Page 103 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

dull and uninteresting but positively painful. We therefore try to

get away from it and create a world of our own outside ordinary
existence. We start daydreaming in various. ways. We start

imagining a better state of affairs. We start dreaming up some
ideal world, some ideal society, in which the imperfections of
this world and this society do not exist. Here there is misery and

unhappiness, but we like to daydream about some other place,
some other world, where everybody is happy and where, no

doubt, we can be happy too. Daydreaming of this sort is not
altogether a bad thing, provided we don't indulge in it too often
or when we really ought to be doing something else.

Though most daydreaming is what may be described as

unproductive fantasy, occasionally daydreams are blue-prints of
the future. Today's dream may be, in some cases, tomorrow's
reality. Looking at the history of the world, at the history of

culture, of religions, of the arts, of philosophy, we often find that
the greatest men of the past, and the greatest women too, have

sometimes been the greatest dreamers. If we go back to the
days of ancient Greece, to Plato — surely one of the greatest
men who have ever lived — we find that Plato too dreamed his

dreams. The greatest and most famous of his dreams is, of
course, The Republic, the great dialogue in twelve books in

which Plato dreams his dream of the ideal society, the society
based upon Justice. If we come to other times and cultures, and
other dreams, we have in the Book of Revelations, the last book

of the Bible, the marvellous vision of the New Jerusalem with its
walls of jasper and gates of pearl — a vision of great archetypal

and mythical significance. So it is down the ages. Coming nearer
to

103