The Human World Is but a Dream

📖Master’s Reading

We always take everything before us to be absolutely real, because the ordinary being is veiled by the six senses — eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind — forever anxious over gain and loss in the present moment. Yet if we raise the mind to the higher dimension of the buddhas and bodhisattvas, the human world is in fact but a dream, and all things in it no more than the inevitable process of arising and ceasing.

The joys and sorrows of a dream seem profound, but once the soul awakens, one finds not a trace of them remains. We often mistake fleeting sense-experience for something eternal, forgetting that life came to the earth to learn and to refine the soul, not to take a holiday. The earth is a training ground where we learn to create wholesome conditions and raise the soul's stature. Clinging to the brief joys and sorrows of the dream, the soul cannot truly ascend.

True practice is not passive escape, but learning to stay awake within the dream of life. When one knows how to use the emptiness-wisdom of the Diamond Sūtra — "all conditioned things are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble" — and realizes that nothing is any great matter, one can leap free of the heavy cage of matter and emotion. To wake and see through the dream, to know that what the soul should cherish is wholesome connection, and to set down the dust that cannot be carried away — this is the beginning of practice.

🌱Reflection for Daily Life

• Understand that gain and loss in the world are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble.
• Do not mistake fleeting sense gain and loss for the eternal.
• Before sleep, ask yourself: will this matter in five years?
• Realize that nothing is any great matter, and stay awake.
• See through the world as a dream; letting go of clinging is the beginning of practice.