Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Buddhist Dream Experience

The Role of Interpretation, Ritual, and Gender

  • Chapter
Dreams

Abstract

Buddhist dream experience is most readily accessed through the rich and varied sacred biographies of India and Tibet. Dreams play a prominent role in these texts: They provide dramatic shifts in the action, underscore the inevitability of subsequent events, and precipitate significant changes in the spiritual and temporal life of the dreamer.1 Actually, dreaming is an important element for all religions that emphasize biography as a way of defining the spiritual path, such as Confucianism, Islam, Christianity, and so on.2

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

Primary Sources

  • Abhiniṣramaṇasūtra. Trans. by Samuel Beal from the Chinese version as The Romantic Legend of śākya Buddha (1875. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1985).

    Google Scholar 

  • Aris, Anthony, ed. Tibetan Medical Paintings: Illustrations to the Blue Beryl Treatise of Sangye Gyamtso (1653–1705), 2 vols. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992).

    Google Scholar 

  • Aśvaghoṣa. Buddhacarita, ed. and trans. E. H. Johnston (1936. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1984).

    Google Scholar 

  • Buston. The History of Buddhism in India and Tibet, trans. E. Obermiller (1932. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1986).

    Google Scholar 

  • Chāndogya Upaniṣad, in One Hundred and Twelve Upaniṣads and Their Philosophy, ed. A. N. Bhattacharya. Parimal Sanskrit Series, no. 26 (Delhi: Parmial Publications, 1987).

    Google Scholar 

  • Dowman, Keith. Sky Dancer: The Secret Life of the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984).

    Google Scholar 

  • Evans-Wentz, W.Y., ed. The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954, 1968).

    Google Scholar 

  • The Gilgit Manuscript of the Saṅghabhedvastu, Being the 17th and Last Section of the Vinaya of the Mūlasarvāstivādin, ed. Raniero Gnoli (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio, ed Estremo Oriente, 1977).

    Google Scholar 

  • rGyud bŹi. A reproduction of a set of prints from the eighteenth-century Zun-cu ze blocks, from the collections of Dr. Raghu Vira, by O-rgyan Namgyal (Leh: S.W. Tashigangpa, 1975).

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacobi, Hermann, trans. Jaina Sutras, 2 vols. (1884, 1895. New York: Dover Publications, 1968).

    Google Scholar 

  • ‘Jam mgon chos kyi rgyal po tsong kha pa chen po’i rnam thar thub ba stan mdses po’i rgyan gi cag ngo mtshar nor lu’i ‘phreng ba shes sbya ba bshugs so (Sarnath, Varanasi: Mongolian Lama Guru Deva, 1967).

    Google Scholar 

  • Lalitavistara, ed. P. L. Vaidya (Darbhanga: Mithila Institute, 1958).

    Google Scholar 

  • Lalitavistara, translated as The Voice of the Buddha: The Beauty of Compassion by Gwendolyn Bays (Oakland: Dharma Press, 1983).

    Google Scholar 

  • Le Mahāvastu, ed. É. Senart (Paris: A L’imprimerie Nationale, 1890).

    Google Scholar 

  • Le Mahāvastu, translated as Mahāvastu by J. J. Jones, 3 vols. (London: Pali Text Society, 1949–1956).

    Google Scholar 

  • Mūlasarvāstivādavinayavastu, ed. S. Bagchi (Darbhanga: Mithila Institute of Post-Graduate Studies and Research in Sanskrit Learning, 1967).

    Google Scholar 

  • Nidāna-Kathā, in The Jātaka Together with its Commentary, ed.V. Fausböll (London: Trübner and Co., 1877).

    Google Scholar 

  • Nidāna-Kathā, translated as Buddhist Birth Stories by T.W. Rhys Davids (1880. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1925).

    Google Scholar 

  • Padma bka’ thang shel brag ma (Leh, India: 1968).

    Google Scholar 

  • Sāmavidhāna Brāhmana, ed. A. C. Burnell (London: Trübner and Co., 1873).

    Google Scholar 

  • Sangye Gyatso. Bai ḍūr Sṅon po, ed. T.Y. Tashigangpa (Leh, India: 1973).

    Google Scholar 

  • Somadeva Bhaṭṭa. Kathāsaritsāgara, ed. Pt. Jagadīśa Lāl Śāstrī (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1960), book 12, chapter 5. Trans. C. H. Tawney as The Ocean of Story (London: Chas.J. Sawyer, Ltd., 1924).

