Don Quixote and the Nanke Dream
Two paths to waking up
A thin old man from rural Spain
Mistook windmills for giants
Charged with his spear
Knocked down by the blades
Fell into the mud with his horse
In a similar absurdity
A Tang Dynasty man 800 years ago
Fell asleep drunk under a locust tree
Dreamt of marrying a princess
Served as governor for 20 years
Had seven children
Enjoyed wealth and glory
Upon waking
The sun had not yet set
The wine on the table was still warm
One charged outward
Fighting the fake as if real
One sank inward
Living a whole life in a dream
Half a world apart
Separated by 800 years
These two men
Were doing the same thing
They took something non-existent
As their entire world
And gave their lives to it
Hello
Everyone
I am Wang Lijie
Let's do something interesting today
Spain's Don Quixote
And the Tang Dynasty's Nanke story
Put them on the same table
View these dreamers through Buddhism
You will find
They weren't just dreaming
More importantly
After waking up
They took opposite paths
And these two paths
Are exactly East and West
Facing the great dream of life
Two different answers
Let's start with the Easterner
His name was Chunyu Fen
A bold and reckless man
A large locust tree stood south of his home
Its branches covered the sky
One day he got drunk on his birthday
And was helped to the porch to rest
In a daze
Two messengers in purple appeared
Inviting him on the King's orders
He followed them into a carriage
It drove into a hole under a locust tree
Inside was another world
Called the Kingdom of Great Locust
The King treated him with great respect
Married Princess Golden Branch to him
And made him Governor of Nanke
Twenty years passed there
He governed Nanke perfectly
Loved by the people
With outstanding achievements
The Princess bore him five sons
And two daughters
He reached the peak of power
Wealth and glory
The pinnacle of human imagination
But good times never last
The neighboring Tanluo Kingdom invaded
He sent troops to fight
But suffered a crushing defeat
Soon after
The Princess died of illness
The King began to distance himself
Growing suspicious of him
Finally, he ordered
To send him back home
The same two purple-clad messengers
Escorted him out of the tree hole
He opened his eyes
Still lying on his own porch
The sun hadn't even set yet
The unfinished wine by the window
Was still warm
Decades of glory and shame in a dream
Was just a nap in reality
What chilled him even more
Was what happened next
He had the tree hole dug up
And looked inside
It was a giant ant nest
With a dirt platform in the middle
Swarming with ants
Two large ants guarded the center
This was the capital of Great Locust
Digging further along the south branch
Another ant nest
That was Nanke Prefecture, where he ruled for 20 years
The splendor of his dream
A life of honor and disgrace
Was just a nest of ants
Chunyu Fen understood instantly
Life's illusions are like the Nanke Dream
He quit wine and women
And turned to Taoism
Three years later
He died peacefully at home
This is the Eastern way of waking
See through it
Let it go
Leave the world behind
By digging up an ant nest
He saw the whole world as one
Now
Let's cut to Spain
A poor country gentleman
Named Alonso Quixano
Living in rural La Mancha
He had no major flaws
Except one
He loved chivalric novels too much
Reading and reading
Until his mind broke
He believed the tales of knights and demons
Were all true
And the world needed a new knight to save it
So he renamed himself Don Quixote
Found some rusty ancestral armor
Led out a skinny old horse
Gave it a majestic name
He chose a local farm girl
As the noble lady he would serve
He then persuaded
An honest peasant, Sancho, to be his squire
Promising him
Governorship of an island
Then the pair set off
What happened next
Is what we still laugh at today
He saw dozens of windmills
As giants with long arms
Charged them for a duel
And was knocked flying
He saw a flock of sheep
As two warring armies
He mistook a small inn for a castle
A barber's basin used for rain protection
Mistaken for a legendary magic helmet
He seized it and wore it as his own
Three times he set out as a knight
Making a fool of himself along the way
Beaten at every turn
Hardly ever winning a fight
In everyone's eyes
He was a complete madman
At the end of the story
