Poet and essayist Ci Yun records his reflections on family catastrophes and illness, questioning the meaning and purpose of life. Through a series of self-revelatory essays, he engages in inner dialogues on the historical process of becoming his present self.

Marked by literary diction and reflections steeped in Buddhist thought, Dream Dialogues transcends the bounds of the typical family memoir. The author, Ci Yun, skillfully employs poetic language and imagery to trace the evolution of his relationship with his parents, and their responses to the tragedy of debilitating illness. Through the clarifying lens of time, Ci Yun reconciles himself to the past, granting readers an elevated perspective of measured detachment from the inevitable upheavals and challenges of life.

The book revolves around three core axes: self, mother, and father. Beginning from the self, Ci Yun explores his expectations of societal acknowledgement as a means to reveal his understanding of his own character. Next, he records his mother’s descent into schizophrenia, and the evolution of their relationship over the course of more than a decade of illness, using his mother’s inability to distinguish reality from delusion as the basis for a philosophical inquiry into the nature of truth. Finally, he turns his attention to the process of becoming an organ donor to save his father from liver cancer.

Dreaming is a significant theme throughout the book, taking on various meanings as it links each of the axes. Ci Yun learns to accept his mother’s schizophrenia as a disease which impairs the ability to distinguish dreams from reality. In another episode, while lying in the intensive care unit following the donation of part of his liver, the author enters a series of nested dreams, like Russian dolls. There, free from the constraints of time and physical existence, he engages in a dialogue with his dream-reality.

Dreams take on a new level of meaning in a discussion of Dream Travels, a text by Hanshan Deqing, the Ming dynasty Buddhist master. Therein, life itself is ephemeral – another dreamscape. The dichotomies of fortune and misfortune, honor and shame, and happiness and sadness are viewed as lessons in a long course of study. We need not wrestle with faith, nor struggle against suffering. We need only engage in a dialogue with time, allowing each moment to speak, whether it brings pleasure or pain – for all experiences, good and bad, provide the essential nutrients that will allow us to grow, and continue our life’s journey.

Collecting multiple award-winning essays by author and poet Ci Yun, Dream Dialogues is both a record of suffering, and an expression of the joy of creation. It is a book that gracefully confronts the realities of lost companionship and our basic aloneness. Yet, beneath the still surface of its detached prose, there is a vibrant, pulsing love of life, family, and the world we inhabit.