Awake, I Know Not the Body Is a Guest; in Dream, I Know All Is Void

At night I had a very sci-fi dream: after a great downpour, floods raged everywhere on earth, and everyone was busy fighting the disaster; I worked especially hard.

Suddenly, with a whoosh, I was sucked by an external force into outer space, utterly terrifying. There I went hurtling through the clouds and mist in a rapid free fall, heaven and earth a vast blur.

Falling on and on, I at last fell back onto the earth. But an instant in the sky, decades on earth; everything had changed.

With difficulty I found my home, only to discover the family greatly changed. My wife was old and had a new life partner and new children; the daughter who had been only two when I left (who is my daughter? where is my son?) had grown up and had a little granddaughter of her own, and looked at me as a complete stranger.

With difficulty I proved my identity to my wife, but nothing could return to the way it was; I could not go and wreck the life she had already built.

I had no choice but to leave sorrowfully. My wife and daughter saw me to the bridge; my wife, already past seventy, suddenly asked whether I still loved playing basketball as I once had (since when did I have such a hobby?), and asked whether I would put on my old jersey so she could see it once more. So I really put it on.

Seeing her former husband, still young, in the old jersey, looking just as he used to, the old wife burst into tears and said to her daughter, "He really is your father."

But I too could only go far away, no longer to disturb their lives; and they could only let go of me, this person returned from another life.

On waking I could remember the dream's story completely. I truly could not tell whether the dream was a dream or the waking was a dream.

No love is deeper than that between husband and wife and flesh and blood; yet time and upheaval can change everything. Suddenly I recalled the "Hao Liao Song" (Song of Finished) that the monk and the Taoist who awakened Jia Baoyu sing in Dream of the Red Chamber:

"All the world knows that being an immortal is fine, yet only the lovely wife is unforgotten.

While you lived, each day you spoke of love and grace; but once you died, she went off with another man.

All the world knows that being an immortal is fine, yet only sons and grandsons are unforgotten.

Foolish parents have abounded since olden times, but who has ever seen filial sons and grandsons?"

Is the dream too absurd, or are people in reality so lost that only in dreams can they see more clearly?

I could not help composing a poem:

If life goes smoothly, why worry? Only dread that vicissitudes bring upheaval.

Both in dream and out of dream we are guests; this skin-bag is originally void.

Though knowing love and desire are all illusion, caught in them it is hard to break free.

Take the absurd as real for now, then take the real as absurd.

To muddle through this life is a blessing; why live too clearly?

The true holds the false, the false holds the true; this old man will not drill into a blind alley.

So, be a drama queen! Since acting and not acting are both acting, this is the true life!

I am posting this in the small hours, knowing you all are still in dream; I do not know whether it is you who are asleep at this moment, or I myself.

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