The ingenious film that is ‘Inception’ begins with the assumption that it is possible for multiple persons to enter someone’s dream, that can even be designed without that person knowing, thus digging out deep secrets from his sub-consciousness, or even implanting ideas which eventually shape one’s decisions. Thank goodness this doesn’t seem technologically viable at the moment… though it does seem possible in the near future? If so, may this movie be a cautionary tale for what may come to be! This is especially relevant in this information age, when the conceiving of the slightest ideas by the powerful can mushroom into world-changing actions.
In the story, dreams are elaborately crafted by architects who have an eye for detail and creativity – so as to trick the dreamer into believing the dream sequences to be real. This reminds me of the Buddha’s teaching in the Diamond Sutra, that all conditioned phenomena (including real life) is dream-like, due to their ethereal and transient nature. Even more confounding yet rich than the Matrix movies, the dream hackers are able to delve deeper into the subject’s mind by conjuring a dream… within a dream… within a dream! With intriguing cross-interaction over layers of dreams, even the hackers are at times unsure of whether they are still in a dream, which, and whose!
In the Matrix universe, it is possible to die when hooked to the Matrix, when one’s mind is weak enough to experience the illusion of simulated pain as real. In the dream world of Inception however, one cannot die in a dream – simply because it is just a dream. Yet, a dream is never just a dream – especially when it is perceived as reality in the moment. The hackers in the real world are synchronised to awaken together upon accomplishing their missions with a common wake-up call – which is heard as music fed through earphones, that penetrates all the layers of dreams. For a quick awakening, their sleeping bodies are jolted awake by dunking them into water! Almost Zennish – as in the sudden school! Buddhists use realisation of the Dharma as the spiritual wake-up call!
It is also proposed that an idea is the most resilient parasite. As they say, thoughts become words, which become actions, which become habits, which becomes character, which becomes destiny. The Buddha would concur, as he taught that the mind is the forerunner of all things. Ideas clung to can shape reality or sustain delusion. While the hackers admit that it is not easy to plant an idea in someone’s mind without the person realising, an idea that is firmly implanted can be difficult to let go off. Just recall your favourite delusion! Also discussed was planting the essence of an idea as a simple mantra-like phrase, so as to let it grow naturally, as one becomes one with it. What mantras or taglines do you live by? Good ones I hope!
In lucid dreaming, one is mindful enough to know one is dreaming, and is thus able to play with the ‘matter’ in the dream. The possibilities would be limited only by one’s imagination. The more sharp one’s mind is, the more intricately detailed and functional can one’s dream be. This would be control. However, for most dreamers, we are controlled by our delusional thinking instead – both when awake and asleep! The Avatamsaka Sutra says, ‘The mind is like a master painter experienced at painting all sorts of things.’ Inception proposes the same when it says the mind works so fast that it can simultaneously create and perceive scenes in dreams. Despite dreams, and especially dreams nested within dreams being inherently unstable, they can seem so solid due to the power of the mind.
Due to the reality of their imagination being limited, the dream architects use visual paradoxes (such as the Penrose Staircase) to create the illusion of vast or interconnected spaces. Nice touch! We too are already tricked by illusions when awake – what more when dreaming! It is interesting too, that we seldom remember the beginnings of our dreams; as we tend to end up smack in the middle of them. It’s a lot like life too – how we seem to be existentially stranded in the thick of Samsara once we realise we are. What we know for sure is that we do have layers of dream-like delusions to break through, before finally surfacing to reality. Inception offers powerful entertaining and enlightening imagery for this!
The plot suggests a time when those disillusioned with life pay to immerse themselves within dreams. However, if they are in too deep, they risk falling into the limbo of infinite unconstructed dream space. How vaguely reminiscent of the teaching that beings too attached to their deep meditation can be fruitlessly stuck in the plane of ‘neither perception nor non-perception’ for eons! Being an altered state of mind, dream time is substantially slower than that of real life too, which is similar to how meditators who enter samadhi (states of concentration) often lose track of time. ‘Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realise something was actually strange.’ Indeed! Insight via hindsight. The enlightened always readily smile when they look back to reflect on how deluded they once were!
While dream architects use their illusions to beguile others, they are also mindful not to lose their grip on reality, to be tricked by their own illusions. This is done by never projecting familiar or common places, which others might have mastery of. Mazes are created too, should their dreams be hacked into by others – so that they know exactly where to flee within them to lose their tails. The lead character however, was so attached to his deceased wife for having ’caused’ her suicide, that she continually appears to sabotage him in his dreams. This is reminiscent of how the wrathful demons of hell in Buddhist cosmology are really manifestations of one’s negative karma and guilt. Because he shared dreams with fellow hackers, his personal delusions threatened their safety too. As in real life, one’s delusion can spill over to harm others too, via the interplay of collective karma.
