The Movie of Waking Life:
Fact or fiction?
My last post (“War”) stirred up some interesting comment threads, two of them touching upon one of my own most persistent koans—the relationship between my deep caring about the world and nondual spirituality. It could also be described as the relationship between relative and absolute perspectives: What is real about this apparent everyday reality and what isn’t?
I’ll start by sharing a story I loved, and then I’ll have more to say after that.
The story is from Zen teacher Steve Matuszak, now the head teacher at Dharma Field Zen Center in Minnesota (the Zen Center founded by Steve Hagen). The story appeared in the latest Dharma Field newsletter, which came out earlier this month:
I had a lucid dream last night. That’s the kind of dream in which one is aware of the fact that one is dreaming. Well, perhaps mine was an almost-lucid dream.
In the dream, I had experienced a series of unfortunate incidents. None were earth-shattering, but cumulatively they were going to cause problems for me. I did not want them to have happened. In a quiet moment, as someone was driving me to my job, my head nodded like it does when I’m drowsy, but instead of drifting off to sleep, I snapped awake for a fraction of a second, and I glimpsed that it had all been a dream. The heaviness in my heart lifted.
But then, there I still was. Nothing had changed. Why hadn’t I woken up? Or was I merely wishing it had been a dream? I tried to wake myself up to no avail.
I ended up meeting with a couple of friends, and I told them what had happened and of my insight that it had been, or at least I thought it had been, a dream. They listened, not responding.
“This is a dream, right? Tell me it’s a dream.” They just stared at me. I realized they wouldn’t be able to help me. I got desperate. Then my alarm went off.
It strikes me that my dream dramatized a situation that many of us face. Life seems to create problems for us, problems we may fervently wish were gone. But then we get a sliver of insight and see that the world isn’t really the way we believe it to be. The way we’ve put it together and how we understand it is just a dream. Regardless of that insight, we still find ourselves in the dream, trying to will ourselves awake or to tell others to wake us up.
But in our daily life, as in my dream, we can’t muscle ourselves awake through sheer willpower nor can anyone else wake us up. What we can do is pay attention to what we’re calling problems and notice that the act of labelling things “problems” can be the alarm that could wake us up from the dream.
-- from Steve Matuszak, head teacher at Dharma Field Zen Center, from their October 2, 2023 newsletter –
Steve’s story reminded me of Richard Linklater’s great 2001 movie Waking Life.
And, as I mentioned at the top, this story, like my previous post and the videos I shared there and some of the comment threads, touches upon very important questions in the world of nondual spirituality, questions that different traditions, teachers and individuals have answered in very different ways:
How real (or substantial or solid or persisting) is this apparent everyday reality?
What is real about it and what isn’t?
How much do our beliefs, prejudices and ideas color what appears? Is there any objective reality? In any given situation, what can you know beyond all doubt about what happened?
What is it that feels threatened when the solidity or reality of our life story, our problems, or various current events is questioned, or when the world is compared to a dream, a movie, or perhaps ever-changing kaleidoscopic Rorschach blots?
How much attention and energy do we each want to give to the many concerns arising in the relative world including political, social and environmental issues?
Can transcending the world sometimes be a form of escapism, avoidance, spiritual by-passing, or unhealthy forms of detachment, dissociation and/or depersonalization? Is it important to feel the pain and sorrow of the world and to know ourselves as vulnerable, finite, human beings? Or are these concerns just ways of holding ourselves back from fully letting go into the freedom of boundless openness, no-thing-ness, pure consciousness or spirit?
What identities do you have about yourself? This could include such things as ethnicity, race, gender, religion, occupation, age, political affiliations, enneagram type, whether you see yourself as smart or stupid, enlightened or unenlightened, capable or incapable, an oppressor or a victim, a success or a loser, generous or stingy, wealthy or poor, lucky or unlucky, etc. Do any of these identities really describe you? Are any of them always true? Are any of them really pindownable as to exactly what they are? How do these identities color and shape your particular movie of waking life?
These are questions to live with and explore, not by THINKING about them, but by actually exploring them directly with open attention, with awareness, in our own immediate present moment experiencing. In other words, look. Listen. Feel. Sense. See what is discovered. Don’t jump to answering these questions, and be open to being surprised.
And maybe instead of applying these questions to really horrific situations, as I did in my previous post, maybe it is easier, more helpful or less threatening to apply them to any ordinary moment, here and now, as we’re eating breakfast, for example, or washing the dishes, or reading a new Substack article. How substantial is this present experiencing right now? What can I know beyond all doubt about what is appearing right here, right now?
Again, don’t go to thought to find the answers—but actually explore your own experience. Let these questions live in you—see what emerges.
Normally I welcome comments and sincere questions, but in this case, I’m hoping everyone will undertake this exploration in silence, by giving open attention to one’s own direct experiencing and one’s own reactions as they unfold in real-time situations. That’s really where genuinely liberating insights and discoveries happen, more than in comment threads. Those can be helpful, but sometimes they just invite more thinking and opining. And there’s a more personal reason that I’m discouraging the sharing of ideas and opinions about this post…
As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ll be offline at times this month while replacing my computer and also taking some time intermittently to be quiet and on a kind of solitary retreat at home. So for that reason as well, I really don’t want to get drawn into responding to emails or comments about this post, as I did on the previous post. If you do feel compelled to comment or email, I will (hopefully) abstain from responding, or if I can’t resist, hopefully it will be with extreme brevity, which (as we know) is not my strong suit. So, thank you in advance for helping me to be quiet, and for understanding if my only response to comments on this post is silence.
Love to all….