For more information on Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, please visit our website at www.ancientdragon.org. Our teachings are offered to the community through the generosity of our supporters. To make a donation online, please visit our website. I'm delighted to have our emeritus guiding teacher, Taigen Dan Blayton, here to share with us the vast and wondrous dharma of Dogen's expressing the dream within the dream. Is that the translation? Yes. Something like that. Thank you, Taigen. Thank you very much, Oketsu. Welcome, everyone. So yesterday afternoon on the Ancient Dragon Zoom, I did an online three and a half hour seminar on this essay by Dogen, Uchi Setsumo, Within a Dream, Extressing a Dream.

[01:08]

And so I also talked about how dreams are understood in Japanese and East Asian Buddhism. or some of that. And so I'm going to do a short version of what I talked about yesterday, this morning, and try to use some time for a little discussion. So the essay that I talked about from Dogen Shobo Genzo, Muchu Setsumo in Japanese, within a dream, expressing a dream. Sometimes it's been translated as in a dream, talking about dreams or speaking of dreams. But really, Setsu, that character, means speaking and talking, but it also means expounding or expressing. And Dogen was the founder of Japanese Soto Zen. from 1200 to 1253. And he emphasized very much not just zazen and realizing the ultimate, but expressing it, how we express and share the teaching and the practice in our everyday activity.

[02:28]

So this sexu in this case means within a dream, expressing the dream. And it's a long essay with lots of interesting juicy stuff in it. But I'm going to read some of the highlights. And one of the main points of this essay is that as opposed to the idea that awakening or enlightenment is awakening from dreams, that Dogen says that we must express the dreams within the dreams. So he does not reject the dream world or the world of phenomena as opposed to the world of ultimate or universal truth. So this is a clear emphasis in all of this teaching. And it's basically Mahayana Buddhist teaching, Bodhisattva teaching, Nirvana is right in samsara. We are practicing not only as a self-help or self-improvement method, but for the sake of, for the purpose of awakening all beings.

[03:45]

So, that... The dream world, which is, so one of the things that Dogen does regularly in his teachings, voluminous teachings, is to undercut conventional, even Buddhist conventional teaching. So the conventional understanding that awakening is to awaken from dreams, here he's talking about, right, amid dreams, And then delusion is a place of awakening. So I'm going to just read some of the many examples of how he says this in this essay. And then I want to say a little bit about how dreams were understood in East Asian Buddhism and particularly in Dogen's period. of the Kamakura period and basically in the 13th century, before and after. Okay, so Dogen says in this essay, and this is from the translation I did with Kastanahashi a long time ago, that

[04:52]

In the realm of Buddha ancestors, there is the active power of Buddha going beyond Buddhas. So this is related to this because it's not an awakening or enlightenment, however you want to translate that, it's not a matter of some one-time experience and then you're done. Buddha continued practicing and awakening throughout his lifetime. And Buddha is an ongoing reality and practice that We continue in 2024, 2,500-something years after Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha in northeastern India. that Buddha is alive. Okay, so this is an introduction to him saying, within a dream, this is the dream you express. Because awakening is seen within awakening, the dream is expressed within a dream. The place where the dream is expressed within a dream is the land and the assembly of Buddha ancestors.

[05:58]

the Buddhist lands and their assemblies, the ancestors' way and their seats are awakening throughout awakening. He continues, every dewdrop manifested in every realm is a dream. So, I didn't mention this yesterday, but there's an old Buddhist teaching that goes, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. And this is what Dogen is talking about, that dreams or delusions are not the opposite of awakening. Awakening happens in delusion. Dogen says it, as I say again, Jakar, that Deluded people are deluded about awakening. Awakened people are awakened to their delusion.