Severely ‘haunted’ by his wife, he decides that reality is no longer enough, as he creates an addictive dream to imprison his memories of her, in which he tries to create an alternate reality; or rather, alternate delusion. He had experimentally implanted the idea within her mind, that she might be in a dream while she was alive, which became a delusion so firmly lodged that she made a leap of blind faith to death… in order to ‘wake up’. Buddhism would say she is not gone forever though, as there is rebirth, but the husband clings on to the past version of her to relive their happier days and to make up for his mistakes. This he did, till he realised it didn’t bring him true happiness, as he knew it was an illusion, that continually punished him instead. Dreams then became not as worthy as reality, as he strived to wake up.
As in the Matrix trilogy, the audience is left existentially wondering if this very life is but a dream-like illusion. More perplexing than Zhuangzi pondering if he is actually the butterfly he dreamt, who is now dreaming himself to be a man, we ponder which of many dreams we might be in instead! The hackers each fashion a unique totem for themselves, which they always hold on to – an object, such as a chess piece, that is crafted and weighed in a manner that only one knows. With it, they would know if they are in someone else’s dream – as another hacker would be unable to create the exact totem. Methinks Inception has a perfect ending… the totem of the lead character, which is a top, spins on, but wobbles a little… and we’re unsure if it will fall. In a dream world, it could spin on indefinitely if one wills it to; in the real world, no top spins forever. An open-ended scene that summarises the state of our uncertain and unenlightened lives!
Related Article:
‘Inception’ of Some Ideas for Awakening
http://thedailyenlightenment.com/2010/12/inception-of-some-ideas-for-awakening
Hi Shi’An,
Thanks for your sharing and great indepth. Coincidentally I wrote down my own learnings from the movie.
– Subconscious mind has multi-layers. The deeper it goes, the more impact it has on us in our daily lives.
– Subconscious mind moulds our thoughts, actions, behaviours, beliefs, values and speech.
– To change our subconscious mind, we need strength, courage, faith, guts, wisdom and compassion to act on it.
– We have the power to decide we want to change / to create new consciousness.
– We can mould our subconscious mind to what we want to be.
– Unless we change our subconscious mind, we get stuck in the current pattern and we will stay on ‘dream’ state and continue living in the soulless state of mind – suffering.
– Realising the past is a result of our previous act but our future is dependent on the present act (with learning from the past).
Blessings
Shirly
Hi Shirly, good points you shared!
(I)
Wish I thought of them while writing the review!
Amituofo
This firm is fictional YogÄcÄra… and a good intro to ÄlayavijñÄna – the Eight Consciousnesses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Consciousnesses)…
These days not a lot of folks talk about or practice YogÄcÄra anymore… so this movie is a good retrieval… remember inception is about planting “seeds” and there has to be a place to store these seeds, a storehouse, and in the movie it is a safe, a vault…
Think about the cast:
– Mallorie “Mal” Cobb, the Shade – is she the Seventh consciousness (klistamanas)?
– Eames, the Forger – is he representing the other five senses?
– “Dom” Cobb, the Extractor – the Six consciousness?
– Saito, the Tourist – A tourist comes and goes and doesn’t come and go… in the early part of the movie the extractor failed his mission because of Shade and “capabilities” of this “tourist”…
– Ariadne, the Architect – remember the streets of Paris on the sky… creating roads at will, if we can also do that in our dreams then we are somewhere… this is a true practice too… “be aware” and “in control” even in dreams… remember the two mirrors on the pavements with multiple reflections of Dom, there is like infinite numbers of Dom… which is real? Yes, it is a dream but in real-life, with two mirrors, you still get infinite numbers of you… which is real? Not to mention, the mirror image is laterally inverted in the first place…
The architect deserves more coverage… Her namesake the mythical Ariadne, helped Theseus escape from the Minotaur’s labyrinth… yes, labyrinth, a maze… when Dom gave Ariadne a minute or two to come out with a complex maze, the most complex is a spiral one… a circle or a loop… because any point is a starting point and an ending point in a spiral and it repeats infinitely… just like our cyclic existence… put another way, there isn’t really a start or end point… in a circle and there is not way out, or there is?
