Life is but a Dream...
I have heard Buddhist teachers say that you should view your life as if it were a dream. This advise seemed terrible simple and trivial to me at first. But recently I have begun the realization process which strengthens my understanding of projection which helps me understand the depth of what those teachers mean.
What are dreams? They are pure projections of the mind. We see them as less substantial than the projections we have while walking around awake but everyone knows that a dream can have significant effect on our emotional and physical state in the moment of the dream. But when we wake we shrug and laugh at the foolishness because after all it was only a dream, it was not real.
But if our mind projects meaning onto the world around us as we walk around in it, is this also not a form of dream? If what we are perceiving is simply what our mind is creating for us to perceive, how is that not a dream?
Clearly reality is subjective.
As an example to illustrate this subjectivity a teacher once told us to imagine an office with three workers in it. While working one day the boss came in and criticized one of the worker’s, call him Joe, report. Joe perceived this as a belittlement and he became depressed for the rest of the day. The second worker, call him Ted, hated Joe and so the event brought him pleasure and he was happy the rest of the day. The third worker, call him Bill, was indifferent to Joe but was annoyed by the interruption.
How can one event have three meanings. Clearly the event itself had no real meaning other than the meaning given to it by the observers. The meaning that each individual projected onto the event says more about the individuals than about the event. They all had a different “dream” in that moment.
The point is to not deny your feelings and emotions as a part of a dream but rather to recognize that you are projecting meaning and to not become obsessed with the dream. See what you see, feel what you feel, experience what you experience, but do not take it too seriously because it is all a projection of your mind. It is all a dream.
What are dreams? They are pure projections of the mind. We see them as less substantial than the projections we have while walking around awake but everyone knows that a dream can have significant effect on our emotional and physical state in the moment of the dream. But when we wake we shrug and laugh at the foolishness because after all it was only a dream, it was not real.
But if our mind projects meaning onto the world around us as we walk around in it, is this also not a form of dream? If what we are perceiving is simply what our mind is creating for us to perceive, how is that not a dream?
Clearly reality is subjective.
As an example to illustrate this subjectivity a teacher once told us to imagine an office with three workers in it. While working one day the boss came in and criticized one of the worker’s, call him Joe, report. Joe perceived this as a belittlement and he became depressed for the rest of the day. The second worker, call him Ted, hated Joe and so the event brought him pleasure and he was happy the rest of the day. The third worker, call him Bill, was indifferent to Joe but was annoyed by the interruption.
How can one event have three meanings. Clearly the event itself had no real meaning other than the meaning given to it by the observers. The meaning that each individual projected onto the event says more about the individuals than about the event. They all had a different “dream” in that moment.
The point is to not deny your feelings and emotions as a part of a dream but rather to recognize that you are projecting meaning and to not become obsessed with the dream. See what you see, feel what you feel, experience what you experience, but do not take it too seriously because it is all a projection of your mind. It is all a dream.
posted by Mark at
7:36 AM
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