[07:03]

So every dewdrop manifested in every realm is a dream. So the phenomenal world wants something to be transcended, but it is where we practice, where we express the dream within a dream. He says also, do not mistake this as merely dreamy. It's not just some delusive dreamy kind of thing. It's actually the heart of our awakening. Again, he 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 and also pay homage to those names of our other Buddhas. To express the dream within a dream is the ancient Buddhas. So a lot of Zen teaching is about sayings from or referring to the words and actions of the Buddha ancestors, all the different Buddhist practitioners and teachers who have kept, who keep still and will keep still Buddha alive.

[08:11]

So a few more of these references. There are inner dreams, dream expressions, expressions of dreams, and dreams inside. Without being within a dream, there is no expression of dreams. Without expressing dreams, there's no being within a dream. Without expressing dreams, there are no Buddhas. So this kind of rhetoric where he turns words around is typical of a lot of what Dogen says, particularly in Shogun Genzo. He adds, furthermore, going beyond the Dharma body, the ultimate Dharma of all phenomena, Dharmakaya, is itself expressing the dream within a dream. So there's so much more in this essay, but this is the encounter of the Buddha with the Buddha. So more of how Dogen expresses this in his essay.

[09:21]

A thing of suchness expresses the dream within a dream. A person of suchness expresses the dream within a dream. So suchness is a way of talking about reality, just this reality, this phenomenal reality that we experience, that we engage. Such is another way of talking about emptiness. Emptiness is to see the emptiness of all. all entities that we believe are substantial, emptiness also means just the relativity, the interrelatedness of all things. And the teaching of Indra's Net and of Poyen Buddhism that some of you know about is the undercurrent of all of this and all of Sutta Zen. So Dogen says here, a thing of suchness... a thing that is all of reality, expresses the dream within a dream. A person of suchness expresses the dream within a dream.

[10:29]

A thing beyond suchness expresses the dream within a dream. A person beyond suchness expresses the dream within a dream. This understanding has been acknowledged as crystal clear. What is called talking all day long about a dream within a dream is no other than the actual expression of the dream within a dream. So again, we might understand awakening practice, Buddhist practice, Buddhist teaching as something that is separate from this dream world, this phenomenal world. But actually, that's the place of awakening. That is where assemblies of Buddhas, sanghas like this appeared. So we are enjoying this dream of ancient Dragon's End here in Chicago and all the people online.

[11:38]

I see people from a number of places. Anyway, this is all a dream. And it's exactly this dream that we awaken into, that all the gurus awaken into, and express. It has to be not just realized or understood, but actually put into practice. How do we express this? the deeper reality that we get a glimpse of at least in zazen and in longer sittings. How is that expressed to help awaken all beings within this dream? So, some more of this. Dukkha continues, making one brief utterance beyond understanding and beyond knowing.

[12:42]

Is the expression of the dream within a dream? As the expression of the dream within a dream is the thousand hands and eyes of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. This functions by many means. Avalokiteshvara, who functions by many means, the power of seeing colors and sounds, And hearing colors and sounds is fully maintained through this dream. The manifesting body is the expression of the dream within a dream. Our body, your body, my body, is the manifestation of a dream within a dream, Dobrin says. The expression of dreams and myriad aspects of dreams are the expression of the dream within a dream. Taking hold and letting go are the expressions of the dream within a dream. Directly pointing is expressing a dream. Hitting a mark is expressing a dream.

[13:43]

So all of this activity in our phenomenal world, all of our life, is expressing a dream within a dream. And he mentions here the bodhisattva's compassion about the kiteshvara. Hanzai in Japanese, Huan Yin in Chinese. This is the Bodhisattva of compassion who appears in many forms for the benefit of different kinds of beings. One of the main forms that he refers to a little later on is a Bodhisattva figure. There's an image of this, I think, in a practice room. Yeah, with a thousand hands. And each hand has an eye. And each of these hands, many of these hands have tools, teaching steps, or lassos to corral difficult customers, or vases full of nectar and ambrosia to dispense to people.

