This Japanese sliding-door panel from about 1606 shows the allegedly immortal Liezi riding the winds. Although based on mythological stories, the flying figure also evokes a state of dreaming, since humans have recorded flying dreams across many civilizations. The Daoist text named after Liezi gives insight to a particular type of dream interpretation. In this case, night visions appear as a compliment to our waking lives, giving insights that provide peaceful solutions to an imbalance, as well as drawing attention to the ways wakeful consciousness gives us an illusory sensation of reality.
Two examples of dreams from the Daoist tradition show this. From the fourth-century CE _Liezi_ comes the story of a rich man who treats his servant horribly. Nevertheless, the servant is content– he gains his peace from his evening dreams which make him powerful and give him pleasure. The rich man, meanwhile, is unhappy – his dreams make him sick because in them he is always a mistreated servant. When the rich man finally decides to treat his servant well, the nightmares in his sleep vanish. Here, Daoism upholds balance and harmony as moral virtues.
The second example is from the _Zhuangzi_, another Daoist work that I wrote about last week (third century BCE). In it, the philosopher and sage Zhuangzi has a dream that he is a butterfly, and he is very happy to flutter all about. When he wakes up, he doesn’t know whether he is really a butterfly dreaming that he is a philosopher, or a philosopher dreaming he is a butterfly. Separating the waking and dreaming states is something we do, but is nevertheless arbitrary, seems to be the conclusion . . .
Source(s): _Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming _, edited by David Shulman, Guy G. Stroumsa, 1999, Oxford University Press, Chapter one, “Dreams of Interpretation in Early Chinese Historical and Philosophical Writings”, by Wai-yee Li. Image: Wikimedia. Metropolitan Museum of Art DT6104 accession number 1989.139.1a-d.
