' An Enlightened Dream Character '...

During a dream in sleep at night, it seems you are a real character and a self. You have a body, a mind with thoughts and you perform various activities. Does it make sense to think that your dream self has the capacity to become enlightened and to continue to exist as a Buddha doing what Buddhas do?

I hope all would agree that the dreamed "self" is just a momentary projection of mind with no innate capacity or possibility to morph into a real enlightened Buddha. It doesn't matter how many high level
meditations and practices the dreamed self engaged in; it will never morph into being a Buddha. Rather it just vanishes when we wake up in the morning.

But in the morning when we wake up, we notice that we seem to have a body and a mind too. We feel like we are a self with an identity and memories to prove it. However it can be discovered upon investigation that our self identity is also just a projection of mind established by the same subconscious mechanism that produces our dreamed self; both are mere thought-forms that have no independent life of their own.

Sometimes in a very profound state of clarity, the pseudo-self of imagined personal identity, vanishes. In this moment it's known that there is no personal self that could ever become enlightened no matter how much meditation or effort in practice is exerted. It's seen there is no self that could become enlightened because that self is no more than a bunch of thoughts arising from the subconscious.

How does a bunch of thoughts become a Buddha? That would mean that your thoughts about marmalade could morph into fully functional Buddhas! Thoughts about marmalade are no more a self than thoughts that describe a "me".

There is no self to become enlightened! There is no self that is born, lives and dies anymore than your dreamed self is born, lives and dies.

So when people say that "they" are followers of a gradual or a sudden path to enlightenment, please try to contain your laughter.

When the mind ceases generating the "me" self identity, what remains is the eternal Buddha Mind that has no personal identity, and that has never been born or could die or that could become a Buddha again.

So the next thought would be "ok, I get it, now what do "I" do to actualize this insight?"

Ha, ha, ha ... (laughing out loud) sorry, couldn't contain the laughter! What does "who" do??? (more laughter)...


-Jackson Peterson: