Night 8 · Unfolding · Between dream and waking

Zhuangzi Dreams of a Butterfly

庄周梦蝶

昔者庄周梦为胡蝶，栩栩然胡蝶也，自喻适志与！不知周也。俄然觉，则蘧蘧然周也。不知周之梦为胡蝶与，胡蝶之梦为周与？

Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhou. But he didn't know if he was Zhou who had dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhou.

Zhuangzi, Chapter 2, “On the Equality of Things” (Qiwulun)

02 Tonight

You wake for a moment in the middle of the night. A dream is still on your eyelids: the office, or a road from childhood, or someone you never met by day. As waking returns, you do the familiar thing first. You try to sort it out. Which part was real. Which part should be forgotten.

03 How the ancients saw it

At the end of the chapter “On the Equality of Things,” Zhuangzi tells a very short story. He fell asleep and dreamed he was a butterfly, flying about, so free and pleased he hardly seemed to be Zhuang Zhou at all. Then he woke, and there he was again, solid Zhou, lying in his body.

Then he stops on a question. Was he Zhou who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming of being Zhou?

He does not answer. He does not even say which side is more trustworthy. The story ends in the not-knowing.

Later readers often turn this into a large problem about reality. In bed, it can stay smaller. In the first moments after waking at night, we usually want to pin identity down at once: I am the waking one; the dream was the false layer. Zhuangzi loosens that grip a little. For a while, he says, you flew happily and did not know anything about being “Zhou.” After waking, you need not rush to press that happiness flat with the daytime name.

This is not an invitation to confuse life with hallucination. The bills, the child's name, tomorrow's meeting will return, and they should. Zhuangzi is talking about a narrower interval: the few minutes when you have come out of a dream and the world has not quite closed yet. In those minutes you need not hurry to declare who you are, and you need not hurry to put the dream on trial.

Last week we said a dream can work like a packing list. Tonight add one line: on waking, you need not open the bag and count everything at once. Lie still first. Whether the butterfly is still here, whether Zhou is still here, can wait. The body already knows it is in bed. That is enough for a little while.

04 One line for the pillow

In the first minutes of waking, you need not settle who you are.

05 A quiet image to end on

A pale patch of moonlight on the window paper. An unseen wing crosses the light and leaves no shadow. The bed is still the same bed.

Words of the night