Expert: Laurie McLauglin - 1/31/2009

Question
My wife had a dream that intrigues me and puzzles her.
She's not a very religious person, and what little she
knows of eastern religions she gets from educational tv, or
me. I know a small amount about buddhism, mostly about
taosim, and less about many of the other eastern religions.

So moving on the the relavent bit...she had a dream today
that she was on an airplane, and a man showed up (she's not
sure of her appearance), she was sitting beside her and
then all the activity on the plane stopped. His hands
glowed blue and he made a gesture of holding a ball to his
chest (but with no ball) with one hand on bottom, and one
hand on top, then he switched his hands position. She says
his hands were held directly over his midchest, and glowed
brighter and brighter as he went on.
As all this was going on he spoke a few words in a chant,
and she felt as though she were to try to remember them and
say them, and do his gesture. There were about 8 words, and
he repeated them a couple of times, then dropped his arms
and she got the impression she should try it.

Then our kids woke her up.

The words, or parts of them, as much as she remembers are:

Nasmaste(or namsa-something) om ma tri mu yi sa li du

Can you folks help us at all??

She is baffled by this, and we have no grounding in chinese
or tibbetan, or anything of the sort!

Thanks for anything, Vern and Sarah

Answer
Hello Sarah and Vern –

Thank you for letting me try to answer your question

First off, though I am supposed to be somewhat of an expert, I am not in any way an expert on dream interpretation.

That said, I can tell you from my experience thus far what Buddhist symbolism I see in your wife’s dream. From a Buddhist standpoint, it would appear to possibly be an auspicious dream and a good one.

The hand position, or mudra as it is called in Buddhism is a typical one. Usually it starts with the right hand is on top, and the left on the bottom and then we do a full circle with them so the right ends up on top again.  The right hand symbolizes our perfect wisdom and our left hand symbolizes emptiness. When we do certain practices, we do this mudra.

But there are also many Buddhas and Bodisattvas that are depicted with this mudra.  The one that comes to mind based on your wife’s dream is the Buddha of Compassion Avalokiteshavara.  When he is depicted with four arms, two of his arms are in this mudra and he holds a blue jewel. The jewel shows that his mind is never separated from primordial wisdom.  As I recall, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama also has this same mudra in the traditional drawing of him.
Our practice is full of mudras and full of buddhas however and I have not made of full study of any of them, so I am giving you this based on the knowledge I have learned thus far in my seven years of practice in the Tibetan Gelugpa Mahayana tradition.

It is possible that your wife had this dream because she has some imprint from a previous incarnation dealing with Buddhism in general or these particular figures specifically.

As far as the eight words go, Namaste means basically, “I bow to the Buddha nature inside of you”. I am still learning the various phrases and mantras but Nama or Namo as far as I know means “I bow to” or “I prostrate to” The syllable “om” is the way all mantras begin. When used at the beginning of a mantra, as far as I know, it means “with the Buddha’s body, speech and mind”.  As far as the rest of the syllables, I cannot tell you what mantra.

The Mantra for Avalokiteshavara is Om Mani Pad Me Hum.

Even though I cannot help you with all the information in the dream, according to Tibetan Buddhism it is a wonderfully auspicious and terrific dream to have.  If she is interested in pursuing it, I would have her get books about His Holiness the Dalai Lama or about Avalokiteshvara and see if anything in them resonates with her.