[14:47]

Many, many, many, many different tools, all of which are to help awaken beings within this dream that we are dreaming of. And this dream, again, is not centered from awakening, but only from our awakening. But it is a dream even a dream. So there's so much in this essay. Maybe I'll mention again at the end, but if anyone wants to get a recording of the three and a half hours about this yesterday, you can still sign up and get a recording. He goes on. There's a whole section yesterday in this essay about justice, about the sense of justice and balance, and how we find our balance at the balance scale. So I talked about that a little bit yesterday. But to continue with some of his sayings here, Dogen says, there is no liberation other than the expression of the dream within a dream.

[15:55]

That's pretty strong stuff. There's no liberation other than expression of the dream within a dream. The dream is the entire great earth. The entire great earth is stable, is steady, is balanced. Plus the inexhaustibility of turning the head and pivoting the brain, actualizing freedom is just your awakening of the dream within a dream. Identifying with actualizing the dream within a dream. So it's not enough to... Well, you know, maybe we need to start by just hearing and teaching. We start by just, in our tradition, sitting zazen, doing this upright sitting where we Enjoy our inhale and exhale sitting face to the wall. Face our reality. See all of the dreams that arise as we stare at the wall. Hear all the sounds that arise in this dream. The people going by.

[17:00]

Our thoughts going by. Our feelings arising and passing away. All of this is the expression of the dream within the dream. And this is also about taking personal responsibility for how we enjoy and appreciate and understand our lives. So we express the dream of one dream. The next section is a long passage. Well, there are quotes from the Lotus Sutra with Dogen Svega of Sutras. And I'll make a little bit of this. This is a quote from the end of Chapter 14 of the Lotus Sutra. All Buddhas with bodies of golden hue splendidly adorned with a hundred auspicious marks hear the Dharma and expound it, express it for others. Such is the fine dream whatever occurs. In the dream you are made king, then forsake palaces,

[18:02]

and household entourage, along with the utmost satisfaction with life-sense desires, and travel to the site of practice under the Bodhi tree, where only getting happens. So this is referencing the story about the life of Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha, around 500 BC or so, in northwest, now northeastern India, was sheltered as a child in his father's palace and did not know about suffering and finally went out and explored the world and saw the suffering of the world and let go of his privilege. tried to help awaken our beings and did awaken under the Bodhi tree. So this is the story that the Lotus Sutra is telling, and it says this is a fine dream. So Dogen is citing the Lotus Sutra as a way of talking about this expression, the dream within a dream.

[19:12]

A little after that, he says, this dream of Buddha's is not an analogy. And that Chinese character could be translated as a metaphor or a parable. I mean, parables in the Lotus Sutra. So the dream of Buddhas, the dream of awakening, is not a mere story or a parable or metaphor, for example. He says, as the wondrous dharma of all Buddhas is mastered only by a Buddha together with a Buddha, All dharmas awakened in the dreams, all dharmas awakened in the dream are genuine forms. In awakening, there are aspiration, practice, awakening, and nirvana, which is talked about, as Paul talked about in the Lodhi Sutra a lot. He says, within the dream, there are aspiration, awakening, practice, awakening, and nirvana. Every awakening within a dream is a genuine form. without regard to large or small, superior or inferior.

[20:15]

And this phrase he uses, only by the Buddha, together with the Buddha, is a passage from another chapter in the Lotus Sutra that talks about only Buddhas can, together, face to face with each other, understand fathom the depths of this awakening and its expression of awakening. So, again, Dogen uses many references and then many more in this essay to classic Zen and Buddhist teachings. Awakening, a little further he says, awakening and dreaming are from the beginning one suchness, a genuine reality. Buddha Dharma, even if it were a metaphor, a parable, is the genuine reality, as it is not a mere analogy.

[21:22]

If you dream what becomes king and when, let's go with that, he becomes and is Buddha. more passages when I want to talk about how dreams were understood in Dauphine's time and in East Asian Buddhism generally. The Buddhist path of transforming this world of suffering throughout his lifetime is indeed created in a dream. again, referring back to this quote from the Lotus Sutra, he says, as it is said that all Buddhas with bodies of golden hue, splendidly adorned with a hundred auspicious marks, we can directly realize beyond any doubt that this dream is itself all Buddhas with bodies, almost.

