Selected Lectures on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (94)

Chapter One: The Thirteenth Dream Simile   

Original text: 佛言大王。譬若有人。于睡梦中。与诸宝媛。共相执持。是人觉已。忆念梦中。所受妙触。为实尔不。王言不也。

Explanation: The Buddha said: Great King, suppose there is a person who, in a dream, engages in pleasure with many beautiful women. After this person wakes up, he keeps recalling the wonderful tactile sensations experienced in the dream—does this truly exist? King Śuddhodana said: It is not something that truly exists. After this person finishes the dream and wakes up, he still takes the events of the dream as real, remaining immersed in the dream, with endless recollections, clinging and unable to let go. This person lacks wisdom, not knowing that the dream is not real, not actual; he should not be infatuated with unreal illusions, pursuing illusory sensations and feelings, and should not be so deluded and inverted as to take the false as real. The sensations experienced in a dream are all illusory, let alone recalling the events of the dream after waking—the feelings are even more illusory. Do the things recalled in the mind still exist? They no longer exist; otherwise it would not be called recollection. For example, when I recall that the food I just ate was delicious—the food has already been eaten, and the flavor is now gone, no longer existing. No matter how one savors the memory, it has no actual effect and is of no benefit whatsoever; what has vanished does not come back. And a dream is even more illusory than a past real scenario; recollection only shows the mind's attachment and refusal to let go, uselessly immersing itself in illusory imagination, vainly wasting precious time and energy. Take another example: when we recall words someone once said, are those words still at our ears now as we recall them? There is no sound at the ear; sounds of the past, words once spoken, do not exist for the present and no longer have any effect. If one still refuses to let go of those sounds, endlessly calculating and clinging to them, that is illusion upon illusion. The very moment a sound exists it is already illusory, let alone after it has vanished—it is even more illusory and unreal. As for past states of the six sense objects, if they seem to still have an effect, that is in fact merely the false discrimination, deliberation, and imagination produced by the mind, with the mind once more generating illusory feelings and clinging emotions; in reality they no longer have any effect. What is past is past; clinging without letting go only adds to afflictions in vain. In daily life, sentient beings feel that their experiences of the myriad dharmas of the six sense objects are all very real—but are those experiences really real? None of them is real; they are like flowers in the sky and illusory shadows.