Just as a person who doesn’t wake from a dream doesn’t realize he’s dreaming, a person who hasn’t opened the Eye finds it difficult to understand that he is blind.
Chuang-tzu once said that it takes a great awakening to realize that you have been having a big dream.
This world of delusion is one big dream. And even a Bodhisattva who has achieved Universal Enlightenment should realize that he is still dreaming. Only when all remaining elements of ignorance in the Alayavijnana are swept away does one awaken from this dream.
Then, and only then, do you see your true Buddha nature.
You are not an awakened person, you are not a free-flowing person before this Supreme Enlightenment. The freedom that people talk about is freedom in a dream; but only a fully enlightened person is truly free. How can you call freedom in a dream true freedom? There is a great difference between dream and reality. An enlightened being, a Buddha, a free being is one who has fully awakened, one who has experienced No Mind. one who has seen the great brilliance. Only such a being is truly free-flowing.
And once a person becomes that free-flowing being, he has no need for the Buddha, no need for the predecessors, no need for the Tripitaka. Terms like “Buddha” and “predecessors” are merely medicine to help you wake from your dream.
Our disease is this dreaming, and once we are cured we have no need for medicine. Medicine is for the ill, not for the cured.
“You have your own way to go, so why do you follow others?” This one sentence illustrates the true freedom of Buddhism.
Tong Songchol (1912~1993), one of the great Zen masters in the last century was also called the Living Buddha of Korea.