The Realiy of Dreams

Is our normal waking lives a dream? Is the real world so distorted in our eyes it is actually an illusion? Are we all part of this great illusion? Am I awake? Are you awake? Am I in a dream adding this post to this Blog???

Read the following Taoist tale, written well over two thousand years ago, which illustrates the paradoxical nature of dream and waking realities:

There was a man of Cheng who killed a deer and, fearing someone might find it, hid it in a ditch until he was ready to go home. But when he came back later he could not find the animal. He concluded he must have been dreaming.

A passer-by heard him muttering to himself about the affair and, acting upon what he heard, found the deer. When he returned home he told his wife: “Just now a woodcutter dreamed he had caught a deer, but did not know where it was. Now I have found it. His dream was a true one.”

“Isn’t it rather that you dreamed you saw a wood-cutter catch the deer? Since you have really got the deer, isn’t it your dream that was true?”

“All I know is that I have got it. What do I care which of us was dreaming?”

When the woodcutter got home he had a true dream of the place where he had hidden the deer, and of the man who found it. Next morning, guided by his dream, he confronted the man and then went to law to contest his right to the deer.

The Justice said: “If in the first place you really caught the deer, you are wrong to say that you were dreaming. If you really were dreaming, then you are wrong to say it actually happened. The other man contests your right to it. His wife says that he recognises it in his dream as another man’s deer, yet denies the existence of the man who caught it. All I know is that we have a deer, so I suggest you divide it between you.”

When reported to the Lord of Cheng, he commented: “Alas! Is the Justice dreaming he has divided someone’s deer?”

The Prime Minister was consulted, who said: “ It is beyond me to distinguish dreaming from non-dreaming. Only the Yellow Emperor or Confucius could have told you and they are dead. For the present we may as well trust the decision of the Justice.”