Regard All Dharmas as Dreams

We take ourselves and our world so seriously. Things seem so real, so intense and colorful, even overwhelming, but at the same time, everything we try to hold onto slips away. Nothing is all that substantial. It is amazing that there is anything at all! At the same time, nothing seems to be there in the way we would want.

— Judy Lief, on Slogan #2 of the lojong slogans, "REGARD ALL DHARMAS [=phenomena] AS DREAMS"

Dear All,

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
                                                   
-- James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man


Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

                Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep? 

-- John Keats

I held a jewel in my fingers

And went to sleep.

The day was warm, and winds were prosy;

I said, “‘Twill keep.”

I woke and chid my honest fingers, —

The gem was gone;

And now an amethyst remembrance

Is all I own.

— Emily Dickinson

Thus shall you think of this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.  

— The Diamond Sutra


Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.    
                                                         
-- Wm Shakespeare, The Tempest


All blessings to all,

Michael