Until Dom showed a circle that is broken into two semi circles… according to him fictionally, break the cycle and enter someone’s dream (or only to realize that this is a dream non-fictionally)…
In real-life, can we break the “cycles” and cease cyclic existence? The hints are with the Forger, the Extractor, the Shade, and the Tourist…
Is there a cycle to break or a dream to wake up in the first place? Remember the concluding part of the movie with the mini top still spinning “spirally” on the table even though Dom is “awaken” with his kids (according to Mal, the top should stop spinning after a while in the “real world”)… this offers a clue…
Intriguing take! Amituofo
(I)
Interesting indeed. Here’s my take… Seeds that are planted in the 8th Consciousness are not thoughts and cannot be thoughts. But rather, they are seeds of either ripened or unripened karma created by the seven Consciousnesses. Thought arises in the 6th Consciouness via the five Consciousnesses. And from the 6th Consciousness, the 7th Consciousness – the thinking faculty, creates the volition of good or evil that formulates the result (karma) in the 8th Consciousness. Strictly speaking, if an inception is possible, it probably can only go as deep as in the 6th Consciousness. To tap into the 8th Consciousness, one has to be as enlightened as a Buddha.
The MahÄyÄna-saṃgraha says, “All conscious objects are only constructs of consciousness because there are no external objects [that are unchanging and substantial]. They are like a dream.†So, whether DiCarprio’s top stops spinning or not, he is still “in†a dream until he fully wakes up (enlightened)!
There is also the ‘inception’ and conception of Pureland… a world created by the greatest architect – Amituofo (Amida Buddha), with his wondrous creativity, inexhaustible sea of merits, Compassion and Wisdom. A world where suffering, discrimination and such is foreign, that is associated with utmost purity and bliss, inhabited by enlightened beings who guide us to definite enlightenment in the most direct and smooth-sailing way. Would you accept the possibility of reaching Pureland? If so, all you need to do is just be single-mindedly mindful of Amida Buddha with faith and aspiration to reach there.
Dear Bodhisattvas,
More food for thoughts, inspirations, and practices:
~~~
The Great 6th Patriarch says, “The first five consciousnesses turned become the perfecting wisdom; the sixth consciousness turned becomes the wonderfully observing wisdom; the seventh consciousness turned becomes the wisdom of equal nature, the eighth consciousness turned becomes the wisdom of the great perfect mirror.â€
Although the sixth and seventh are turned in the cause and the first five and the eighth in the effect, it is merely the names which turn. Their substance does not turn.
~~~
The Buddha has four wisdoms:
– The wisdom of the great, perfect mirror is the eighth consciousness (alayavijnana) when it has been transformed from consciousness into wisdom. The eighth consciousness is also called the “store†consciousness,
because it stores up all the good and bad seeds you have planted in the past, all the good and bad things you have done in this and past lives. If you have planted good causes, you reap good effects; if you have planted bad causes, you reap bad effects. As the potential of all good and bad karma is stored in the eighth consciousness, it also comes to be called the “field of the eighthconsciousness,†because whatever you plant in it eventually sprouts. When you are unable to use it, it is merely consciousness, but
when you return to the root and go back to the source, the eighth consciousness is transmuted into the great perfect mirror wisdom, which in its essence is pure and undefiled.
– The wisdom of equal nature is the seventh consciousness when it has been transformed from consciousness into wisdom. Before you understand, it is the seventh consciousness, but once you are enlightened, it is the wisdom of equal nature. The
seventh consciousness is also called the “transmitting consciousness†because it acts as a transmitter between the sixth and eighth consciousness. It is called “the wisdom of equal nature†because the minds of all Buddhas and living beings are equal when the latter’s consciousness have been transformed into wisdom.
– The wonderful observing wisdom is the sixth consciousness when it has been transformed into wisdom. It is the wisdom of subtle observation. The sixth consciousness, what we think of as the ordinary mind, is the consciousness of discrimination; it discriminates good and evil, right and wrong, male and female. Such discrimination is not actually the work of intelligence, as it seems to be, but is merely a kind of consciousness. When you turn it into wisdom, it becomes wonderfully observing wisdom, which sees all realms without having to go through the process of discrimination. This wonderful observation is quite different from mere discriminative thoughts.
– Perfecting wisdom comes from the transformation of the first five consciousnesses (senses)–eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body–into wisdom.
