The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.
Question: What are dreams in Buddhism?
Than Ajahn: Dreams are your thoughts. When you sleep, you still keep thinking and your thinking becomes images in your mind, then they become dreams.
Question: I dreamt about my father who passed away a few years ago. In the first dream, it felt cold & grey; the second dream, it felt like it was in a café; the third dream felt like in a beautiful place. The fourth dream was when I saw my father's face at another person’s body. Are these dreams real?
Than Ajahn: They are real to you. They are your thoughts. When you sleep, you still think and you start creating these images in your mind. They are just dreams, so don’t pay too much attention to them unless you can prove that they’re real. What do you mean by real? What is reality from those dreams? If you can prove your dream, like after you woke up, you could validate your dreams, then you’d say that the dream is real.
For instance, you dreamt that you won a lottery with number 95, and then the next day you go buy lottery number 95, and if you win, then the dream is real. You need to validate your dream whether it’s real or not real. If you dreamt that someone was telling you, ‘I left some money for you under the tree somewhere,’ and then you went to dig up that spot, and found the money then you’d say, ‘This dream must be real.’
Otherwise, it’s not real. Ok? So, you need something to confirm or to validate your dreams. There’s nothing else you can validate it except for the reality itself.
Question: Can we cross to another realm and communicate with my father in dreams?
Than Ajahn: If you have psychic power, you can connect with spiritual beings. And if you want to have psychic power, you have to meditate. The Buddha had psychic power, so he could connect with different spiritual beings, like his mother who died when he was 7 days old. After his enlightenment, he wanted to reach out to his mother to help her, so he searched for her by using his psychic power. He eventually found her in the spiritual realm, and he could connect and conversed with her and also taught her the Dhamma until she became a sotāpanna. So, if you have psychic power, you can connect with the spiritual beings.
“Dhamma in English, Mar 25, 2019.”
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Question: 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 had 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 dreamlike 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 a 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 the 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 i.e. 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
YouTube: Dhamma in English.
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