Regard All Dharmas as Dreams

Osho said, “Now the work starts. Atisha is very condensed, seed-like. That is the meaning of a sutra; it is just like a thread, just a hint, and then you have to decode it.”

When we talk about “dharmas” in this context we’re talking about “phenomena.” There is Dharma – which is the teaching and there is “dharma” which means “phenomena,” all that you see, all that you experience, all that can ever be experienced is “phenomena.” All this “phenomena” seems very solid, very real. But Pema says, “Another way to put this is: “Every situation is a passing memory.” Now when you think about that, it puts the whole of life into a completely different perspective. What you just did, said, thought is a memory right now. You can’t maintain it in any way. It’s over and it’s gone. Our experience – “phenomena” – is so fleeting that there is almost nothing about it that endures.

We begin to experience this in our sitting practice. We watch our breath and how it changes and our physical sensations and how they change. The same with our feelings and thoughts. They’re there and then they’re gone, just like that. You can hardly recreate the thought that you just had, unless it’s your habitual thought and even then it alters all the time. It morphs from one thing to the next. Sometimes it’s subtle, and sometimes we make the huge leap from “I really made a mistake that time,” to “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I ever do anything right?”
Our sitting practice allows us to witness this and to bring compassion to ourselves as we see it happening. Pema again, “Gentleness is our practice. This compassion, this clarity, this openness are like something we’ve forgotten. Sitting here being gentle with ourselves, we’re rediscovering something.”

With this slogan of regard all dharmas as dreams or as a passing memory we can see that we’re creating an illusion about ourselves and that we don’t have to live in the things we tell ourselves about ourselves or others. Certainly, we all make mistakes – sometimes they’re terrible mistakes and the consequences are terrible. Sometimes we live in terrible circumstances and it seems there is no way out of them. But, when we begin to look at the course of our lives on a moment to moment basis, as we do in our sitting practice, we see it actually changes all the time. This can give us the courage and strength we need to begin to live in a different way. It’s hard to give up our habitual self-talk and behavior – scary. We’ve created our identity with it. To begin to change it is a pretty amazing thing. But change occurs on a moment to moment basis, just as life does. So the small things we do to move out of our habitual behaviors and begin to do things in a different way also take on new meaning. All our efforts become important and consequential when seen in the light of the present moment.