Zhuangzi (691 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesRating: 1.36 on 16 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by David Adventurer (View user info) at 2003-07-23 15:08:32 EDT
Following on from dream-related posts such as
http://www.ubersite.com/cgi-bin/message_get.cgi?message=1058984132414828783
http://www.ubersite.com/cgi-bin/message_get.cgi?message=1052402993316011919
http://www.ubersite.com/cgi-bin/message_get.cgi?message=1056672592566617686
http://www.ubersite.com/cgi-bin/message_get.cgi?message=1050348670271412547
I'd like to know whether you've ever had a dream that left you feeling confused when you woke up, or another strong emotion.
Bonus questions: Has a dream ever changed you? Have you had a lucid dream? What do you know about Taoism?
Here's an old Taoist tale. Zhuangzi was a philosopher who lived in the third century BC.
Once upon a time, Zhuangzi dozed off in a garden full of flowers, and dreamt he was a beautiful butterfly. It fluttered by, hither and thither, until it grew tired and also fell asleep. It too had a dream, and dreamt it was Zhuangzi. At that instant, Zhuangzi awoke. He did not know whether he was now the real Zhuangzi, or the one in the butterfly's dream; nor did he know whether he had dreamt of the butterfly, or it had dreamt of him.
User Reviews
Submitted by DavidAdventurer (user info) at 2003-07-24 21:44:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
OK, I wasn't going to write any more, but thanks for that dream. It's interesting for me because my father had an incredibly vivid dream in which he was deep in the ocean and a beautiful exotic fish swam in front of him and communicated to him the importance of all life. He woke up in the middle of the night and knew he could never eat fish again, and in the morning he decided he was a vegetarian.
My dad's very atheist and anti-superstitious, so he doesn't believe his fishy dream was some real spiritual communication or anything, but it made him think. It goes to show that dreaming serves to collect our waking thoughts and experiences and re-organise them in our minds. In this case, the philosophical arguments he had been reading and hearing about all came together in one night. After a couple of years of observing him, I too decided to become a vegetarian.
I've always been impressed by the power of this dream, and of one that changed my life when I was fifteen. They are the reasons I made this post.
Submitted by PeopleAreStrange (user info) at 2003-07-24 19:21:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Okay -here is a vivid dream for you. Last night I dreamt (in colour) about swine who talked to me - mummy and daddy porky pigs. The mum gave birth to a litter of piglets and she begged me not to kill them even though she knew me and other humans wanted to eat them. She offered some afterbirth to *my* mother as a snack so that we wouldn't hurt her offspring. All of her litter looked like bloody pieces of chops but they made little piglet grunts. At one point I felt like kicking the mother pig but then I thought I should be nice to her, and she looked at me with a human expression of mixed gratitude and fear in her eyes. By the end of the dream I was feeling quite fond of and protective towards the whole 'family'.
I woke up feeling like I could never eat pork again. I think I'll stick to chicken - they're pea brained. But I think swine are too much like dogs, they're intelligent and have feelings. Make a good pet. Maybe I should stop being speciesist...
Submitted by MAB (user info) at 2003-07-23 23:27:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
PAS: I'm not sure how the system works exactly, but classes in most American colleges have abbreviations like "LATN 112-02" for Beginning Latin II. The numbers go up by how advanced the class is, and an introductory survey for people who know nothing about the subject is usually has 101 as its Course number, e.g. Introductory Chemistry is CHEM 101, while Experimental Biochemistry is CHEM 472.
Just FYI!
Submitted by PeopleAreStrange (user info) at 2003-07-23 22:06:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
You're reading WAY too much Uber, David are you feeling like you need to catch up on older posts? You could spend months doing that.
Sounds like Descartes Meditations to me, nice to know he nicked the idea from the Chinese, hardly surprising, haven't Europeans done that for years?
I have a lot of good, vivid, in-colour surround sound dreams but I don't have time to go into details.
Razor - can you or any other American please explain to me why classes are called '101' - what does '101' actually MEAN? In the UK we call classes by their subject and don't tag numbers onto the end.
p.s. David, you're fallible, live with it - it's not a bad thing at all. Only fellow pedants like smart-arses and we're such a lonely bunch.