[22:24]

Although within awakening the Buddha's transformations never cease, The Buddha ancestors' emergence is itself the creation of a dream within a dream. So he hammers home the points in his essay, and there's a lot more that I can't get to in this time frame, but the point is that this world of dreams, this world we dream of, is where we awaken. And I'm tempted to mention so I will that there's a dream coming up of an election, and we can't express this dream within a dream, or please vote. I want to talk, though, somewhat about dreams. and how dreams were understood in Dōgen's time, which was the Kōkura period in Japan in the 1200s, but also throughout East Asian Buddhism.

[23:32]

This goes back to stories about dreams in the folklore and in the lore of East Asian Buddhism. And there are many, many, many, many of these stories, so I'm going to share a few of them. just to give you a sense of how people then thought about dreaming. So we have some psychologists here who can talk about how dreams and dreaming are understood now in our modern times, but in In East Asia, and I think before that in India, dreams were very important. A number of examples. So the night before Dogen arrived, so Dogen traveled to China from Japan. came from, and spent four years in China, 12, 23 to 27, looking around for a teacher to help him really awaken into awakening, and express dreams within the dream.

[24:47]

Maybe he didn't understand it that way yet, but he finally found his teacher, Chantong Rujing, in Chinese, and Endo Myojo, in Japanese, Chantong, And that was the teacher from whom Dogen received transmission and received full awakening and continued and brought that back to Japan and started what we call, it's called the Japanese Sendo Zen, which is the tradition that this temple is part of. So Ruzheng, the night before Dogen happened to arrive at his monastery, Ruzheng had a dream. And in this dream, Dongshan Liangjie, Tozan, who was the founder of the Chinese lineage of Sato, Sato is called in Chinese, Ruzheng had a dream that Dongshan appeared to him and said, hey, there's a foreigner coming who's really, I don't know exactly what he said, but he's really cool and you should really pay attention to him.

[26:00]

And the next day, Dogen arrived, who was Japanese. So Rujing really paid attention to Dogen. And Dogen had unusual access to Rujing, compared to most of the monks in the monastery. So that's one dream that was important. And Dogen had some other dreams in China that were important. But again, Well, so many of these. There's a person named Guna Bhadra. He's not in our Zen lineage that we chant. But he used to be in early Chan Chinese lineages. He was before Bodhidharma, who was the founder of Zen, called the founder of Zen Chan in China. He went to Guadalupe in 394 to 468. And he arrived in China around 435. And he wanted to spread the Dharma, the teaching, to

[27:04]

China, but he was really upset because he couldn't speak Chinese or understand Chinese or express himself in Chinese to the Chinese people who he wanted to help with his practice. But he had a dream in which somebody chopped off his hand and gave him a new hand. And then the next morning he woke up and he suddenly understood Chinese and could express himself in Chinese. Maybe a later incarnation is Tom Cleary or something. I don't know. But Ibn al-Badra ends up translating one to the Tara Sutra. He was also a scholar of Krishna, Parmitra, and Wayan. So whether or not you believe such dreams, and Ibn al-Badra understood Chinese overnight, this is how East Asian people thought about dreams. And there's another dream about... an execution. This is from, also from early in China.

[28:10]

Yeah, so there was, this is about a general This was in the Northern Wei Dynasty, 386 to 535. His name was Sun Jingde, and he was captured by an invading army, and his enemies were brought to execute him. And the night before his sentence was going to be carried out, he had a dream. And this dream was a Buddhist monk appearing, and he told him to recite a sutra to a bhavakadishvara, Kamsa Yama, for his self-compassion. It's one that we chant here sometimes. Kamsa Yama, Kamsa Yama. It's a short sutra. So in the dream, this monk taught Song Jingde this chant, and he chanted it a hundred times when he woke up. And then he went to be executed, and the executioner's sword bounced off his neck.

