Dream Teachers excel at Skillful Means. They don’t need much time to figure out how you learn and relate to the Dharma itself. Conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind all participate. Your way of thinking and learning sets up the classroom itself.

 

By David Jones

Dreams are amazing classrooms.

We can meet new teachers past and present, hear new teachings and take steps toward enlightenment.

Dream Teachers excel at Skillful Means. They don’t need much time to figure out how you learn and relate to the Dharma itself. Conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind all participate. Your way of thinking and learning sets up the classroom itself.

That’s not to say it’s easy to understand. Although our minds creates the stage, it dresses it with symbolism, metaphor, and discomfort. The benefit? It bypasses our conditioned reactions. If a teaching would trigger your defenses, Dream Teachers approach it from a different angle. And because we sometimes need to learn how things apply in different circumstances, base teachings will likely occur in various scenarios with related variables.

I have many teachers in the Dreamlands.

There’s an older Asian woman who I know only as Venerable. She’s kind and nurturing, radiating wisdom and patience. An older Asian man, who I know only as My Teacher, is very direct. Terse but never mean, he pushes me when I get stuck. When I’m stubborn, he happily gets right to the point.

Then there are the many companions, some nothing more than voices behind, within, or next to me. Some have my voice, most don’t. They question and challenge and help provide clarification.

Many teachers aren’t even human. Just as with native and Indigenous experiences, animals, plants, even the water and the sky have wisdom to impart if we’ll let go of our human arrogance and sit quietly to listen. A student remains humble and open.

Two Lessons

One night I sat with Venerable. I was focused on creating a book, stitching pages together, making my own Book of Wisdom. I slipped a needle with some kind of fibrous twine through the pages, pulling it completely tight before moving to the next stitch. Venerable watched over my work, and as she did, she sang.

She sang one word over and over: Hallelujah. She sang each syllable in a different tone, the same word each time, completely different each time. While she sang, we both swayed gently with the song. She sang, I stitched, we swayed.

Suddenly she stopped singing and asked me a question: “Do you know what ‘Hallelujah’ means?”

I stopped stitching. This was a lesson in a riddle from my teacher. It deserved my attention. My mind started stepping through what I understood about the word and its meaning. Jewish traditional interpretations, the literal Hebrew, the many thoughts of the Early Church Fathers, years of commentary.

I knew some, so I couldn’t say, “No I don’t.” I didn’t know everything, so I couldn’t say, “Yes, I do.” I resumed stitching and finally replied, “What does it mean.” She smiled, and resumed singing while I smiled and stitched, and we swayed gently.

My reply wasn’t a question, it was a statement.

I wasn’t asking her, “I don’t know, what DOES the word mean?” I wasn’t looking for her to explain. I replied not with another question but with no answer, and her smile was bright and soft.

One night, a lot of us students gathered for a meal together, sitting at tables under the glistening stars and the bold moonlight. I didn’t have anything to eat, so another student—much farther along than me—got up and gathered ingredients. She piled some kind of meat-like substance, bean paste and a white powder on a flour tortilla and handed it to me. I thanked her, then just sat there staring at it. Was I supposed to roll this up like a burrito? I was bothered and unsure. So I picked the whole thing up to consult My Teacher who sat in a building eating with other teachers.

My Teacher was sitting in a room separated from the students by a thin wooden lattice.

He is such a simple, unassuming man, head shaved bald, his gray robes loose but never disordered. He looked up at me and saw I was bothered. My face always gives me away.

“What is wrong?” he asked.

“I’m frustrated, Teacher, because I’m not able to meet the expectations.”

His eyebrows went up. “Which teacher’s expectations are you not meeting?”

“I guess mine. I’m not meeting the expectations I have within me.”

The Teacher held his hands out and I handed him my food. He examined my dinner, holding it up like holding a book, causing most of the ingredients to fall into his lap. He handed back what was left, and said, “We will get there.” I ate my meal in gratitude with his words, “We will get there” echoing in my mind. We. That was the most reassuring thing I could imagine.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been having teaching dreams most nights. Some frame the same lessons in different stage dressing, showing how application of principles can change. Some nights dreams may revisit past views or simply give me recess time to unwind my mind.

Some dreams are role-playing for embodying teachings. Sometimes no teacher is visible.

I used to stress about teaching dreams; wondering if tonight would be one, wondering if I needed to be ready to think through the whole night.

Or conversely, would I want a teaching dream and be disappointed if it didn’t happen? Now I understand. Teaching comes when you let go and allow things to unfurl around you. They will come in their time, often when—and only when—you’re truly ready. Patience and Mindfulness are what the student brings to class.

Rest assured, the teachers will handle their part.
 

Photo: Pixabay

Editor: Dana Gornall

 

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