The short answer: what Chapter 16 does not settle
The awakening scene in Chapter 16 of The Nine Cloud Dream does not end with the moment of waking from a dream. Master Yukgwan tells Seongjin (性眞) that he is splitting the dream and the human world into two, and adds that Seongjin has not yet woken from his dream. This article puts the dialogue of Chapter 16 and the butterfly dream of Zhuang Zhou (莊周) quoted there at the centre, and reads them together with the Tang tales Zhenzhongji (枕中記) and Nanke taishou zhuan (南柯太守傳), the Joseon dream-journey records, and Ongnumong (玉樓夢). This is the third part of a three-part series.
The Nine Cloud Dream is a novel by Kim Man-jung (金萬重), of the reign of King Sukjong. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture describes the work as a novel that expresses the Buddhist idea of life's impermanence through a dream. The plot is given here only as far as the analysis requires. According to the same encyclopedia, Seongjin, a disciple of Master Yukgwan, longs for worldly wealth and rank, then dreams and is reborn as Yang Soyu (楊少遊). Seongjin marries beautiful women who are the reincarnations of eight fairies and enjoys wealth and glory, and then wakes from the dream. The encyclopedia summarizes that after waking, Seongjin realizes that all the glory and disgrace of the world are as empty as a dream, and turns to the Buddhist path.
The same encyclopedia lists three Chinese-character idioms for the fleeting wealth and glory of a moment: iljang chunmong, namga ilmong and handan jimong. It notes that these idioms come from old tales. Namga ilmong shares its characters with the Namga of Nanke taishou zhuan. Handan jimong shares its characters with the Handan road that appears in Zhenzhongji. The overlap can be read as a sign that these dream stories survived in idiom form as well.
The foreign monk's words and Seongjin's 大覺 in Chapter 16
Chapter 16 of The Nine Cloud Dream contains a passage in which a foreign monk (胡僧) claps his hands and laughs aloud. The text of Chapter 16 on Chinese Wikisource records his words as follows: 胡僧拍掌大笑曰：「是矣，是矣！然只記夢中之一見，不記十年之同處，誰謂楊丞相聰明？」 The monk points out that Yang Soyu remembers only a single meeting inside the dream and not the ten years they spent together. Then he asks who would call Chancellor Yang clever.
At the heart of the remark lies an imbalance of memory. The monk splits Yang Soyu's memory in two: on one side is a single meeting in a dream, on the other ten years of living together. Yang Soyu has held on only to the first. The passage can be seen as presenting, first of all, a situation in which memory cannot contain the length of a life. And it suggests how hard it is to make memory the test that separates dream from reality.
The same chapter also contains a passage in which Seongjin bows his head to the ground and weeps as he speaks. The text records his words as 性真叩頭流涕曰：「性真已大覺矣！弟子無狀，操心不正，自作之孽，誰怨誰咎？ Seongjin says that he has already attained a great awakening. He says that since he failed to keep his own mind upright, there is no one to resent and no one to blame. What stands out is that at the very moment of declaring enlightenment he turns responsibility back on himself. The Chinese text of The Nine Cloud Dream can be consulted on Chinese Wikisource, and the commentary on the work in the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture published by the Academy of Korean Studies.
Master Yukgwan's counter-question and Zhuang Zhou's butterfly dream
Master Yukgwan's words point in a different direction from Seongjin's declaration. The Chapter 16 text contains this line: 且汝以夢與人世，分爲二也。汝夢猶未覺也。 Master Yukgwan says that Seongjin is splitting the dream and the human world into two, and that Seongjin has still not woken from his dream.
The line shifts the criterion of enlightenment. It can be read as saying that opening one's eyes from a dream and waking from a dream are not the same thing. The moment Seongjin judges the dream to be empty, he sets up dream and reality as two separate things. What Master Yukgwan takes issue with is that division. Even the conclusion that it was all empty can be seen as still resting on the division.
In the same chapter Master Yukgwan brings in Zhuang Zhou's butterfly dream. The text reads 莊周夢爲蝴蝶，蝴蝶又變爲莊周。 Then he asks 性真少遊，孰是夢也？孰非夢也？ The question is which of the two — Seongjin or Soyu — is the dream and which is not. The way the passage offers no answer and leaves the matter as a question can be seen as its distinctive feature.
The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture explains the dreaming in The Nine Cloud Dream as running in two directions: in Seongjin's dream the life of Yang Soyu is presented, and in Yang Soyu's dream the figures of Master Yukgwan and Seongjin appear. The same encyclopedia states that this dream world was constructed on the Buddhist idea of emptiness, which treats the very impulse to separate reality from dream as a vain delusion. It also explains that the sijo poem by Yi Jeong-bo (李鼎輔) on Zhuangzi's (莊子) butterfly-dream tale largely sings of the emptiness of dreams. The question posed in Chapter 16 can be seen as going a step beyond that singing of emptiness.