[29:25]

The executioner tried three times to cut off his head. It was unsuccessful. So his captors decided, well, I guess he's not supposed to be executed. And he went home, and he went to his home altar, where he had an image of Guan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, and this image had three nicks on its neck. Okay, this is, you know, these stories you can take literally or not, but this was how people then thought about dreams. Dreams were the access point for bodhisattvas. And there's so many more of these stories, but this one's a little longer, and I'll tell it when we can have discussion. This is from Dobie's time, early 13th century. I don't know if I can say Japan. And this is about a town called Sukuma in what's now Nakano Prefecture, where there was an additional hospital.

[30:27]

And one of the townsmen had a dream in which a voice announced to him that Avalokiteshvara would come to the town square the next day. The dreamer asked in the dream how he would know what was going on. and the voice described a scruffy, 30-ish-year-old warrior on horseback. So this townsman went around to this small town and told everybody about this dream that he had about the Bodhisattva's compassion. And so everybody gathered at the appointed time in the town square because they were expecting Kannon to come. And instead, this samurai warrior appeared, kind of like a scribe in a dream. And everybody started prostrating themselves, doing full bows to this samurai. And he said, what's going on? What are you doing? And they just continued prostrating themselves. Finally, a priest came and told him that there had been this dream that he would appear, well, he would appear in his form.

[31:37]

And, you know, this samurai just explained that He'd fallen and injured himself, and he'd come to the additional hot springs for healing. But they kept continuing making frustrations. And the healing that occurred, after a while, the samurai had the thought that, well, maybe he actually was kind of the Bodhisattva of compassion. And the story goes that he decided to become a monk. So he put down his sword and shield by God's grace and was ordained by a famous priest. So we don't know anything more historically about this former samurai priest, but this is the power of dreams, the way dreams were understood in Dogen's time. So there's many more stories like this of people accessing Orvisato's in dreams.

[32:42]

And just to mention, Dogen had various dreams also. But in Dogen's lifetime, there was a monk named Dioe, this fascinating figure. He was both Shingon, or Martiriana, and Kagon, or buying up a Tom Sucker school mug And he kept a 35-year dream diary in which many Bodhisattvas and Buddhist figures appeared to him. And modern Jungian psychologists appreciate this as well. The first really comprehensive, self-reflective dream diary. Also, the second founder of such as that case on a few generations after Dogen, a very strong relationship with dreams. He used his dreams to find the sites of the temples that he built and to ordain people. So anyway, there's not much more to say.

[33:46]

I'll stop there. I think we have a little bit of time for questions or discussions. dreams, and this dream that we're having right now, and how to awaken it in dreams, and that awakening is exactly something that happens in the phenomenal world. It talks about awakening with an awakening and being in delusion through our delusion. And the point isn't to get rid of delusions and dreams. The point is to express awakening right in the dream of our everyday activity in life. So... That's a little bit about this essay. Questions, comments, reflections, or if you want to share any dreams you've had. I had a dream this morning. What did you dream? This is weird. I just was remembering it as you were talking.

[34:48]

So I had a dream. I was in this sendo. Not this sendo, but kind of like this sendo. I couldn't find an exit. Oh. I go back in, and I'm like, I guess I'm here the rest of the day. And all of these people from Minnesota started singing hymns to Bhairochana Buddha. Yes. I was like, oh, I'm so happy. Wow. Well, you know. It was all these Minnesotans who were, you know, lots of water. Well, there were people from Minnesota. Maybe we can start singing hymns to Bhairochana Buddha. Well, I didn't mention Vairakshana. There's a whole section about Vairakshana, okay, in this essay. So I could talk more about Vairakshana. The Buddha, who is the entire... world, not just this world, all worlds, the whole universe, and all the other universes that we don't know about, is this is the aspect of Buddha.

