The Dream, Enlightenment and the Awakened Mind

Lately I’ve been reading Śhāntideva‘s famous text, the Way of the Bodhisattva (or Bodhicharyāvatāra), which can be found online or in book form (which I own). In this text, Śhāntideva talks often about the mind that is Awakened, free from ignorance and delusion, and inclined to help all beings. This of course, is the essence of the Bodhisattva. In Śhāntideva’s first chapter, he writes about how there are two states with regard to the Awakened Mind: wanting to wake up, and actually doing it.

The first part involves us first awakening to the Dharma, seeing reality in a new light, and aspiring to wake up. The second part involves us making steps, however big or small, to accomplish this. When I thought about this, I realized that the term “Awakened Mind” is much more descriptive than the term Enlightenment, which is too abstract. We use difficult Buddhist vocabulary such as delusion and enlightenment, but really, there’s a much simpler way to understand this.

Imagine yourself in a dream. When you dream, you are not aware you’re dreaming, right? Either you’re being chased, standing there undressed, or some other silly thing. But through the duration of the dream, you’re running through it as if this is reality. Lately, I often have dreams that I am still back in high school, and somehow I have forgotten to do all my homework for the year, and am about to fail. I don’t know why these happen, but while the dream is going on, I feel as if this is reality.

However, imagine that you became aware that this was a dream. I’ve experienced this in real life, and I am sure you have too. It’s very interesting when it occurs. Once you know it’s a dream, you can control things around you more easily, but more importantly, you know you can wake yourself up!

That’s Buddhism in a nutshell. We live our lives, blissfully unaware that we’re dreaming (ignorance, delusion, craving, etc). We could spend our entire life like this and never be aware of it, even upon death. However, once you’ve realized you’re dreaming, you can’t follow the dream the same way as before. Now you know it for what it is, and you know that you can now wake yourself up. That’s the Awakened Mind, that’s Enlightenment. The term Buddha just means “Awakened One” anyways. Once, someone asked the Buddha “what are you?” His reply was “I am awakened.”

This awakening isn’t something you can rationalize or deduce, you have to realize it. It’s like falling in love. You can’t rationalize falling in love, it just comes about under the right conditions, and with cultivation.

On a side note, this notion of living in a dream reminds me of the writings of the Taoism master Zhuang-zi:

Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. (2, tr. Burton Watson 1968:49)

So, when you ponder your life and who you are, ask yourself if all this is real, or are you not in fact dreaming? The Awakened Mind is something more concrete than Enlightenment (which is pretty abstract), but the result is the same.

Namuamidabu