Selected Lectures on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (Pitāputrasamāgamanasūtra) (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 exquisite 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 things in the dream as real, remains immersed in the dream, with endless recollection, clinging and unable to let go. Such a person lacks wisdom, not knowing that the dream is not real, not actual; one should not be infatuated with unreal false appearances, pursuing illusory sensations and feelings, and should not be so deluded and inverted as to take the false for the true. The sensations experienced in a dream are all illusory; how much more so the recollection of the dream after waking—the feelings are even more illusory. Does the matter being recalled in the mind still exist? It no longer exists; otherwise it would not be called a recollection. For example, if 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 it in 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 and refusal to let go, 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 fussing and clinging, that is illusion upon illusion. The very moment a sound exists it is already illusory; how much more illusory and unreal 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 false 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 myriad dharmas of the six sense dusts are all very real—but are those experiences truly real? None of them are real; they are like flowers in the sky, illusory shadows.