    Google Scholar 

  • Strong, John S. The Legend of King Asoka: A Study and Translation of the Aśokāvadāna (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983, 1989).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Tanjur. Rgyud ‘grel: The Corpus of Indian Commentaries on Vajrayana Buddhist Literature Translated into Tibetan (Delhi: Delhi Karmapae Chodhey, Gyalwae Sungrab Partun Khang, 1982–1985).

    Google Scholar 

  • Thurman, Robert A. F. The Life and Teachings of Tsong Khapa (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1982).

    Google Scholar 

Secondary Sources

  • Babu, D. Sridhara. “Reflections on Andra Buddhist Sculptures and Buddha Biography,” in Buddhist Iconography (Delhi:Tibet House, 1989), pp. 97–101.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, Lynn. Dangerous Wives and Sacred Sisters: Social and Symbolic Roles of High-Caste Women in Nepal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).

    Google Scholar 

  • Bulkeley, Kelly. The Wilderness of Dreams (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, June. Traveller in Space: In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism (New York: George Braziller, 1996).

    Google Scholar 

  • Courtright, Paul B. Ganesa: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

    Google Scholar 

  • Crooke, William. The Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, second. ed. (1896. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968).

    Google Scholar 

  • Diemberger, Hildegard. “Lhakama (lha-bka’-ma) and Khandroma (mkha’-’gro-ma): The Sacred Ladies of Beyul Khenbalung (sbas-yul mKan-pa-lung),” in Ernst Steinkellner, ed. Tibetan History and Language: Studies Dedicated to Uray Géza on his Seventieth Birthday (Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien, Universität Wien, 1991).

    Google Scholar 

  • Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951, 1973).

    Google Scholar 

  • Eichenbaum, Patricia D. The Development of a Narrative Cycle Based on the Life of the Buddha in India, Central Asia, and the Far East: Literary and Pictorial Evidence (Ann Arbor: University Microfilm International, 1980).

    Google Scholar 

  • Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, trans. Willard R. Trask (1951. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972).

    Google Scholar 

  • Gold, Ann. “Gender and Illusion in a RajasthaniYogic Tradition,” in Gender, Genre and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), pp. 102–135.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gross, Rita. “Methodological Remarks on the Study ofWomen in Religions: Review, Criticism and Redefinition,” in J. Plaskow and J. N. Romero, eds., Women and Religion (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1974).

    Google Scholar 

  • von Grunebaum, G. E., and Caillois, Robert, eds. The Dream and Human Societies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966).

    Google Scholar 

  • Gupta, S. K. The Elephant in Indian Art and Mythology (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1983).

    Google Scholar 

  • Gyatso, Janet “Down with the Demoness,” in Janice D. Willis, Feminine Ground: Essays on Women and Tibet (Ithacan NY: Snow Lion, 1989), pp. 35–51.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holst-Warhoff, Gail. “Mourning and Death Rituals,” in Young, EOW, vol. II, pp. 682–685.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huntington, John C., “Pilgrimage as Image:The Cult of the Aṣṭamahāprātihārya, Part I,” in Orientations vol. 18, no. 4 (April 1987): 55–63.

    Google Scholar 

  • Irigaray, Luce. Sexes and Genealogies, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).

    Google Scholar 

  • —. “The Three Genres,” in The Irigaray Reader, ed. Margaret Whitford (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1991), pp. 140–153.

    Google Scholar 

  • Irwin, Lee. The Dream Seekers: Native American Visionary Traditions of the Great Plains (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994).

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, Ernest. On the Nightmare (New York: Liveright Publishing Corp., 1951, 1971).

    Google Scholar 

  • Kagan, Richard L. Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, 1995).

    Google Scholar 

  • Karetzky, Patricia Eichenbaum. The Life of the Buddha: Ancient Scriptural and Pictorial Traditions (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1992).

    Google Scholar 

  • Katz, Nathan. “Anima and mKha’-’gro-ma: A Critical Comparative Study of Jung and Tibetan Buddhism,” Tibet Journal vol. 2, no. 3 (1977): 13–43.

    Google Scholar 

  • Khandalavala, Karl. “Heralds in Stone: Early Buddhist Iconography in the Asokan Pillars and Related Problems,” in Buddhist Iconography (Delhi: Tibet House, 1989), pp. 19–41.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lanman, Charles Rockwell. A Sanskrit Reader (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1884).

    Google Scholar 

  • Lincoln, Jackson Steward. The Dream in Primitive Cultures (1935. New York: Johnson reprint corporation, 1970).