The three Ways Yang Soyu names: Confucian, immortal and Buddhist
Chapter 16 includes a speech in which Yang Soyu names three Ways. The text reads 天下有三道：日儒道，日仙遭，日佛道。三遭之中，唯佛最高。 Yang Soyu says that under heaven there are the Confucian Way, the Way of the immortals and the Buddhist Way. And he says that of the three, Buddhism stands highest. The quotation above reproduces the characters of the Chinese Wikisource text exactly as they appear there.
The text also reads 仙遭近誕，自古隸之著甚多，而終無所驗，秦皇漢武及玄宗皇帝可鑑也。 Yang Soyu says that the Way of the immortals verges on the absurd. He says that although writings about it have been abundant since ancient times, in the end it produced no proven results. As examples he cites the First Emperor of Qin, Emperor Wu of Han and Emperor Xuanzong.
These are the words of a character inside the work. Whether they can be taken as identical to the author's own position is not confirmed in the source material. What is clear is that the work contains a passage that lines up the three Ways and ranks them. When the question is which body of thought to read The Nine Cloud Dream through, this passage can be seen as the starting point. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture explains the work as a whole in terms of the Buddhist idea of life's impermanence.
The great dharma of the Diamond Sutra that Master Yukgwan speaks of
Chapter 16 includes a passage in which Master Yukgwan says he will expound a scripture. The text reads 我當說《金剛經》大法，以悟汝心，而當有暫來弟子，汝蛄待之。 Master Yukgwan says that he will expound the great dharma of the Diamond Sutra to awaken Seongjin's mind, and that a disciple is coming for a short while, so Seongjin should wait.
In this speech the teaching is presented together with the name of a scripture. It can be seen as a passage in which enlightenment is handled in the form of words and exposition. What the source material confirms goes only as far as the fact that this speech appears in the Chapter 16 text. Whether it comes before or after Seongjin's declaration of 大覺 is not confirmed.
Something can be read here without settling the order of events: the dialogue about dreaming and the remark about the great dharma of the Diamond Sutra sit within the same chapter. That can be seen as one of the grounds on which The Nine Cloud Dream has long been read from a Buddhist angle. At the same time, one has to keep in view that the same chapter also contains the speech naming the Confucian Way and the Way of the immortals.
Lu Sheng in Zhenzhongji and Chunyu Fen in Nanke taishou zhuan
The Chinese text of Zhenzhongji can be read on Wikisource. It opens 開元七年，道士有呂翁者，得神仙術，行邯鄲道中，息邸舍 — in the seventh year of Kaiyuan, the Daoist Lü Weng (呂翁), who had attained the arts of the immortals, travels the Handan road and stops to rest at an inn. The text records the handing over of the pillow as 翁乃探囊中枕以授之，曰：“子枕吾枕，當令子榮適如志。” In his dream Lu Sheng (盧生) is twice exiled and twice raised to chancellor, enjoying a life of 五十餘年，崇盛赫奕. But the text records the moment of waking as 盧生欠伸而悟，見其身方偃於邸舍，呂翁坐其傍，主人蒸黍未熟，觸類如故。
Chunyu Fen, the hero of Nanke taishou zhuan, gets drunk in the ninth month of the seventh year of Zhenyuan in the Tang, falls ill, and lies down in the eastern wing of his house. In his dream he enters a walled city with 大槐安國 written on it in gold letters. He governs Nanke Commandery for twenty years and builds up such a record that a monument to his merit and a shrine to him while still alive are erected. When he wakes, two guests are still washing their feet and the sun has not yet set behind the western wall. The text records the time inside the dream as 夢中倏忽，若度一世矣. From a hollow beneath the locust tree come several bushels of ants and two large ants with red heads.
The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture explains that the dreams in Zhenzhongji and Nanke taishou zhuan both treat the same material as the Dream of Josin. The same encyclopedia states that the Dream of Josin raises the question of what is true and what is false in dream and reality, and shows that fifty years inside the dream amounted to no more than a single night on waking. Setting the two Tang tales beside The Nine Cloud Dream point by point brings the differences out. Chapter 16 of The Nine Cloud Dream places Seongjin's declaration of enlightenment and Master Yukgwan's counter-question side by side. First, the trigger for entering the dream differs: in Zhenzhongji it is the pillow Lü Weng hands over, and in Nanke taishou zhuan it is an illness brought on by drink.
Second, the time left in reality after waking is short in both tales. In Zhenzhongji the millet is not yet done; in Nanke taishou zhuan the sun has not set behind the western wall. Third, the behaviour after waking diverges. Lu Sheng gives thanks for having come to know the way of favour and disgrace, the fortunes of failure and success, the logic of gain and loss, and the feelings of life and death. Chunyu Fen, feeling the emptiness of Nanke, turns his mind to the gate of the Way and gives up wine and women, then dies in the jeongchuk year at the age of forty-seven. Fourth, Nanke taishou zhuan closes with an appraisal by Li Zhao, former adjutant of Huazhou, which reads 貴極祿位，權傾國都。達人視此，蟻聚何殊。
Dream-journey records: Wonsaeng mongyurok and Sasu mongyurok
Joseon had the mongyurok, a genre built around the frame of a dream. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture sums up the content this way: a protagonist in the real world enters another world through a dream, has various experiences there, then wakes and returns to reality. The same encyclopedia explains that the mongyurok has a frame structure that proceeds from reality to dream and back to reality. This can be taken to mean that the dream occupies the middle position in the story.
The same encyclopedia states that all five surviving stories collected in Geumo sinhwa borrow the form of dream travel in their structure. It explains that the character of the mongyurok as a type was established in Wonsaeng mongyurok. Sasu mongyurok (泗水夢遊錄) survives as an anonymous manuscript introduced by Yi Myeong-seon (李明善) in 1942 in volume 2, number 4 of the journal Inmun pyeongnon (人文評論). The encyclopedia notes that in Sasu mongyurok there are four invasions in all by Yang and Mo, Lao and the Buddha. It can be seen as a case in which a clash of ideas appears inside a dream in the shape of war.
The encyclopedia explains that the mongyurok shows a strong critical consciousness toward the real world by way of the unreal world of the dream. That explanation is worth reading against the dialogue of Chapter 16 of The Nine Cloud Dream. In the mongyurok the dream serves as a place from which to throw light on reality. In Chapter 16 of The Nine Cloud Dream, the very attitude of splitting dream and reality in two becomes the object of the question. The two directions can be seen as different attitudes toward handling the dream.
What Nam Yeong-no's Ongnumong changed
Ongnumong is a classical novel written by Nam Yeong-no (南永魯) in the 19th century. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture describes it as a novel in 64 chapters. It notes that its length makes it an epic work three times the length of The Nine Cloud Dream. The encyclopedia writes that Ongnumong can be seen as a thorough reworking of The Nine Cloud Dream. It adds, however, that its structure, theme and thought are quite different from those of The Nine Cloud Dream.
The core of the difference lies in where the dream sits and how real life is judged. The encyclopedia explains that whereas The Nine Cloud Dream treats real life as a dream and shows a negative view of it, Ongnumong evaluates real life positively. It states that, unlike The Nine Cloud Dream, Ongnumong sets up a dream world of immortal officials and fairies and uses it to depict life in the human realm. It also explains that Ongnumong takes Confucian thought as its framework while absorbing Buddhist and Daoist thought. When the position given to the dream changes, the direction of the judgement passed on reality can be seen to change with it.
Traces of its reception survive on the stage as well. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture records that in February 1940 the Joseon Vocal Music Research Society adapted Ongnumong as a changgeuk and staged it at the Jeil Theater. When the question is how the question of Chapter 16 shifted in later dream-frame works, Ongnumong can be seen as taking its place as a point of comparison.
Related reading: Why does the dating of Guunmong narrow to 1687? (1/3) · The Nine Cloud Dream: How Its Eight Romances Repeat Across Chapters (2/3)
In sum: the question Chapter 16 leaves behind
The dialogue of Chapter 16 of The Nine Cloud Dream does not use the scene of waking from a dream as its conclusion. Master Yukgwan tells Seongjin that he is splitting the dream and the human world into two. Then he asks which of the two, Seongjin or Soyu, is the dream. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture explains that this dream world was constructed on the Buddhist idea of emptiness.
The Tang tales Zhenzhongji and Nanke taishou zhuan set a short stretch of reality against a long dream. The Joseon mongyurok reveals a critical consciousness toward reality within a frame structure that runs from reality to dream and back to reality. The 19th-century Ongnumong evaluates real life positively. Lining up these three strands makes it possible to gauge where the question of Chapter 16 stands. The Chinese texts of The Nine Cloud Dream and the two Tang works can be consulted directly on Chinese Wikisource, and the commentary in the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture published by the Academy of Korean Studies.