many cultures dreams are not considered the individual’s property but are always for the community. Dreams are shared as offerings to each other, to the collective wisdom and care. 

From Joan Sutherland

In 2020, the communal dreaming of the world has shifted so radically that our heart-minds are breathless trying to catch up. Something profound has gone, something profound has come. Something without names yet, without any but the most provisional descriptions. What new dream is being born in this bardo time? What new theory of the world is holding us in its reverie? How is it entering us, seeping into our nighttime dreams, our daydreams?

Dreams come from the wilderness, the mystery, the unknown. Dreams invite us to see that all is part of this wilderness, this mystery, this unknown. Things are not as they appear.

We receive dreams all the time. The presence of a cosmos flower, the eye of a cat, a touch, a cricket chirp. The dream of the world is knocking on the self-centered dreaming, saying--hey you what are you doing? We are in this together, dreaming the great dream of all beings.

Dogen Zenji says: 

Every dewdrop manifested in every realm is a dream. This dream is the glowing clarity of the hundred grasses. What requires questioning is this very point. What is confusing is this very point. 

At this time, there are dream grasses, grasses within, expressive grasses and so on. When we study this, then roots, stems, branches, leaves, flowers and fruits as well as radiance and color, are all the great dream. Do not mistake them as merely dreamy.

To be receptive to the great dream, to be part of the great dream--is a process of attention. We sometimes call this attention, awareness or even awake awareness. To let our small dreamings, our self-centered dreamings be permeated by, be influenced by the great dream (the dream of plants, rocks, soil, other people), is to acknowledge the awakening/dreaming of being itself.

As we have been practicing with dream I find myself more receptive to the life inherent in everything I encounter. I approach each moment with more tenderness, humility and awe. Someone asked Byron Katie, if you love the dream, is there any need to wake up from it?

She replied: “None, absolutely not. Realizing its a dream, you can just lean back and enjoy it--every moment of it.” Do we have any other choice, then to dream the dream on? May we do so with attention, love, curiosity and respect.