Buddhist tradition is replete with stories of prophetic dreams, beginning with Buddha’s prophetic dreams before waking up.
One was that he walked back and forth, doing walking meditation on a huge mountain of excrement, and yet was not contaminated by the excrement. This meant that when he became a Buddha, he received many gifts, many offerings, but they did not pollute his mind. He would use them wisely, seeing the danger in clinging to them and freeing himself from that danger.
Such a dream is useful. It’s about what needs to be done. After all, the mind is basically a doer. We are constantly manufacturing the present moment, putting things together, but then the present moment passes, so we have to put together another present moment, and then another. We do this all the time and need guidance.
Sometimes the mind guides itself through visions or dreams, and sometimes other beings can communicate. But it doesn’t matter where these visions and dreams come from. The bottom line is, what are they telling you? Is it consistent with the dhamma? This is one of the reasons why it is good to study the dhamma to understand what is really in line with the dhamma and what is not.
The dreams you have about past lives or about various facts about nature, the world: If they have no practical guidance – in other words, they have nothing to do with what you decide to do or not do – you can simply put them aside. But first you can ask yourself, “What kind of dhamma lesson is there?”
The main lesson of visions about the past is how changeable you are, how changeable you were. As the Buddha said, the mind is more diverse than the animal world. Every animal has longed to become such an animal, so these are all possibilities of the mind—and your mind. There are many, many things that you have been and can be.
So you can use this thought to develop your sense samvega. If you see yourself in a very bad situation in a past life, you may say to yourself, “Yeah, I’ve been there.” It teaches you not to look down on poor people now. If you see yourself as rich, powerful, “Yes, you were there.” This teaches you not to be jealous of people who are stronger than you are now. It also raises the question: have you used your power well? If the vision or dream doesn’t tell you, just let it go.
One of my favorite dreams in the forest lore is one Ajaan Suwat‘s. He was in a coma after his accident. One night, in a coma, she found herself sitting next to his body on the bed. He looked at the monitors, which showed his vital signs—blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen level. He said the numbers didn’t look very good. So he thought, “Let’s just change these numbers.” And he did.
After coming out of the coma, he mentioned this to one of the doctors. The doctor said, “Oh, that explains it. His numbers were really bad until one night they suddenly got really good.” If you can focus on it, then do it.
Otherwise, if something comes in and suggests something to be done, ask yourself, “Would this be consistent with the dhamma?” If it seems to be in line with the dhamma, then test it. See what the results are.
Ajaan Munwhen he was in the forest he was one of those meditators who had many, many visions. So he had to be very careful to test his visions in this way. If you believe everything you dream, believe everything you see in a vision, you will go crazy.
One example was that he had visions of devas coming to him to tell him how to do walking meditation. It didn’t matter if they were really devas. What mattered was how useful their lessons were. “When you’re doing walking meditation,” they said, “don’t look around. Focus your gaze along the path. Don’t swing your arms. Don’t look at the beauty of nature around you. You have work in your mind. So focus your mind with as little external input as possible, just enough to be aware that you’re not going off the path.”
Tried the advice and found it worked. He was able to focus his mind more while walking. This is the kind of thing you can test: something that deals with what you do or can do.
As I said, the mind is an active mind and needs guidance. The problem is that you give yourself guidance in many different ways and with different voices. We are talking about the committee of the mind; Ajaan Lee it speaks of all the different consciousnesses in your body: your consciousness, the consciousness of worms and germs, and the various spirits in or around your body. It’s easy to get them mixed up. They slip into the mind either consciously or barely subconsciously. They provide answers to the question the mind keeps repeating, “What to do next? What to do next?” As the mind becomes more still, the layers of conversation fall away. You find that question is like an ostinato, a recurring theme that keeps going: “What’s next? What’s next?”
The sounds that suggest responses to his ostinato are the ones you want to train. When you decide to do something good, you have to align all the other voices with it. Like when you sit and meditate: There’s a voice that says, “Okay, focus on your breath.” Another series of voices says, “No, I’d rather do this. I’d rather do that.” You have to ask them, “Where will this lead?”
As the Buddha said, learning to look not at what you want to do, but at the long-term consequences of what you can do, is a sign of your wisdom. If you see that there is something you would like to do but it would have a bad result, you can learn how to talk yourself out of doing it.
