The Bardo of Becoming & Tibetan Dream Yoga

I will not try to explain the elaborate cosmogony, beliefs, and practices of Tibetan Buddhism, as an American Catholic, it is beyond my ability to describe adequately, though, as with the other topics in this post, I will link to reading material at the end for those who may wish to learn more.

What is important to mention here is the view prominent in Buddhism that mental-reality, a reality of individual things, is an illusion, and that Tibetan Buddhism encourages, in addition to a myriad of mind training practices during the day, cultivating a discerning awareness of our reality when we are asleep as well.

When we dream, all of us are on our own mental beaches, although in a dream, the beach and the real beach are completely indistinguishable. This is widely known and acknowledged, but very few people, and even very religious traditions, seem to openly examine what exactly this means for us, and for our waking existence.

When I dream of a beach or an airport, it IS a beach or an airport, often filled with some people I know and others I don’t. If they hit me, I feel pain; if a tsunami comes, we run in real fear. When I dream as Liam, I am the real Liam. It doesn’t matter if in this dream Liam has the feet of a goat or blue skin; Liam is unperturbed and sees such bizarre occurrences as regular aspects of himself, like having hazel eyes or brown hair.

Avoiding digression into the complex mechanics of dream yoga, and things I am not capable of or understand, the purpose of examining our dreams here is to better understand the illusion of self. We all have dreams where the scenes and our roles in them change very rapidly, and we are unalarmed or disturbed by that. In dreams, reality and ourselves are much more fluid and malleable and therefore easier to see as illusions.

If you are like me and don’t often recall your dreams, a simple step of recording them in writing in the morning is often quite helpful in remembering them in greater and greater detail every night. I encourage this examination as it helps get a better understanding of subconscious selves and the fundamental bizarreness that is dreaming.

Nagasena’s Chariot and Theseus’s Ship:

I encourage anyone who has followed my rambling this far to read the passages below before continuing.

King Milinda’s Questions and the Chariot Simile, by Barbara O’Brien.

One of the King’s first questions is on the nature of the self and personal identity. Nagasena greeted the King by acknowledging that Nagasena was his name, but that “Nagasena” was only a designation; no permanent individual “Nagasena” could be found.

This amused the King. Who is it that wears robes and takes food? he asked. If there is no Nagasena, who earns merit or demerit? Who causes karma? If what you say is true, a man could kill you and there would be no murder. “Nagasena” would be nothing but a sound.

Nagasena asked the King how he had come to his hermitage, on foot or by horseback? I came in a chariot, the King said.

But what is a chariot? Nagasena asked. Is it the wheels, or the axles, or the reigns, or the frame, or the seat, or the draught pole? Is it a combination of those elements? Or is it found outside those elements?

The King answered no to each question. Then there is no chariot! Nagasena said.

Now the King acknowledged the designation “chariot” depended on these constituent parts, but that “chariot” itself is a concept, or a mere name.

Just so, Nagasena said, “Nagasena” is a designation for something conceptual. It is a mere name. When the constituent parts are present we call it a chariot; When the five skandhas are present, we call it a being.

From Life of Theseus  by Plutarch

The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and strong timber in their places, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.

The above passages are traditional allegories from two different cultures separated by thousands of miles and hundreds of years, but they both reflect the same problem: how many planks can we remove before it is no longer Theseus’s ship? If I add an ornate wooden mermaid to the front of the ship, is it still the Ship of Theseus? And if so, as Nagasena inquires about the chariot, what makes ‘it’ the Ship of Theseus? And as Nagasena conculdes the Ship of Theseus is just a mere name, a concept, a social designation to refer to something easily.

This is all well and good to understand intellectually, but it is hard to feel when we are not deep in contemplation, meditation, or under the influence of psychedelics. Many of us do not dedicate the time required in waking meditation for these ideas to start to pervade our daily consciousness. This is where I feel analysis of our dreams can be useful, by remembering our dreams better and better, by writing them down every morning and looking at the way scenery and self change so easily the parable of Nagasena and the paradox of Theseus become much more intuitive both when dreaming and waking.

Cool, but why should I care?

How often in all of our lives do we feel upset, suddenly bothered by some external phenomenon? If you’re like me, these little hiccups in our daily well-being happen all the time. Sometimes big and sometimes small, they have a real effect on our emotions, sometimes causing petty frustrations and or anxiety, sometimes creating real sadness and suffering.

When we start to see the paradox of Theseus and Nagasena in our waking mind, when events that frustrate and bother us pop up more and more, we have to ask ourselves, ‘Who is getting upset?’ I have found that that question quickly takes the wind out of the sails of my worry and frustration. Such an experience is an invitation to think about who I am right now. More and more, it is an invitation to think, who can I be right now?