The five consciousnesses and the eighth consciousness are transformed in the period of reaping effects and the sixth and seventh are transformed in the period of
planting causes. In transforming the consciousnesses into the four wisdoms, first turn the sixth and seventh in the period of planting causes, and next the eighth and five in the period of reaping effects.
On Pure land:
The Master said: “Great assembly, the worldly person’s own physical body is the city, and the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body are the gates. Outside there are five gates and inside there is the gate of the mind. The mind is the ‘ground’ and one’s nature is the ‘king’. The ‘king’ dwells on the mind ‘ground.’ When the nature is present, the king is present, but when the nature is absent, there is no king. When the nature is present, the body and mind remain, but when the nature is absent, the body and mind are destroyed. The Buddha is made within the self-nature. Do not seek outside the body. Confused, the self-nature is a living being: enlightened, it is a Buddha.â€
“If in every thought you see your own nature and always practice impartiality and straightforwardness, you will arrive in a finger-snap and see Amitabha.”
Check out The Sixth Patriarch’s Dharma Jewel Platform Sutra: http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/Buddhism/Platform%20Sutra.pdf
Question: Are the Mind-only Pure Land and the Self-nature Amitabha the same as or different from the Western Pure Land and Amitabha in the Pure Land?
Answer: It is because the Mind-only Pure Land exists that we are reborn in the Pure Land of the West. If the mind is not pure, it is impossible to achieve rebirth in the Pure Land. Even when those who have committed cardinal transgressions achieve rebirth through ten recitations, such rebirth is due to their reciting the Buddha’s name with a pure mind, thus eliciting a response from Amitabha Buddha. Ordinary people generally think that if the Pure Land is Mind-Only, then it does not exist. This is the understanding of demons and externalists. Such a deluded view, which appears correct but is in reality wrong, affects more than half of all people and causes practitioners to forfeit true benefits.
It is precisely because of the Self-Nature Amitabha that the practitioner must recite the name of Buddha Amitabha of the West seeking rebirth in the Pure Land – so as to achieve the Self-Nature Amitabha through gradual cultivation. If he merely grasps at the Self-Nature Amitabha but does not recite the name of Buddha Amitabha of the West, he cannot achieve immediate escape from birth and death – not even if he is truly awakened, much less if (like most people who ask this question) he is pretentious and just indulges in empty talk without engaging in practice.
Thus the answer to your question [are the mind-Only Pure Land and the Self-Nature Amitabha the same as or different from the Western Pure Land and Amitabha in the Pure Land?] is that they are one yet two before Buddhahood is attained, two yet one after Buddhahood is attained.
– Pure-Land Zen, Zen Pure-Land: Letters from Patriarch Yin Kuang: http://buddhanet.net/pdf_file/yin_kuang.pdf
Related Article:
Is Pureland Formless or Mind-Only?
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Amituofo/message/179
Amituofo
“I remember when, as many aeons ago as there are sands in the Ganges, a Buddha called Limitless Light appeared in the world. In that same aeon there were twelve successive Thus Come Ones; the last was called Light Surpassing the Sun and Moon. That Buddha taught me the Buddha-recitation Samadhi.
Suppose there were a person who always remembers someone else, but the someone else he remembers has entirely forgotten about him. If two such people were to meet, even if they were to see each other, they would not take notice. They would not recognize each other.
If two people remember each other until the memory of each is deep, then in life after life they will be together like a form and its shadow, and they will never be at odds.
Out of pity for living beings, the Thus Come Ones of the ten directions are mindful of them as a mother remembers her child. If the child runs away, of what use is the mother’s regard? But if the child remembers his mother in the same way that the mother remembers the child, then in life after life the mother and child will not be far apart.
If living beings remember the Buddha and are mindful of the Buddha, certainly they will see the Buddha now or in the future.
They will never be far from the Buddha, and their minds will awaken by themselves, without the aid of expedients.
A person who has been near incense will carry a fragrance on his person; it is the same in this case. It is called an adornment of fragrant light.
On the causal ground I used mindfulness of the Buddha to enter into patience with the non-production of dharmas. Now in this world I gather in all those who are mindful of the Buddha and bring them back to the Pure Land.
The Buddha asks about perfect penetration. I would selectnone other than gathering in the six organs through continuous pure mindfulness to obtain samadhi. This is the foremost method.”
Namo Mahasthamaprapta Bodhisattva!
PS: The Great Patriarch Yin Kuang is known to be the manifestation of the Mahasthamaprapta Bodhisattva…
thanks for this shi’an. there is so much now for me to read and reflect. wonderful. i am going to inception again with these notes.