Bakula – Buddhist Arhat – Dream 12-08-2011

A thangka depicting Bakula, one of Buddha’s sixteen arhats, with his mongoose.

I am in a roof top garden, there is some sort of party going on with loads of people sat around and at tables. There are people of many ethnicities from all over the world. They are dressed in brightly coloured “hippie” style clothes. As the party carries on, they draw a curtain around one part of the garden and gather around some Buddhist icons. A south American man there starts to do some chanting. I butt in with Tibetan deep voice chanting. They do not recognise me and are annoyed at my interruption. I point out to them that it is my garden which they are in. I strike up again and do White Tara. I need a drink of water before I can find my voice. After several cups I strike the right note and do some White Tara. Everyone joins in and after a while the party resumes happily.

The wife and I are in one segment of the garden when Anna L and a friend turn up. They have been travelling in India. She has remained pale but her friend has gone brown. She talks of her travels and I say that we will in time need to have a proper talk. She has something for me. At which point she shoots straight up into the air and then lands. She has brought many “ethnic”, clothes and trinkets.


Next I am on a mountain train. I arrive at a terminus in a hillside town way up in the mountains. It is very much like Nepal / Tibet / Bhutan. I get out of the train and wander along the high street. Turning instinctively to the right I go up a hill to “my” palace. Again, there is a vibrant garden with peacocks. It is “my” garden.


Later I make another journey on the mountain train and end up at another terminus. Here the streets are filled with market traders selling saffron and magenta clothes, together with gold trinkets and jewellery. I have time to explore. Everyone is trying to barter with the merchants trying to buy goods in various currencies. The merchants will not trade unless the currency matches the passport of the person trying to buy.


I am not interested in bartering and look on watching. Somehow, I am “in tune” with the locals. I wander back to the main street and notice various pins sticking in my back. Somehow, I am now in an off the shoulder monk’s robe. One by one I pull the pins out of my back. They are made of a very fine gold pin topped with a tiny ivory chess figure. There is a castle, a knight, a king and a queen. I have also been adorned with much golden jewellery.


I go into an emporium as I am pulling out these pins and sit down. I ask the shopkeeper about what has been happening. She says that they have done this to me so as to make me unattractive to the locals so that they won’t fall for me and want to have sex with me.


Anna L comes into the shop and sits next to me. We start talking about my palace. An old Indian man with very short hair suddenly starts to talk in a very proper English accent. He says that she holds for me a key and that we must find it. It relates back to 1773. He says that I must get back to Bakula.


We leave the shops and seek out the train station. “All trains go through Bakula”, says the station announcer. We look at the map and it is configured like this.

  • Before this dream I had never heard of Bakula nor the sixteen arhats.
  • It is possible that Anna L is dakini.

Tibetan Buddhist Search Committee Dream 29-04-23.

This dream was so out of the blue, unexpected.

The dream starts in the UK in England. I am hosting a personal development course in a country house with a large events room. We are sat in plenary in U-shape around the side of the high ceiling dance hall. It is ornate but now carpeted. A smartly dressed tall woman with a feint American accent and long blonde hair is speaking on a slightly raised wooden dais. She is using a long wooden pointer to point at a presentation she is making, which is running on a white screen.

It is time for a break before the final closing remarks and conference wrap up.

Everyone gets up for refreshments which are served in the antechamber. I walk through this into the back of the house which turns into a smaller building. This is where I have been living in the UK countryside. There is a wooden shed and outbuildings. I am checking on the content of these as we will be moving soon. Someone has started moving the items of furniture. I say to a woman there that she ought to have known better not to disturb my system. There is a symmetry to how I have fitted things in the shed. They only go in one way and must come out the reverse way. The passage to the shed is narrow and there is only one way to do this. I am slightly angry and the people are sheepish.

I return to the conference and it is over. Everyone has left, they are all people from my past in one sense. I have missed my chance to do the summing up and to thank the speaker. They have mostly left in embarrassment. The sense of embarrassment is strong and clear.

The speaker is now playing a video recording of semi-rural Tibet. The camera is running through the streets and I can see a large white and brown temple up on the hill. There are prayer flags and modern Tibetan people together with some more rustic “peasants”. I look at the woman and she has changed into an embroidered gold and red jacket over her novice nun robes. He hair is now short. I ask her about the video she says that it is of her people and that she has been working for them in making my acquaintance.

At this point a small party of people enter the room. They are all dressed in ceremonial Tibetan robes. These are very opulent. The embroidery is yellow, red, magenta, and saffron. It is ornate and slightly garish. There is a scent of incense accompanying them They are headed by a monk/abbot who is old and his right hand man who has jet black hair.  In the entourage there is a western woman with a round yellow-red embroidered cap over her bald head. I recognise her as someone whom I have met in this lifetime. I go up to her and say, “I know you”. She winks, smiles and says that yes, I do and that she had been sent to observe me. Amongst them is a tall athletic Tibetan man who moves with grace, poise and style. I point my finger into his chest. I say to him, “you are warrior and fighter.” He laughs and says yes. We can spar later using traditional Tibetan weapons to see what I remember.

Now into the back of the room furniture is being carried in by hand. I know it to be of a ceremonial nature and this has been carried from afar. My eyes are drawn to a very ornate chest with meticulous cabinet work. It is made in the shape of a Welsh dresser with an upper cupboard. The wood is highly polished, perhaps walnut. The detail of the closures is in gold.  It is a treasure and contained within it are relics. Although not visible to the naked eye, inscribed into the wood in “magic” lettering are some words in Tibetan script. The calligraphy is excellent and the downward strokes of the letters are longer and more artistic than is customary. They have been inscribed with flourish. There is a sense that the intense black calligraphy has been “burned” into the wood over the centuries and that only certain people can see it.

From the film Kundun, a portrayal of the 14th Dalai Lama

The carpet on the floor of the hall has been rolled back to reveal a parquet dance floor of some considerable sheen. Amongst the entourage I can hear gossiping. “It cannot be him; he is too coarse thickset and muscular.”

I hear this and whip off my shirt to reveal my muscular bare chest. I say that I will cooperate with whatever it is they must do. Take a look if you must. I am now wearing saffron yellow trousers, training pants, that are “elasticated” at the ankles. I start to do a forward splits on the floor to warm up. I say that given I am nearly sixty I am surprised that being that old I can still do that.

One of the woman in the entourage says to me that I am much older than that both in this lifetime and stretching way back. I am nearly 73 she says. I do the mental calculation that I must have been “born” in the early 1950s. She says, “we tried to wake you five years ago”. You have been “asleep” and we have been waiting.

I briefly wake up and then drift off.

I am at an oriental Temple scene with ponds and in an immaculate garden. At first pass I think Chinese and then know Japanese. There are people there with round black ceremonial hats and flowing Japanese robes. I am poured into the pond as very large and bright, shiny goldfish. I swim in the Temple ponds and in the dream, I know that my second Buddhist life was Japanese. These ponds are my home, where I swim.

I the return to the hall in the previous part of the dream and the warrior comes into the room carrying some odd looking Tibetan martial arts weapons. Which I recognise. Some of the monks are now seated and are reciting mantra whilst thumbing through their prayer beads.

I have a very strong visual image of two yellow-hat Tibetan monks in full colour sat on a rock up in the mountains playing their long Tibetan alpine horns. That image and the sound persists even now. I can “hear” the horns inside my mind. They are precursors to a ritual, setting the scene.

 I get up and greet the cat. I take my medication and put the coffee on. I sit down and start typing.