Commentary on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (168)

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 amorous pleasure with many beautiful women. After this person wakes up, he keeps recalling the exquisite tactile sensations experienced in the dream. Do these truly exist?" King Śuddhodana said: "They are not things that truly exist."

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 and clinging attachment. Such a person lacks wisdom, not knowing that the dream is not real, not actual, and that one should not be infatuated with unreal false appearances, pursuing illusory feelings and sensations, nor should one be so deluded and inverted as to take the false for the real. The feelings experienced within a dream are all illusory; how much more so the recollection 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, if I recall how fragrant the food I just ate was, the food has already been eaten, and the fragrance no longer exists now—it is gone. No matter how one savors the memory, there is no actual effect and 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 clinging attachment, a pointless immersion in illusory imagination, merely wasting precious time and energy.

Take another example: when we recall words someone once said, are those words still at our ears as we recall them? There is no sound at the ear. Past sounds, words once spoken, no longer exist in the present and no longer have any effect. If one continues to grasp at those sounds without letting go, endlessly fretting and clinging, that is illusion upon illusion. The very moment a sound exists it is already illusory; how much more illusory and unreal it is once it has vanished. As for past objects of the six sense dusts, if they seem to still have an effect, that is in fact merely the mind's false discrimination and imaginative thinking, with the mind once more producing illusory feelings and clinging emotions—in reality they no longer have any effect. What is past is past; clinging without letting go only adds affliction in vain. In daily life, sentient beings feel that their experiences of the six sense dusts and the myriad dharmas are very real, but are those experiences truly real? None of them are real; they are like flowers in the sky, illusory shadows.

This is how sentient beings have been since beginningless kalpas: life after life, they pursue things that are not real, vain and insubstantial, taking the illusory world of the five aggregates as real, with deluded thoughts without end, merely adding to their suffering. Seeing the dullness and anguish of sentient beings, the Buddhas give rise to compassion and come into the world, proclaiming the truth, guiding and transforming the deluded multitudes, enabling them to leave foolish darkness and the decaying house, and to turn toward the great path of liberation.