The second lojong slogan is traditionally translated, “Regard all dharma as dreams.” I’m using Jamgon Kongtrul’s simplified translation: see everything as a dream.
But…what does that mean?! Well, we could get into a whole Buddhist philosophical conversation about the nature of awareness, and consciousness, and being/nonbeing, and emptiness. Maybe I’ll dive into some of that later… But for our simple purposes, what it means is that we don’t want to get stuck in our own projections.
When we think and feel things, we project our reality onto our experiences. To see everything as a dream means reminding ourselves that we don’t hold the whole reality of anything. We know in part, to paraphrase a biblical verse. And what we think we know, or what we feel, can also get us entangled, enmeshed, stuck, confused, and all worked up.
Instead, try to see everything as a dream- as one depiction of reality, not reality itself. Don’t hold onto it so tightly. Be willing to look at things from a distance. Be open.
Quite simply, this slogan calls us to take a step back, and take a deep breath. It means: chill out. Traleg Kyabgon says, “All our misery comes from mental fixation, and viewing phenomena as dream-like will help us relinquish our fixation on the world.”
Have you ever gotten yourself all in a fuss about something someone did or said, and then when you confronted them, they explained that it wasn’t at all what you thought? That’s fixation. That’s putting too much stock in our own experience and letting it just run us all around. If you really have a reason to be bothered, it will remain even after you let yourself calm down and stop fixating on it. And then, you’ll have the clarity and calm to do something about it in a productive way.
I like what Norman Fischer says, too: “Maybe I don’t need to be so worked up about it. Maybe I can just figure out how to deal with it without that extra measure of anxiety and freak-out.” YES. This is a good goal.
So, this week, try to just let go a little. When you feel yourself getting worked up, imagine those emotions and thoughts becoming soft, fluffy, dream-like. Just release them and see what happens.
New? This post belongs to my series Living the Lojong, where we’re walking through each of the 59 Buddhist mind-training slogans.
