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The dream that was a wake-up call

29/6/2021

 
​When I became an anagārika I had taken a sabbatical from my research PhD in psychology at Southampton University to spend a year at Chithurst monastery. All my work colleagues thought I was crazy, my career was really taking off. I had spent seven years training first as a psychologist and then added on physiotherapy with the aim of doing research in the area of neurological rehabilitation. 
Black silhouette of the Rod of Asclepius
Yet, all along my personal agenda, as a practising Buddhist, was to develop my contemplation of body and mind. I was not really sure what to expect from monastic life but for the first few weeks it was just good to give my brain a rest and do the simple work of cooking and driving and so on. ​​

Then one night, out of the blue, I had an extremely lucid dream which was to change the course of my life. I dreamt that I was rushing around the wards at the hospital, as I had been for so many years – but instead of patients in the beds there were just organs. In one bed a liver, in another lungs, in another a pile of intestines. I had no idea what to do. The situation seemed completely hopeless.

I just kept running around saying to myself,

“What am I going to do, what am I going to do?”

When I woke up I sat up in bed and my first thought was,

“Oh no, all that work!”

I realised that my hospital career was at an end, and here I am still in a monastery twenty-five years later with no thoughts of going back. Looking back I can think that perhaps the taste of freedom, of letting go, I had experienced a few years before after a trip to the morgue had gone deeper than I had thought.
​
Silhouette of a Dhamma Wheel

​I offer this for your reflection


Ajahn Kalyāno
http://www.openthesky.co.uk
​

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  • Other languages
    • บทความภาษาไทย
    • Norsk
    • Italian (Link)