Illusion

 The 13th century zen master, Dogen, spoke much of illusion, of dreams, of how each related to the other. His style of writing is often complex and difficult to understand but I think he saw through this question. Dreams for him, as he saw it, were simply another instance of the great illusion. The great illusion we all live under. Maya.

I must resort to the commentary on Dogen by Hee-Jin Kim, from his book "Eihei Dogen:Mystical Realist".

Dreams are a favorite metaphor in the Buddhist tradition and are often used to signify phantasmic and phantasmagoric unrealities. Dreams and realities are sharply differentiated and contrasted, and by and large, the former are conceived in depreciatory terms. In Dōgen’s view, however, dreams were as real and legitimate as the so-called realities in that they comprised our incessant efforts to decipher and dramatize the expressive and actional possibilities of existence. Both dreams and realities were ultimately empty, unattainable, and without self-nature. Going a step further, Dōgen thought that existence was essentially a discourse on a dream within a dream.

Further:-

What concerned Dōgen most was not to eliminate illusion in favour of reality so much as it was to see illusion as the total realization—not as one illusion among others, but as the illusion, with nothing but the illusion throughout the universe until we could at last find no illusion. Only if and when we realized the non-duality of illusion and reality in emptiness could we deal with them wisely and compassionately.

Anyway, possibly no one is interested in this , all seen as so much nonsense. Each to their own. Believe it or not, it brings a degree of clarity, even simplicity, to my mind/heart.

What you see is what you get. What could be more simple?