[35:51]

So there's the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni from northeast India, 500 BC, more or less, and then the Virochana Buddha is, there's a whole thing about Virochana Buddha, which is, yeah. I haven't even looked at those for years. I knew you were going to talk about them so much. Yeah, he talks about Virochana. They're singing hymns of Virochana. Well, and he talks about, okay, so Dogen does this lots of times. He takes some conventional idea and turns it inside out. So like, you know, the idea that awakening is awakening from a dream. No, it's awakening within the dream. And he also talks about putting your head on top of your head. Have you heard that expression? It's an expression. And usually it's understood that this means doing something extra. It's unnecessary. But Dogen says, no, that's exactly what we should do, is to place a head above the head. And he said, it's actually above the head, the crown of Wang Lechang.

[36:51]

So he talks a lot about this, placing a head above the head. As I'm an example of a dream within a dream and expressing the dream within a dream. And in November, I'm going to do another seminar on another essay that's related to this called A Painting of a Rice Cake. And it starts from an old saying that a painting of a rice cake does not satisfy hunger. And usually that's understood to me that you know, just the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon, for example, or that some understanding or some expression or some beautiful scroll about the Buddha realm is not the real thing. However, in his essay, Painting of a Rise-Kicking, I'm going to talk about extensively in November, Dogen ends up, spoiler alert, Dogen ends up saying that a painting of a rice cake is exactly what satisfies hunger.

[37:57]

And you cannot satisfy hunger without a painting of a rice cake. And then he talks about painted hunger, painted satisfaction. So anyway, this is what Dogen does. He turns inside out our conventional understandings, including conventional Buddhist understandings. So thank you for sharing your general thoughts. Very auspicious. Thank you. So other comments, questions, reflections, responses, please feel free. And people on the line as well. Yes, Dylan. So I have a dream and a question. I'll show you the dream first. I don't have dreams terribly often, but I had a dream a couple, like two weeks ago. I was very short. where I was in school and training to become a teacher, like doing on-site training in a middle school.

[39:00]

And my dream was that the classroom was full of kids, and I asked them to do something, and then I turned in the other direction, and then I turned back, and all of them were gone. And I initially thought of this as a stress dream, like, you know, that they're... it's beyond my control or something I can't have control over or beyond my grasp. But I'm also thinking today that it might be you know, about how they're all growing up, you know, that, like, I'm going to form all these relationships with these kids this year, and they're all going to feel like my kids, and then they're going to go off to high school, and then they're going to leave the school, and then it's going to be like that every year. Well, I have another interpretation of your frame. Okay, go for it. That you ask them to do something. And then he turned away and he turned back and they were all gone. Yeah, because they went to do it. I don't know. That's possible, too. So it's one that's sticking with me, and the meanings change the more it hangs out with me.

[40:05]

My question is about delusion and dreams, and I'm curious, for Dogen's time, if there was a difference between the conception of delusion and dream, And I know in our contemporary American society, there's an aspect of hopefulness in dreams. And how much of that is in Dogen's conception of a dream? Or is there more of a sort of multi-universe psychedelic? That's what I'm hearing more, is that it has more of the, like, you know, Star Trek angle of, like, oh, we just found ourselves in this other universe and we're still ourselves. And so I guess we ought to make the best of it, kind of. Yeah. Yeah. The first one you said was the dream. So in your talk, the word delusion and dream, to my ears, were used almost interchangeably. And I'm wondering if at that time, what the differences between conceptions of delusions and dreams were.

[41:09]

And if hope was, you know, if we have a dream, that's like a hope. Did they think of dreams as wishes, that word, you know? Ah, wishes and hopes. Well, I am a dream for the future. Yeah, like Dr. King has a dream. Well, I'm not sure, but it is clear that Dreams was a place of access for connection with bodhisattvas, with awakening beings, with inspiring figures, with people. So in that sense, people had these dreams of these great awakening beings showing up for them. And so, you know, Wu Jing had this dream about there's some barter that's going to come. And then it turns out to be Dogen. So, yeah, I think they did see these dreams as so many stories. Like portals to the spiritual world.

