One morning Chuang Tzu awoke from his sleep. he told his students, "Last night I dreamt that I was a beautiful butterfly fluttering through the fields. Now I awaken. My question is this; how do I know if I am Chuang Tzu, who dreamt himself a butterfly *, or if I am a butterfly, now dreaming itself Chuang Tzu?"
his butterfly dream is a very well-known story , a taoist parable on the nature of reality .within this simple story we can find four important lessons;
oneness- connecting himself with such a different fragile being than humans, chuang tzu wants to emphasize that all are one.
life is like a dream- anything that happens in our so called life is just like this butterfly dream after all it's transient - like heraclitus*-or eternal with transformation of things- with this example of butterfly ; a butterfly goes through larval or pupal stages;human beings go through a metamorphosis .after necessary knowledge over a period of time, the mind begins to process the information to extract wisdom for the soul.
awakening awareness-another lesson,is also the moment of clarity and realization and in deed it is the power of now,achieving this,leads anyone make amazing discoveries.
in the dream, chuang tzu was clear about his identity, but after he was awakened, this became uncertain. He did not know whether it was Chuang tzu dreaming that he was a butterfly, or whether it was the butterfly dreaming that it was Chuang tzu??reality is subjective and dream is objective, in other words, awakening rises to ignorance or uncertainty of what is known as reality. this uncertainty hides in itself the awakening awareness.