The teachings of Ajahn Suchart
Question from Germany: Can you please explain about dreams according to the Buddha’s teachings?
Than Ajahn: Dreams are created by your kamma (actions) during your waking hours. You may do some good kamma and you may do some bad kamma. The kamma that you’ve done will be stored in your memory. When you go to sleep, the memory will arise in the form of dreams. If you have good dreams, it’s because of your good kamma. If you have bad dreams, it’s because of your bad kamma.
When you sleep, you can’t control your dreams because you have no mindfulness. Your mind uses the memory to create dreams to entertain itself. Sometimes it entertains itself with bad dreams because it can only think about bad things that it has done in the past. But if you’ve done a lot of good kamma, when you sleep, you’ll have a good memory, thus your mind will generate good dreams. So, if you want good dreams, then you have to do a lot of good kamma and abstain from doing bad kamma during your waking hours. Then, when you sleep, you will always have good dreams. The Buddha said that people who do good kamma and people who practice mettā will have good dreams when they go to sleep.
When you die, these good dreams become heaven. While waiting for a new body to be reborn, you’re actually in a dream state. When you die, it’s similar to when you go to sleep where you will have good dreams and bad dreams. If you have bad dreams, it’s because of your bad kamma – you enter the hell or apāya realm. If you have good dreams, you enter the realm of heaven. This is what happens after you die: you will be in the dreamlike state until you get a new body.
When you get a new body, which is when you are born, you then wake up and start crying. You stop dreaming. You start to grow up. You start creating more kamma – good and bad kamma. And this is how life goes on, from life to life, depending on your good and bad kamma. It will never end until you come across the teachings of the Buddha who said that if anyone wants to stop this cycle of birth, ageing, sickness and death, and dreamlike state when one dies, then one has to stop the 3 cravings that drive the mind to be reborn again and again, namely: craving for sensual gratification, craving to be and craving not to be.
Those are the cravings that you have to resist and get rid of by the practice of meditation: samatha bhāvanā and vipassanā bhāvanā. If you can practice them, you can eliminate all your cravings from your mind. And there will be nothing to push your mind to go look for a new body. Your mind will be in a dreamlike state that is perfectly calm, peaceful and happy forever – this is the mind of the Buddha and the enlightened ones. The Buddha and the enlightened ones still exist. They exist in the spiritual world. They exist with peace and calm mind because they have eliminated the sources of the stress – the 3 cravings.
They don’t have to go take a new body because there are no cravings to have a new body. This is the teachings of the Buddha.
“Dhamma in English, May 8, 2018.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
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