creates such tremendous pressure in the mind of the
meditator that it “explodes” (Chinese, po), destroying
in the process the conventional point of view that con-
stitutes the ego, and freeing the mind to experience the
multivalent levels of selfless interrelationships that
characterize enlightenment in the Chan school.
See also:Meditation; Path; Psychology
Bibliography
Buswell, Robert E., Jr. “The Short-Cut Approach of K’an-hua
Meditation: The Evolution of a Practical Subitism in Chi-
nese Ch’an Buddhism.” In Sudden and Gradual: Approaches
to Enlightenment in Chinese Thought,ed. Peter N. Gregory.
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987.
Buswell, Robert E., Jr. “The Transformation of Doubt (Yiqing)
in Chinese Buddhist Meditation.” In Love and Emotions in
Traditional Chinese Literature,ed. Halvor Eifring. Leiden,
Netherlands: Brill, 2003.
Jayatilleke, Kulatissa Nanda. Early Buddhist Theory of Knowl-
edge.London: Allen and Unwin, 1963.
Nyanaponika Thera, trans. and comp. “The Five Mental Hin-
drances and Their Conquest: Selected Texts from the Pali
Canon and the Commentaries.” Wheel Series26 (1947).
Reprint, Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society,
1961.
ROBERTE. BUSWELL, JR.DREAMS
In Buddhism, as in most ancient cultures, it was widely
assumed that the images seen in dreams conveyed im-
portant knowledge. Thus, dreams not only play a ma-
jor role in descriptions of the life of Buddha and in
the biographies of eminent representatives of the Bud-
dhist traditions, but dreams became the basis of cults,
of the construction of monasteries, and of the diag-
nosis of disease.
Dreams in S ́akyamuni’s biography
Within the Buddhist tradition, records about S ́akya-
muni abound with accounts of dreams, and it is also
reported that the Buddha was familiar with the inter-
pretation of dreams. The Buddha’s birth is marked by
a dream: It is reported that he descended from Tusita
heaven in the form of a white elephant and entered the
womb of his sleeping mother, Mahamaya, who saw the
event in a dream. When Gautama’s wife Yas ́odharabe-
came aware that she was pregnant, Gautama’s foster
mother Mahaprajapatand his father S ́uddhodana ex-
perienced dreams. After Gautama had been instructed
by the celestial ones to pursue a life of homelessness,
he appeared to his father in a dream in which he de-
parted from the palace with his hair shorn. Then, when
Gautama’s father tried to bind him to the world, the
celestial ones caused S ́uddhodana to experience seven
dreams about his son’s departure. At the same time,
Yas ́odharahad twenty dreams concerning the depar-
ture of her husband. That same night, Gautama him-
self dreamed a five-part dream that confirmed his
decision to leave. While the prince was readying him-
self to escape, Yas ́odharadreamed a three-part dream
in which the moon fell to the earth, her teeth fell out,
and she lost her right arm.
The Buddha’s death is also marked by a series of
dreams. Tradition relates that the Buddha’s disciple
Subhadra dreamed of the Buddha’s NIRVANAa short
time before the event. Both ANANDAand the king
Ajatas ́atru also had important dreams on the night of
the Buddha’s nirvana.The dogmatic classification of dreams
Given the Buddhist concern with questions about the
nature of existence and the traditional belief that
dreams reveal the nature of the mind, and given the
Buddhist proclivity for analysis and classification, it is
not surprising that Buddhist literature includes at-
tempts to classify dreams. One such classification can
be found in the Vibhasa(second century C.E.; T1545:
27.193c), where it is said that dreams are: (1) guided
from outside and induced by higher beings such as
gods, seers, sages, or by spells or drugs; (2) based on
past events, so that one sees in a dream what one pre-
viously perceived or thought about, or what one did
as a habitual action; (3) based on events that will come
to pass, so that if something favorable or unfavorable
is going to occur, one will see signs of it beforehand in
a dream; (4) based on discrimination, so that if one is
longing for, striving after, or sorrowing about some-
thing, one will see this in a dream; and (5) based on
illness, so that if the elements are out of balance, one
may see in one’s dream the nature of a certain element
that is present in excess.
Although this classification attempts to account for
both ordinary and extraordinary dreams, it is the prog-
nostic dream that played the greatest role in narratives
like biography and pseudo-biography. But it was in
scholastic contexts that the dogmatic implications of
the dream state found the most attention. What is it
that makes dreams dreams? The Vibhasa (T1545:27.DREAMS