[42:11]

Portal world. Beyond material existence, maybe. Yeah. So I don't know. Star Trek angle. Both. But the word delusion, we think of that as negative. But very much this is not about delusions are negative. Delusion is a way of talking, one way that Buddhism traditionally talks about the phenomenal world. How do you imagine things to be? Yeah, well, we... I mean, there's a whole... I could give a whole talk about Yogacara and how we... this aspect of Buddhism that sees the mind as projecting. And Dogen says that to carry yourself forward and experience myriad things, that's delusion. When you project yourself, your ideas of yourself... your ego onto the world, that's what delusion is.

[43:12]

That beings together awaken, beings together awaken is what awakening is. And that beings, what beings realize awakening together um, that includes us. So it's not, it's about seeing ourselves as part of a bigger whole rather than just as me, you know, and, and I'm the king of the world or whatever, you know, some politician might think, you know, um, so, um, yeah, it, it turns inside out that our usual idea of delusion and reality, reality include everything. So, um, I like the saying by William Blake, anything that can be imagined is an image of the truth. So all of our dreaming is actually the expression of the realm of the world. That's one way to say it.

[44:18]

So other, I don't know, maybe we're out of time. A few minutes, is someone online? Yeah, does anyone online have a... Oh, Matthew, go ahead. Hi. It's a short question, but I'll keep the traditional chair dream first. I've been vegan over half my life, but I've tried before that vegetarian. While I've been wrestling with that, I actually was having more and more vivid dreams that were food dreams. And there would just be a sense of who was with me at each table being different. set of family or friends, and very vividly picturing the plate in front of me and thinking about the food as I eat it, of how it was prepared and what went into it and how it... So all of my first recipes when I then decided, okay, now it's time, were ones that I dreamt. So that's my dream story. So that is cooking the dream within the dream. And then bringing it into...

[45:20]

are meals. So, incorporating the dream. And the question, so I know that in Tibetan traditions, they teach dream yoga, they teach the practice within dreams. Is there a parallel in Zen? Well, yeah. There are many, many spiritual traditions around the world where there's kind of shamanic dreaming, where there's dreaming that is... encouraged as a way of seeing something, of awakening to something. So, and I'm sorry, I have to think, I remembered another dream from Japan, a story of a dream. This happened in Nara, the ancient capital, which has this beautiful pond near Kofukuji. It's one of my favorite places in the world. But there's a story about a guy in the town who dreamed that at a certain time, a dragon would arise from this pond.

[46:25]

And so similarly, there's more to it than was, but at some point the townspeople gathered at the pond and there was a, actually there was somebody who was poo-pooing a dream, but anyway, they gathered and a dragon did arise and fly off into the spot. So anyway, there's, there are, Dreams of food and dreams of animals are common. But yeah, you mentioned Tibetan Buddhism, and there's a dream yoga that they encourage. And I'm thinking of the Yaki Way of Knowledge and Don Juan and Carlos Castaneda's books where he talks about dream practice of trying to produce dreams or invoking dreams. In East Asian Buddhism... There are some practices of encouraging dreams in, I think, in Shingon Kagon, but it's not as developed as far as I know.

[47:29]

Oh, Kopp was here, he might have been able to describe this, but I don't know that there's a formal practice in Japan, but there's definitely an acknowledgement of the importance of dreams. And dreaming about, Hogetsu dreaming about something that was supposed to be what I was going to talk about this moment without her knowing it, I mean, there you go. So... So, you know, I remember Paul Heller once said that in Southeast Asia, Theravada Buddhism, that dreaming stops when you attain greater awakening. which I think is interesting. I wondered if this was also this Dogen Mahayana take or argument about dreams. Maybe not, but it was an interesting thing. I never really looked at that. I never looked it up and talked to Paul Moore about it. Because someone I remember at a practice period was reading a dream yoga book, a Tibetan dream yoga book, and he was sort of like...