His fellow townsman set a trap
A young man posed as the Knight of the White Moon
Challenged him to a duel
And defeated him
By the rules of chivalry
He was ordered to return home
Forbidden from adventuring for a year
Don Quixote conceded
Returning home in dejection
Falling ill as soon as he arrived
Then comes the book's most pivotal moment
After days of high fever
And falling into a deep sleep
He woke up
Suddenly lucid
He calmly announced
He was no longer the knight Don Quixote
But the ordinary, good man
Alonso Quixano
He cursed the harmful chivalric novels
And wrote his will
Stating if his niece were to inherit his estate
She must never marry a man who reads such books
Sancho wept by the bedside
Clinging to him and saying
Master, please do not die
Get up quickly
Let us go to the fields and be shepherds
Let us continue our adventures
But Don Quixote shook his head
Clearly and rationally
He admitted the absurdity of his life
Then, amidst the weeping of others
He breathed his last
Do you hear the difference between these endings
Chunyu Fen saw through the dream
And turned toward a different peace
Don Quixote had his dream shattered by reality
Then died lucid and heartbroken
One awakening
Leads to liberation
One awakening
Leads to disillusionment and death
The East leads to spiritual practice
The West leads to dying in resentment
Both wake from a great dream
How can they take such different paths
To answer this
We must use the microscope of Buddhism
There is a Buddhist term
Called Parikalpita
It means
Our minds
Take the shadows they project
As real, independent, and certain things
And cling to them tightly
The world you see
Is largely not the world itself
But a story woven by your mind
And you believe it
You become attached
Don Quixote's giants
Are the clearest form of Parikalpita
A windmill is a windmill
That is a fact
But in his mind
The windmill is covered by a thick story
That story tells him
It is a giant
An evil that must be eradicated
What he rushes to fight
Is never the real windmill
But the giant in his own mind
Chunyu Fen is the same
The ant nest is real
But his mind covered it with a script
Of nation, marriage, office, and children
He cried, laughed, and loved in that script
Living there for twenty years
The kingdom he served
And the lady Don Quixote served
Are essentially the same thing
Shadows projected by the mind
Then mistaken for reality
So you see
The first level of the answer appears
These two stories
Are fundamentally the same story
An Easterner and a Westerner
Separated by eight hundred years
In their own ways
they mapped the human mind
Every one of us
to some extent
lives in our own dream kingdom
facing our own windmills
with spears raised
But before moving on
I want to note a subtle difference
These two dreams
were entered differently
Chunyu Fen's dream
was a passive fall
He was drunk
messengers arrived
the carriage entered the tree
He was swept in by fate
the tree, the ants, the wine, the afternoon
all pulled him in blindly
Buddhism calls this 'dependent origination'
meaning
nothing arises from thin air
but manifests through conditions
In the dream, he truly believed
He had no idea he was dreaming
Only upon waking and digging up the nest
did he realize the truth
Don Quixote is different
His dream
was a conscious choice
He knew others saw windmills
yet he chose to see giants
He wasn't tricked into the dream
He used his will
to force this mundane world
into a world worth fighting for
In a way
he was more awake than Chunyu Fen
and more stubborn
This is a man with eyes open
creating a dream for himself
One was swept in by fate
the other built it with will
Remember this difference
because it determines
how they eventually woke up
But more interestingly
is the second layer
Why these two dreams
ended in different ways
Note an easily overlooked detail
How did Chunyu Fen wake up
He was awakened by an action
He dug open the tree hollow
Saw the ant nest with his own eyes
He saw the hardware of that dream
Saw that magnificent kingdom
Physically just a pile of dirt and bugs
The Eastern awakening
A total awakening after seeing the underlying truth
Once seen
The entire illusion collapses
Collapsing along with all attachment to it
One becomes empty
One becomes still
One enters the path of Tao
How did Don Quixote wake up
He didn't see any truth