Submitted by Razor (user info) at 2003-07-23 17:14:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
My mom told me that story when I was a kid.
Also, I remember the professor telling that story in Philosophy 101... it stuck in my head because I remember thinking "Hey! I know that story!"
Unless I'm mistaken, it's supposed to be a koan.
Submitted by Nosferatu (user info) at 2003-07-23 17:14:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
cool
Submitted by DavidAdventurer (user info) at 2003-07-23 17:11:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
You mean you've read it before in English? The first time I saw it was in my Chinese textbook. I hope you like my translation.
By the way, see that character on the second line, either side of the comma? That's mèng, and means "dream". It's my favourite Chinese character. http://www.ocrat.com/chargif/GB/horiz/c3ce.html
Submitted by Razor (user info) at 2003-07-23 17:00:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I've always loved that story...
Submitted by DavidAdventurer (user info) at 2003-07-23 16:53:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I so wish I could dream lucidly. I would nap all day just to be able to live in that world. But how can one practise? I can't when I'm awake, and when I'm asleep I'm not lucid enough to know I'm dreaming, let alone make the conscious decision to control it.
Yes, I did get annoyed with myself over the spelling mistake. A big fault of mine is perfectionism.
My swimming/flying dreams can get weird. Sometimes I can fly quite freely over crowds, and sometimes I skim over the ground, pushing against it like on a skateboard. Sometimes I have to hide the fact I can fly because people freak out, and then in other dreams they see it as relatively normal. Once I'm in the air, swimming movements cause the motion, but to initiate flight I have to remain still and meditate to cause levitation. I dreamt about this hundreds of times through my childhood.
No dreams that have changed your life? I know one changed my whole sexuality in the Autumn of 1994 (No, not what you think. No, no details.)
Submitted by Nator (user info) at 2003-07-23 16:35:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I've had one lucid dream, ever. I was about 10, and was always scared of wolves. A wolf ran out of the kitchendoor, between my legs and I sat down on it and killed it.
That's it. I *think* it happened because I wanted to.
(I'm not FAT, I don't know why it died when I sat on top of it)
Submitted by lucid (user info) at 2003-07-23 16:31:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I've had several lucid dreams. I've found that you can make your dreams lucid with practice and dedication and this makes dreaming alot more fun than just a mismash of weird images and scenes.
Has a dream ever changed me? Many of my dreams change the way I work since I tend to sleep on problems I can't solve right away. Lots of times the answer comes during a dream or upon waking up from a deep dream.
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2003-07-23 16:23:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
David relax sheesh you're not really freaking out over spelling something wrong are you?
This is good. I used to have this recurring dream that I was swimming through a tunnel, I couldn't get out of the end, and the current was too strong to swim back the way I came. It seems Freudian, but it's not that deep. I did swim though a tunnel and things were fine, but for some reason it started fucking with my head after the fact. It ended when I forced myself to dream that I grabbed the walls and pulled my way out.
Too much information?
Submitted by DavidAdventurer (user info) at 2003-07-23 16:09:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
SHIT. Why don't I proofread before posting? I could shut up and nobody would know, except there's one Chinese guy here and I'm sure he'll point it out if I don't. I fucking misspelt "hòu", the eighth character on the third line. It should read http://www.ocrat.com/chargif/GB/horiz/baf3.html
Submitted by DavidAdventurer (user info) at 2003-07-23 15:54:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I occasionally have the vague impression that I've made a certain comment to someone, and then when I ask myself when, I realise "it was in that dream, fuckwit".
An extra bonus question: do you have recurring dreams? I constantly dream of flying, but not like superman; I make swimming-type movements.
Submitted by d_d (user info) at 2003-07-23 15:54:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
awesome
Submitted by MAB (user info) at 2003-07-23 15:42:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Sometimes I have these dreams where I make a large amount of money accidentally by being in the right place at the right time, and when I wake up I lie there honestly believing that I still have the money. It takes me about half an hour or so to look around and realize that I don't, and then I get all disappointed. It's about as vivid as a nightmare or sex dream, and I'm hoping it's some kind of premonition.