[48:38]

And, you know, when you're concentrated enough, you don't even have dreams when you sleep, you know. But I think dreams, you know, they're something we wrestle with as humans. Well, that's really interesting. And, you know, there's lots of different versions of all of this. It's not like... one thing, but I think he was, he may have been trying to discourage, you know, getting into some, some practice of trying to bring forth the dream like a Tibetan dream yoga. But, you know, Ruching had a dream, you know, Dogan had dreams. Absolutely. Oh, I'm tempted to share a dream for so long. One more dream. Why not? Okay. But also, I was going to ask instead, is there anybody online who has a dream? Is there a hand there online that's floating in space? No. Oh, that's a cursor. Okay. I had a dream that was a hand there. It was a cursor. Okay. Yeah. Well... This is a little complicated.

[49:39]

Well, first, to that question, any of you online have dreams you want to share? Going once, once, twice. I know Miozan has lots of dreams. Well, you're prepping us. You know, I just want to mention, you spoke three and a half hours yesterday on this, and we just scratched the surface. Oh, yeah. There needs to be a reprise of... Well, okay. It's up in our classical. Well, no, but the thing is that... Oh, wait, I don't think, do I have this? Yes, I have it here. But as I said earlier, any of you who want to can still register on the Ancient Dragon website for this seminar, and you will then receive a recording of all things. So that's possible. Okay, I'm going to share one last dream. This is from Dogen's extensive record, Eikoroku. which is this massive collection of Dogen's teachings.

[50:46]

And he has several dreams in there, but one, he doesn't exactly call them dreams, but clearly that's what's going on. He's in one of them. This is from 1243, just before he moved from Kyoto to start aging in the north. He says, Last night, this mountain monk, Dogan, struck the empty sky with a single blow. My fist didn't hurt, but the empty sky knew pain. I guess Dogan had this macho side. He doesn't call it a dream, but he describes something that happened last night. Then, from the empty sky, a number of sesame cakes appeared and rushed to become the faces and eyes of the great earth. Suddenly, a person came to this mountain monk, to Dogen, and said, I want to buy the sesame cakes. And Dogen said to him, who are you?

[51:48]

And the person replied, Dogen, I am a Valokiteshvara Bodhisattva. My family name is John and my personal name is Lee. That's like Smith and Jones. Bodhisattva compassion is like an ordinary person. And Dogen said to him, did you bring any money? And he said, I came without any money. And I asked him, if you didn't bring money, can you buy them or not? He didn't answer. He just said, I want to buy them, I really do. So then Dogen, after recounting this, says to his assemblage, do you totally thoroughly understand the meaning of this? Dogen had a great sense of humor, anyway, and you see it more in this extensive record. After a pause, Dogen said, When Valakiteshvara, Anand Bodhisattva Compassion, makes an appearance, mountains and rivers on the great earth are not dead ashes.

[52:50]

We should always remember that in the third month, in the third month, the partridges sing and the flowers open. So Dogen interprets this dream as when this Bodhisattva Compassion appears, all of reality, The phenomenal world is alive. And part, we should say, and after, just in autumn, but after winter spring comes, so anyway, this kind of read from Dogen. Thank you so much, Taigen, for this wonderful opening of this deep, beautiful dream. And then, Chao. We're happy you're here and sharing dreams with us. And you'll be back. I look forward to that. Anything with Gabio, the rice cake, to be continued. There's a lot of food here.

[53:52]

You know, a little pita as far as a sesame cake. You know, so I think... Are we going to have tea and treats? We will. So we'll say the four vows? Yeah. Okay. Thank you all. I want to breathe in. Solutions are inexhaustible. I want to cut through them. I want to cut through them. We vow to enter them. Without faith is unsurpassable. We vow to realize it. The angels are endless. We vow to free them. The new shepherds are very exhaustible. The babbles are cut through them.

[54:56]

Darned by the gates are boundless. The babbles. We vouch for freedom. Delusions are inexhaustible. We run out to cut through them. Dark realities are boundless. We run out to cut through them. The endless way is impossible. We run out to realize it.

[55:50]

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