Post by Neo on Nov 8, 2020 23:11:59 GMT -5
Consider someone who has fallen deeply asleep on his bed. While he is sleeping, someone in his household starts beating clothes or pounding rice. The dreamer hears the sound of the beating or the pounding and mistakes them for something else, perhaps the striking of a drum or the ringing of a bell. In his dream he wonders why the striking of the bell or drum sounds like clothes being beaten or like rice being pounded.
He wakes up suddenly, and he immediately recognizes the sound of the pounding. He tells the people in his household, `I just had a dream in which I mistook your pounding rice for the beating of a drum.'
"Ananda, how was it that this dreamer could have been conscious of sound or silence? How was it that his ears were unobstructed and functioning?
Although his body was asleep, the enlightened nature of his hearing did not sleep. Even when the body wastes away, its energy dissipates, and its life force moves on, how could that essential capacity to hear dissipate along with them? ~ Surangama sutra (Buddhist Text Translation Society p.188)
Source:
www.amazon.com/Surangama-Sutra-Translation-Commentary-Venerable/dp/0881399620/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1286281556&sr=8-1
He wakes up suddenly, and he immediately recognizes the sound of the pounding. He tells the people in his household, `I just had a dream in which I mistook your pounding rice for the beating of a drum.'
"Ananda, how was it that this dreamer could have been conscious of sound or silence? How was it that his ears were unobstructed and functioning?
Although his body was asleep, the enlightened nature of his hearing did not sleep. Even when the body wastes away, its energy dissipates, and its life force moves on, how could that essential capacity to hear dissipate along with them? ~ Surangama sutra (Buddhist Text Translation Society p.188)
Source:
www.amazon.com/Surangama-Sutra-Translation-Commentary-Venerable/dp/0881399620/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1286281556&sr=8-1