Life is but a dream
According to the highest teachings of Zen which still flow down from the Lankavatara Sutra there is no external world apart from absolute Mind itself, although we would like to believe otherwise. This same Mind, when it fully recognizes itself (samadhi) realizes, at the same time, the triple world of existence is no more than a configuration of itself being in this regard an illusion. In other words, there is really nothing other than Mind; all else is empty. Just like gold which can be made into countless shapes there is nothing real except goldthe shapes are illusory.
Avidya (ignorance) and delusion rule us when we mistake what is unreal for the real, tenaciously clinging to the unreal because we imagine it to be real. This leads to samsara which we are bound to as long as we chase after and desire the unreal. The Lankavatara Sutra warns us that the world we elect to cling to is "the same as a dream" a subject the Buddha in the Lankavatara Sutra seems to never get tired of teaching.
Mahamati, it is like a man, who, dreaming in his sleep of a country variously filled with women, men, elephants, horses, cars, pedestrians, villages, towns, hamlets, cows, buffalos, mansions, woods, mountains, rivers, and lakes enters into its inner appartments and is awakened. While awakened thus, he recollects the city and its inner apartments. What do you think, Mahamati? Is this person to be regarded as wise, who is recollecting the various unrealities he has seen in his dream?
Said Mahamati: Indeed, he is not, Blessed One.
The Zen that comes to us today doesn't chime with the older, more advanced Zen that is found in the Lankavatara Sutra. Few modern teacher teach from the Lankavatara Sutra emphasizing that we stop clinging to the triple world which is dream-like. Instead, modern Zen seems to teach its flock how to cope with the modern world. It seems less like a dream in that respect w! hile wha t is real is all but ignored. One gets the impression from modern Zen that we can make the dream a better, happier dream! There is even the belief thatthe dream state and the waking state are equally ultimate reality (Dogen)!
Such a position, however, is going in the wrong direction. It isnt Buddhism. It offers to the serious student no refuge except a false one. Awakening to Mind (buddha) is the only true refuge.
"The world is the same as a dream, and so are the multiplicities of things in it; [the wise] see property, touch, death, a world-teacher, and work as of the same nature" (Lankavatarasutra).
