Last night I had such a vivid dream. I was hiking in the mountains with my pack on my back. The trail was so beautiful, passing under cherry blossoms through coniferous groves winding up onto a ridge. Birds were singing in the high branches and golden shafts of sunlight slanted between the tree trunks. The path started to open up so I could see the massive peaks ahead and above as I strode along. A knife-like ridge climbed to the nearest viewpoint, and beyond white snowfields sloped up towards pure gleaming cornices and the final approach to the summit. As I set out onto the ridge my heart resounded with joy. Everything around me seemed to vibrate in harmony as if I and the mountain were one composite entity. The rise to the summit felt inevitable.
Without any warning the ground fell away beneath my feet. Light turned to dark.
They say that if you fall in a dream you never know when hit the ground or you will die. I don't remember falling but there I was on my back staring at the sky, my body a sea of pain. Far above me the summit shone golden in the last rays of the sun. Then the clouds closed in, the rain began to fall and a chill wind blew hard through the trees. My vision blurred, with darkness threatening around the edges. Pain lanced through my skull. My ribs ached with every breath. But I was alive. The rainfall increased, the temperature dropping rapidly, thunder rumbling across the high peaks.
Somehow I staggered down off the mountain that day. The forest around me became a harsh, foreign place. The trees and bushes inhabited a land in which I had no place. It turned out that the damage was limited to three broken ribs, a mild concussion, a sprained ankle and countless bruises. Slowly, slowly I started to heal.
When I awake the dream seared its images in brilliant colour across my memory. Had it really happened? What did it mean? How is the world composed of two such sharply contrasting realities at one and the same time? The dream was like the circular Tai Chi symbol: within the brightness of light a promise of darkness; within the deepest darkness a promise of light. In the after images of the dream I felt a harrowing of my soul. My thoughts returned again and again to the glimpses of paradise - lost in an instant. In remembering the pain of loss, the loss of what I never really gained, I suffered. The mind is a strange place. The past is gone forever and the future an illusion, yet we suffer from the loss of the former and the fear of the latter. We cling to the happy memories, but hold nothing but cherished dust. What is that suffering, but a substantial tuition fee that we pay unwillingly for our own development?
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