Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva

Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva: Verse 24

All forms of suffering are like dreaming that your child has died.

Taking confusion as real wears you out.

When you run into misfortune,

Look at it as confusion — this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

Did you ever have a terrible dream, and upon wakening, you fear it’s real. That’s certainly happened to me. I have to wait for a moment, until I remember I was sleeping and the terrible thing that happened wasn’t real.

I recently had a dream of climbing high mountains and looking down to see wild animals — looking like dinosaurs with long slimy tails, chasing after me, and almost upon me. In another dream a terrifying man, unkept, filthy, grabbed me on the street, lifting me up, I was screaming and no one would help. I still sometimes wonder, did that really happen?

Nothing was quite as terrible as the dream where my young son died, the despair was so intense it had to be real. It was hours before I was sure it didn’t happen, all was peaceful in the house, my heart slowed down and panic subsided.

Can we really face the horrible scenes of the future as if they’re dreams? The Great Salt Lake is almost dry, and it hasn’t rained in years. I can barely remember the rains that came in late November; for months we were blessed with torrential floods followed by gentle drops into the spring.

Where are they now? The deepest glaciers are predicted to melt, the oceans will rise and no one is prepared. Is this what we’re supposed to see as a dream? The confusion we’ll feel as things fall apart — weren’t we warned? Misfortune awaits us, will we sit in confusion instead of fear, will we be able to reconstruct a world that falls apart? Is this the practice of the wise bodhisattva?

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