When I wake up I realize who I really am and have always been, yet was somehow
lost in a dream. Within the dream it could not be realized, although I may have had
an intimation. In a sense the original self was not there in the dream (not awakened,
realized, or actualized). And yet the original self is never totally absent. After all, who
is dreaming?
This original self—now awake as the boundless, formless universe—is not some
projected or objectified reality (like what appears in a dream). The original, formless
self can in no way be measured or grasped by the standards of the dream-complex.
Thus the difficulty—in a very real sense impossibility—for the self in the dream to
waken. Only the awakened self truly knows the nature of the dream as dream, and
now truly comes to, and knows, itself, the other, and the world directly and
immediately.
How then do I wake up? Zen Buddhism stresses that, finally, there is no way to
wake up short of waking up! This accounts for the paradoxical logic of Zen mondo
or spiritual debates. To give one sterling example: Shih-t’ou (700–90) was one of the
great early Chinese masters. Once he was speaking to a group about the fact that this
very mind is Buddha—awakened. (This was before the idea became fashionable in
Zen circles.) A monk came forward and asked him, then what about emancipation,
the Pure Land, and Nirvana? For the monk these were perhaps inevitable
problem-questions that Shih-t’ou’s statement had aroused. After all, aren’t we
supposed to practice diligently in order to get emancipated from all that binds us?
Aren’t we supposed to achieve the Pure Land, free of all defilement? Aren’t we
supposed to attain Nirvana and get out of the miserable cycle of samsara? How do
we answer?
Here is how Shih-t’ou resolved the problem:
What about emancipation?
Who binds you?
What about the Pure Land?
Who defiles you?
What about Nirvana?
Who puts you in samsara?
(see Miura and Sasaki 1966:301)To each question of the dreaming monk the master answered—simply by being
awake. The master could see the monk’s self-confusion; he could also ‘see through’
to the monk’s formless self. Thus, the master’s paradoxical—yet perfectly honest and
straightforward—responses. He might just as well have said: ‘I see no chains on you,
brother!’
In Buddhism and in Zen a variety of provisional methods have been put forth. For
example, the method of concentrated sitting in which one does not hold onto
anything in the dream, nor even to the dream itself or the dreamer. One thus confirms
that one is indeed awake by allowing the entire dream complex to fall away. Another
method is shocking the dreamer awake when the conditions are ripe. But any method
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