Chapter 1 Dream Narratives in Indian Buddhism (Part 4)

By Quyen Ngo

Dreams and Karma

The relationship between dream and karma can be illustrated by several examples. In Kuṇāla Jātaka, when queen consort Pañcapāpā sees in a dream an indication that she is to become the chief queen consort of two kings. Despite efforts of the first king’s courts to dispose of her, the vision became true. In another story, king Aśoka has a son named Kunāla (dream no. 13 in the Appendix), who has beautiful eyes. He was predicted by a Buddhist monk that his eyes will soon be destroyed; hence thereon he devotes himself to the Buddhist teaching. One day Aśoka dreams of vultures trying to pluck out KunŒla’s eyes and that Aśoka’s teeth were falling out. He consults the soothsayers who interpret the dream to signify either the destruction of his son’s eyes or the death of his son. Despite prayers for his son following the bad dream, the prophetic vision became true. Kunāla’s eyes were plucked out by order of Aśoka’s chief Queen, who fell in love with Kunāla but was rejected by him.1

Buddhaghosa puts the cause of prophetic dream to come from one’s merit or demerit, and cites Queen Mayā’s dreams, the Bodhisattva’s five great dreams, and King of Kosala’s sixteen dreams as examples.2 Furthermore, all these three types of dreams are experienced by previous Buddhas’ mothers3 , previous Bodhisattvas4 and previous king5 .

Dreams and spiritual accomplishment

Dreams can reveal spiritual accomplishments. For example, in the Supina Sutta the Bodhisattva’s dreams portend to his enlightenment, realising the Noble Eightfold Path, he will have many disciples from various castes, and that he will use requisites without attachment. Similarly, the Lalitavistara included the following dreams among the ‘signs of great merit and these dreams mark the essence of his glory’6 :

He stirs up the water of the four great oceans with his hands and feet;
The whole world becomes his well-adorned bed,
with Meru, best of mountains, a pillow for his head…
…Four black and white animals lick his feet;
birds of four colors become a single color.
Climbing a mountain of the most repulsive filth,
he walks there without being soiled…7

According to the Lalitavistara, the above dreams are not unique to Gotama but they occur to all ‘Holy men of the past who have accumulated many virtuous works’ (Ibid). As Young points out, the ability to interpret dreams, both one’s own and those of others, reveal the spiritual accomplishments of the saints. The ‘saints are portrayed as masters of dreams because they are capable of interpreting their own as well as other people’s dreams’(1999: 95). In the Mahāsupina-Jātaka, the Buddha tells the King of Kosala, ‘there is none, other save me, who can tell what your dreams signify or what will come of them’8 .

In all but one accounts of the Buddha’s former lives he correctly interprets his own dreams and those of others9 . However, in the Divyāvadāna - which tells of the very beginning of the Bodhisattva path - when the Buddha was the youth Sumati. The latter had ten dreams. Though well versed in the Veda, he could not interpret them. So he sought advice from a powerful ascetic, who was endowed with five supernatural powers. However, even he could not interpret Sumati’s dreams and advised Sumati to seek advice from the Buddha Dīpaṃkara10 .