Are nightmares just memory-cleaning?
When we wake from a nightmare it's easy to think, "This must mean something." Neuroscience, however, offers a different—and rather sober—explanation: dreams are largely a process of memory consolidation. The brain sorts daytime experiences and emotions, integrating what’s useful and discarding what isn’t. In that view, a nightmare is less a message and more a phenomenon.
The stance of Jōto Shinshū aligns well with this: the tradition does not base faith on divination or ritualized prayers. Relying on fortune-telling or dream interpretation is not the way; instead, one entrusts oneself to the saving power of Amida Buddha.
And yet — there was a "dream-message"
Still, a curious story is handed down about the founder of Jōto Shinshū, Shinran Shōnin. He is said to have received a dream-message from Prince Sh正 (often called Prince Sh正 in tradition), and following that dream he went to meet Hōnen, who became his lifelong teacher and the person through whom Shinran embraced the nembutsu teaching.
At first glance this seems contradictory: a school that rejects dream divination yet preserves an account in which its founder trusted a dream. How do we reconcile this?
How might we understand it?
- Shinran as an ordinary person: Even great figures live within cultural contexts. Shinran was not a supernatural being but a human shaped by the beliefs and practices of his age.
- Dreams as a skillful means: The dream itself need not be taken as a literal divine command. Rather, it functioned as a trigger — a condition that led Shinran to encounter Hōnen. In other words, the dream served as a karmic hinge that opened a Buddhist connection (en).
Beyond the literal meaning of dreams
Ultimately, using dreams as fortune-telling tools is not the practice of Shin Buddhism. Yet when we look back, it is permissible to see the way a dream helped arrange circumstances as part of Amida Buddha’s guiding activity.
The point is not the dream itself but the meeting and turning point that followed from it. Those encounters—the human ties and life changes—are what truly matter.
日本語版note：
悪夢と仏縁 ― 脳科学と親鸞聖人の夢告
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