Compassion and a dreamlike world
The material and physical world is as dreamlike as the world of the mind. So the self of a human being is dreamlike too.
Dreamlike – but not – a dream. Though both are equally valid aspects of experience, they are not the same. Part of the ongoing examination of experience is becoming clear about this difference. Examination, is what we mean by, practice – realization. Study like this isn’t an additional thing to do, it’s just naturally a part of respecting life’s attributes in being gathered and awake. An ongoing question in this living study could be – is this respectful care, a burden of responsibility, or not?
Problems accrue when we are not seeing – experiencing this dreamlike nature of existence. There’s no benefit to believing this world to be dreamlike if we aren’t seeing it. Seeing it, is living it. Realization shows in our behaviour, including what we are doing with our ‘inner’ world. In wordlessly penetrating the dreamlike nature of life and letting the dreamlike nature permeate us, our individual breathing is the breathing of the universe. It takes respect to manifest this and when we are respectful – we care for what we can care for and it’s enough – even as there’s always more too.
If we were to go so far out from ourselves that we end up believing that life is, ‘just a dream’, or that everything is, ‘dreamy’, then we really would be making problems where none need exist. If we were fortunate, at some point, hard reality might compassionately bring about a rude awakening from such a mistaken state. Irresponsibility is a complete failure to realize the dreamlike nature of existence.
When we are seeing the dreamlike nature of everything, within circumstances and conditions, experience becomes light and energized. Free of worrisome control, life’s richness kaleidoscopes. Even if the dreamlike nature is manifesting as pain and difficulty, it doesn’t have to become inescapably nightmarish. The blood and bone nightmare situations that do manifest in this world, are continuously unfolding and in much more complexity than they might at first appear. There is not some immutable, malevolent, external force relentlessly imposing itself on something else.
Just as we make things heavy in avoiding seeing their nature, we make our dreamlike self heavy in trying to insist on it’s continuity. We may create solid seeming nightmares, or safe seeming heavenly dreams, but both are equally precarious and anxiety making, both needing constant propping up. Like castles made of sand, the dynamics of reality cannot be fixed and don’t need to be. Real security cannot be found while trying to manipulate conditions in these ways.
Here’s one way to see the dreamlike nature of existence – when we die, our world will die too, nothing of it will remain. This is not annihilation at all, but a graceful gift that is a great relief here in life. In death there’s a totality that exceeds any imagined boundaries, just as there is in life. In giving ourselves away while alive, we benefit the world and are receptive to the invisible benefits that come back to us. Any beneficial legacy that continues once we are dead, will only come from where we have given of ourselves while living. This generosity is not just our personal attribute, it’s our nature and the nature of everything.
When we are insisting on there being a fixed, continuous centre in ourselves, the kaleidoscopic nature of existence cannot permeate experience. Delusive restriction then continues to dominate body and mind, making an uneasy self.
The measure of our seeing or realizing true nature, is inseparably showing in our behaviours and the effects of them. Two broad manifestations, that more or less encapsulate our continuing alienation from true nature, are the making of fixed standpoints out of assertion or denial. Both are symptomatic of an ignoring that is making the dreamlike, into a problematic dream obstacle in our own path. At the time of making, we are not seeing that the dream that we are caught up in, is actually dreamlike in its nature. While we are caught up in it, it’s anything but dreamlike for us.
This is why it is only a compassionate universe – no matter what appearances may suggest, when the illusion of a separate self is surrendered (not just not once, but over and over without end) – it’s clear that nothing is lost or destroyed. Poignantly, in clinging to an illusory self, fear of this generous, compassionate reality, only grows in strength.
The subtle, wholehearted way of zazen, is always going beyond reacting to appearances. In this universe, there’s nothing but compassion for our limited, doubting, deluded, self. Opening up to this compassion may not always be easy, but it is within our individual capacities and it is always good, a good outside of any seeming opposites. The fullness of life expresses itself quite ordinarily through the activity of loving wisdom. Love is not concerned with the ease or difficulty of its active living, nor does it get caught up in inappropriate heroics. This is where the great ease of compassion is silently showing itself, in the world, as it is.
Willard Lee 09/03/2024