འཕགས་པ་སྲད་པ་འཕ་བ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད intro.18

intro.18

It is also up for interpretation exactly how the analogy of the dream should be understood. The Buddha gives this analogy to explain the principle of how the karma appears at the moment of death, stating that the woman in the dream is analogous to that karma, and that her arising in the mind of the man waking from the dream is to be understood as analogous to the karma appearing before the mind at the moment of death. Certainly, he is not implying that the phenomena of karma itself appears, since it has explicitly long since passed, but its potentiality or causal force is present somehow at that crucial moment of death. Perhaps the analogy also emphasizes that the karma itself is nonexistent, like the woman in a dream. But on the whole, the precise implications of this analogy might be explicated differently according to the theory of karma and transmigration held by any particular Buddhist school.