A favorite song of mine

Cripple Creek


A cripple on his deathbed and a daydream did ride,
Out past the streams of fire on a pedaled path did glide,
He left his wheelchair spinning deeper in the mud.
in it set his memories and his body and his blood.

An angel came to greet him by his side she flew,
whispered as a part of him what he already knew,
his head was spinning freely and it was plain to see,
his burden was himself, he bore, the sight his eyes could be.

His death, it died quite easily, right there was gone for good,
but he couldn't see his loved one, like he thought he should
he thought "if they were gone", said he, "and this cannot be true"
the search to find what wasn't there has brought him back to you.

-Alexander Spence

Dreaming on Dreaming

Last night I had a dream where I was sitting in a teaching by my Lama, my mom in the back, in a house by a lake. At some point, his translator said that Lama had some free time, so if there was anything anyone wanted him to do, now was the time. There was silence for a while and my mind started racing, trying to figure out what to do with this golden opportunity. Someone else asked something, sparking me to remember a question I had. I said to the translator "In dreams people are not real, whereas in real life people are real in some sense, although not real in another. What is the difference?" The translator said to me, "well you agree that real life is like a dream?" and I responded "Yes, that's what prompted me to ask this question. I mean in real life I don't have miraculous powers like in a dream, but..."(I felt a little bit like I was bragging here. Basically saying that I do have miraculous powers in dreams.) At this point in the dream someone started talking over me, and then I started talking over them, and then I found that I wasn't saying what I wanted to say and kind of wished I would shut up. Another character mentioned that sometimes two people can see the same detail in a dream, and the translator asked them how, and the other person said "Heroin!" I almost yelled "Not me!" At this point the Lama said "twenty minutes" indicating that some preestablished period of time had elapsed. He looked tired. After he left, I noticed my mom was gone from the back of the room. After this, I was standing out on the pier looking at the lake, feeling disappointed that my question wasn't definitively answered. I didn't realize I had been dreaming until I woke up.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on Buddhism?

One encouraging thing the Guide has to say about parallel universes is that you don't stand the remotest chance of understanding it. You can therefore say "What?" and "Eh?" and even go cross-eyed and start to blither if you like without any fear of making a fool of yourself.

The first thing to realize about parallel universes, the Guide says, is that they are not parallel.

It is also important to realize that they are not, strictly speaking, universes either, but it is best if you don't try to realize that until a little later, after you've realized that everything you've realized up to that moment is not true.

The reason they are not universes is that any given universe is not actually a thing as such, but is just a way of looking at what is technically known as the WSOGMM, or Whole Sort of General Mish Mash. The Whole Sort of General Mish Mash doesn't actually exist either, but is just the sum total of all the different ways of looking at it if it did.

The reason they are not parallel is the same reason that the sea is not parallel. It doesn't mean anything. You can slice the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash any way you like and will generally come up with something that someone will call home.

Please feel free to blither now.


-Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adams

Lucid Dreaming

I had an interesting type of lucid dream last night, where at various points in the dream, I became aware that I was dreaming but was still caught up in the dream. In fact, what was rather fascinating was that I was walking down a sidewalk, thinking how much the progression of events so far seemed dream-like, but that this was definitely not a dream because the reality around me seemed so clear and real. Then something clicked. I'm not sure what clued me in, but as I gazed up at a gas station sign, I realized that I was, indeed, dreaming. Later in the dream, I remembered I was dreaming when I saw that another character's hand had healed way too much for one day, and I said to him something like "That's what happens in the dream world."

I've had lucid dream before, where as soon as I realize I'm dreaming, I begin to take authorship of the dream in a much more direct way. I feel in those dreams, like I'm consciously causing things to happen, whereas in the dream last night, it was more like my consciousness observing an unconscious process.

In Tibetan Buddhism, the recognition of ones dreams is said to beneficial to the path. On the one hand, it makes you realize how much ordinary reality is like a dream, and on the other hand, it makes it possible to practice while you are sleeping. It is also said, that after you die, it will be easier to recognize the fact that you are in in-between state between this birth and the next. Usually, it is said, beings are propelled by their karma, caught up in the dream-like appearances of the in-between state, into their next birth, but that if you realize what's happening, you can affect your rebirth to be more positive, or even gain enlightenment in this state.