Notice it. You don’t just force yourself not to do it. You trick yourself into not wanting to do it. At the same time, there are things you don’t like to do, but in the long run they will bring good results. So you have to learn how to make yourself want to do them. You make yourself anxious, you use whatever psychology you can think of to get yourself to do what you should do and not do what you shouldn’t.
This requires a lot of internal conversation. That’s why meditation isn’t simply about being with whatever comes up or trying to drown out all the voices in your mind. Sometimes you have to reason with unreasonable sounds – because every desire has its own reason.
Sometimes you have to reason with unreasonable sounds – because every desire has its own reason.
I read one like this years ago Very brief introductions from Oxford Press on Early Greek Philosophy. The author pointed out that one of the big questions at the time was, “Are your passions and your reasons completely separate from each other, or do you have a reason for all your passions?” The Platonists were on one side of the question, the Stoics on the other. I think the Buddha would stand by: “Your passions have reasons.” They often know that their reasons are not very good, so they try to hide them.
Therefore, it seems that some of his passions are just brute force, like delusions. They have their reasons, it’s just that they try to hide them under a scary veneer. If you want to find out these reasons, then try to make the mind as quiet as possible so that you can recognize and understand the reasons for these impulses whispering in your mind. If you see what they are, you can deal with them.
That’s why when the Buddha talks about understanding what’s going on in your mind, it’s not just about seeing the downsides of your untrained behavior. You also want to see the allure: What about actually being attractive, alluring? What captures your imagination about these things? If you see what it is, you can deal with it.
This requires you to go through several layers of conversation, because the mind too often doesn’t like to admit why it likes certain things: the thrill of desire, the thrill of anger.
Since these things are dirt, the reasons end up being silly. But as we have seen throughout human history, people can dress up their ignorance, dress up their stupidity to appear sophisticated, to appear reasonable.
As we have seen throughout human history, people can dress up their ignorance, dress up their stupidity to appear sophisticated, reasonable.
This is one of the reasons why the Buddha also sets standards. Take the three concepts as a whole. When you see that things are constant, stressful, not happening on their own, those facts alone don’t really tell you what to do. If something is not permanent, is it worth going for it? Sometimes, even in very clumsy cases, you can convince yourself that it will—especially if you tell yourself that it’s as much fun as you’re going to get.
But there are the standards of the four noble truths, and one of them is the third noble truth that the cessation of suffering is possible. And it’s not just the empty or boring absence of suffering. Think of when the Buddha came to teach the five brothers: Before he taught them the four noble truths, he said, “Look, I will teach you to the immortals.” It is a happiness that is completely conditioned and without any limitations. So that opportunity is there in the background, the yardstick against which other things can be measured.
If this is possible, many things that would otherwise be worth the effort, even if they are constant and permanent, suddenly don’t seem so worthwhile. This is why meditation is not simply about noting what comes and goes. There will be back-and-forth discussions, back-and-forth arguments, value judgments about what should be done, what is worth doing, and what is not.
There will be some conscious reasoning in the conversation, but there will also be some subconscious ones. Some of the subliminal messages will be in words; in some pictures. In order to truly control your mind, you must learn to detect and master these things.
For the basic pattern, let’s think of the four noble truths. How do these things fit in with the four noble truths? Take the four noble truths as your standard.
Think of the Buddha’s teachings about proper attention. All the questions he said are not worth answering or even asking about the future, the past, the existence or non-existence of the present moment: Put those questions aside.
The standards of proper attention to really pay attention to are: What is the suffering now? What causes it? And what can be done to stop it? These are questions worth asking and answering. They are your standard.
If there is a conflict in your mind about what to do, bring out the standard. Let him pass judgement. If any part of the mind rebels against it, it must realize that it is wrong. Although you may love him very much and want to be by his side, you must realize that in order to be truly happy, you must learn to see through him. That’s lying to you.
Anything inconsistent with the Four Noble Truths is at best a dishonest half-truth, and usually an outright lie. Think in these terms and then decide your actions accordingly.
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This piece was taken from it and adapted a dhamma talk It was delivered on March 12, 2026.