He was repeatedly and violently defeated by reality
Windmills struck him
Sheep trampled him
Finally the Knight of the White Moon forced his surrender
The Western awakening
Awakening after ideals are crushed by reality
He didn't see through the knightly dream
He just couldn't fight anymore
Forced to admit the dream was unworkable
So in his awakening
There is no liberation
Only an old man facing a lifetime of absurdity
A deep, bone-chilling desolation
One is enlightenment
One is resignation
One is turning off the light from within
One is having the light smashed from without
No wonder one leads to otherworldly peace
And the other to a heartbroken death
At this point
Simply ranking East versus West
Would be too shallow
That's not what this channel is for
I want to go one step further
Ask a question neither book answers
What happens after waking up
Chunyu Fen dug up the ant nest
Quit wine and lust
Retreated into Taoism
It sounds very sophisticated
But have you ever wondered
If this is just moving from one dream
Jumped into another dream
He used to cling to wealth and fame
Now he clings to something called Taoism
The object of his grasp has changed
But that grasping hand
That heart needing to hold something to feel safe
Has it let go
True awakening
Is it possible that even "I am awake"
And the thought of "I must practice Taoism"
Must also be gently set down
Look at Don Quixote again
Before death, he renounced knighthood
Returning to the rational Alonso
The book calls this clarity
A return to the right path
But the weeping Sancho by the bed
Cried out something startling: "Don't die"
"Let's go adventuring again"
Think about those words
The squire always seen as a fool
The most practical, grounded peasant
In the final moment
Did not want his master to be sober
He wanted his master to keep dreaming
Who is truly awake
Is it Alonso, who renounced his life's passion
And then lost his life
Or is it the madman
Don Quixote, who lived every day with fire
If clarity brings only disillusion and death
Could this clarity
Also be a form of attachment
An attachment to truth and correctness
Western literature sees clarity as the end
But Buddhism asks
Are you sure that is the end
And not just another wall
At this point
The true answer of Buddhism
Begins to emerge
It doesn't side with Chunyu Fen, saying
Dreams are fake
Wake up and renounce the world
Nor does it side with Sancho, saying
Since it's a dream
Then stay mad to the end
Buddhism takes the middle path
It calls this
The non-duality of emptiness and form
What do you mean?
The truly awakened
know that this is a dream
Know windmills aren't giants
Know fame is but an anthill
Yet they do not flee
They still live earnestly
Vibrantly within this dream
They act with chivalry
They love others
They govern the dream world well
But they are clearly aware
I know this is a dream
So I am not held hostage by it
And because I know it's a dream
I can live truly gently, without fear
Inside of it
It's like watching a movie
You might cry at moving parts
Feel anxious
Worry for the protagonist
But you always know
It is just a movie
When the lights come on
You wipe your tears
And calmly walk out
Neither coldly refusing to engage
Nor collapsing, saying life is meaningless
Fully immersed
Yet fully free
Chunyu Fen's highest state
Shouldn't be fleeing to a monastery
But carrying that awareness
Back to his life in Yangzhou
Eating when it's time to eat
Working when it's time to work
No longer enslaved by an anthill
Don Quixote's most moving part
Was never his deathbed clarity
But that indefinable spark in his madness
Knowing they were windmills
Yet choosing to be a knight
Have you noticed?
The highest way to live
Is not being awake
Nor being asleep
But keeping your eyes open in the dream
So next time
When you struggle with a windmill in life
When you fret over an anthill
When you're fighting to exhaustion
Perhaps ask yourself quietly
Is what I'm charging toward
A real giant
Or a story I've projected onto a windmill
This question
I leave to you
I'd love to hear
In your life
The windmill you've fought for so long
What is it
Did you eventually see it clearly
Once you did
Did you walk away like Chunyu Fen
Or learn to keep your eyes open in the dream
And continue to live earnestly
Tell me in the comments
I am Wang Lijie
See you next time