Weird Buddhist Dream II

I woke up kind of early this morning, due to my alarm clock (my cell phone) being set to the wrong time, so at 4:50 I went back to sleep. Then I had a weird dream I thought I’d share.

My wife and I were in a small Buddhist shrine room, in some modern looking building, like an office. It was well-lit, with a window to my right facing the street below (we were on the 2nd or 3rd floor). The back half of the room was this elaborate Buddhist altar, vaguely similar to the one seen here on Wikipedia. There at the back end was a statue with 6 arms, and a brilliant gold color again similar to the one seen in the link. I sat in the back corner of the room for a moment, when my wife said I should go up and make an offering. For some reason, the thought popped into my head, “this is Akashagarbha Bodhisattva“.

So, I stepped up on the raised part of the floor and found an incense brazier, with some sticks of incense for sale. I noticed I had a bunch of $20 bills in my wallet (yay!) and I thought to myself, “I hope I have some one’s”. Sure enough, I had two crisp one-dollar bills which allowed me to buy a stick of incense (for some reason the incense sold for $1.67). I noticed some hot stones nearby for lighting incense, so I lit my incense stick, which for some reason now was broken into 4 pieces. Before I could offer the incense though I woke up.

This is the second time I’ve dreamt about a Bodhisattva (hence the “II” in the title…the old post was lost on the old blog though). The first time, I dreamt about my wife and I offering a huge, huge bundle of incense to a statue of Kannon (Avalokitesvara), but this time it was Kokuzo (Akashagarbha). I don’t necessarily think they’re prophetic or anything like that, I think it’s just my mind projecting what I am feeling at the time, but it’s interesting nevertheless. I was asking about Akashagarbha last night on E-sangha, so obviously it was fresh on my mind.

I did ask a Shingon priest about my first dream (of Kannon) and his interpretation was surprisingly thorough, but also very reassuring. I won’t discuss what he said, but it’s funny a similar dream has come again almost two years later.