    Google Scholar 

  • Lorzen, David N., The Kāpālikas and Kālāmukhas:Two Lost Saivite Sects, second ed. (1972. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991).

    Google Scholar 

  • Lüders, H., ed. Bhārhut Inscriptions, rev. by E. Waldschmidt and M. A. Mehendale (Ootacamund: Govenment Epigraphist for India, 1963).

    Google Scholar 

  • Macdonell, Arthur A. A History of Sanskrit Literature (1899. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1971).

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, Patricia Cox. Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

    Google Scholar 

  • Nebesky-Wojkowitz, René de. Oracles and Demons of Tibet: The Cult and Iconography of the Tibetan Protective Deities (1956. Graz, Austria: Akademische Druckü Verlagsanstalt, 1975).

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Flaherty, Wendy Doniger, The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, 1980).

    Google Scholar 

  • —. Women, Androgynes and Other Mythical Beasts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

    Google Scholar 

  • Pommaret, Françoise. “Returning from Hell,” in Donald S. Lopez, Jr., ed., Religions of Tibet in Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 499–510.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rahula, Telwatte. A Critical Study of the Mahāvastu (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1978).

    Google Scholar 

  • Rank, Otto. “The Myth of the Birth of the Hero,” reprinted in Robert A. Segal, In Quest of the Hero (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 3–86.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rockhill, W.W. The Life of the Buddha (Varanasi: Orientalia Indica, 1972).

    Google Scholar 

  • Rupprecht, Carol Schreier. “Sex, Gender and Dreams: From Polarity to Plurality” in Kelly Bulkeley, ed., Among All These Dreamers: Essays on Dreaming and Modern Society (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1996).

    Google Scholar 

  • —. “Women’s Dreams: Mind and Body,” in Estella Lauter and Carol Schreier Rupprecht, eds., Feminist Archetypal Theory: Interdisciplinary Re-Visions ofjungian Thought (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985).

    Google Scholar 

  • Sanford, James H. “The Abominable Tachikawa Skull Ritual,” Monumenta Nipponica vol. 46, no. 1 (spring, 1991): 1–20.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schumann, H. W. The Historical Buddha, trans. M. O’C. Walshe (1982. London: Penguin Group, 1989).

    Google Scholar 

  • Schlingloff, Dieter. Studies in the Ajanta Painting: Identifications and Interpretations (Delhi: Ajanta Publications [India]: 1987).

    Google Scholar 

  • Sharma, Jagdish. “Symbolism in the Jinist Dream-World,” in Sharma, Jagdish and Siegel, Lee, Dream-Symbolism in The Śrāmaṇṇic Tradition: Two Psychoanalytical Studies in Jinist and Buddhist Dream Legends (Calcutta: Firma KLM Private Limited, 1980).

    Google Scholar 

  • Shastri, Biswanarayan. “The Philosophical Concepts and the Buddhist Pantheon,” in Buddhist Iconography, pp. 52–59.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shulman, David, and Strouman, Guy G., eds. Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

    Google Scholar 

  • Smithjonathan Z., “Sleep,” in The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 13. Mircea Eliade, ed. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987), pp. 361–364.

    Google Scholar 

  • Storm, Mary. “Death,” in Young, EOW, vol. I, pp. 243–244.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tedlock, Barbara, ed. Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

    Google Scholar 

  • Trachtenberg, Joshua. Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion (1939. New York: Atheneum, n.d.).

    Google Scholar 

  • Urubshurow, Victoria. “Dakinis,” in Young, EOW, vol. I, pp. 231–232.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, Liz. Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

    Google Scholar 

  • Winternitz, Maurice. A History of Indian Literature, 3 vols. (1927. Delhi: Oriental books reprint corporation, 1977).

    Google Scholar 

  • Young, Serinity. An Anthology of Sacred Texts By and About Women (New York: Crossroad, 1993).

    Google Scholar 

  • —. Dreaming in the Lotus: Buddhist Dream Narrative, Imagery and Practice (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1999).

    Google Scholar 

  • —. “Dreams,” in The Encyclopedia of Women and World Religion, Serinity Young, ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1998), vol. I, pp. 271–273.

    Google Scholar 

  • —. “Tantra,” EOW, vol. II, pp. 956–959.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zimmer, Heinrich. Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, ed. Joseph Campbell (1946. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1962).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Serinity Young
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Kelly Bulkeley

Copyright information

© 2001 Kelly Bulkeley

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Young, S. (2001). Buddhist Dream Experience. In: Bulkeley, K. (eds) Dreams. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-08545-0_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation