Saturday, July 10, 2010

Some Thoughts On Our Waking-Dream State

Several years ago, I bought a copy of "The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud" (Random House, 1938) in a used book store for $5.95. As I am often inclined to do, I set it aside and ignored it until recently, when my unconscious mysteriously propelled me toward the bookshelf where it had patiently been waiting for me. I dusted off the book and then opened it randomly to exactly the place that my thoughts had recently been occupying: "The Method of Dream Interpretation."

In this piece Freud outlines his views on the state of mind one must have in order to gain an understanding of the content of their dreams:

"For the purpose of self-observation with concentrated attention it is advantageous that the patient should take up a restful position and close his eyes; he must be explicitly instructed to renounce all criticism of the thought-formations which he may perceive. He must also be told that the success of the psychoanalysis depends upon his communicating everything that passes through his mind, and that he must not allow himself to suppress one idea because it seems to him unimportant or irrelevant to the subject, or another because it seems nonsensical. He must preserve an absolute impartiality in respect to his ideas; for if he is unsuccessful in finding the desired solution of the dream, the obsessional idea, or the like, it will be because he permits himself to be critical of them."

What caught my eye, of course, was the fact that Freud's observations do not differ at all from the instructions you will get if you walk into our zendo for the first time to sit in meditation: "Do not judge your thoughts as "good" or "bad," instead, just let them pass through your consciousness, unobstructed."

Freud, as far as I know, never sat zazen. I don't care. He had caught on to something that looks and sounds very much like the age-old practice of mindfulness that has been assiduously passed down through the ages and which we continue to study and utilize today. Thus, as far as I'm concerned, his work and his writings put him in the same lineage as our Zen forefathers: Master Rinzai, Master Dogen, Master Hakuin, and Master Sigmund.

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