In the dream, I was at Southern Monastery. I’d gone back for some kind of retreat, and I was downstairs in a room that had long tables and folding chairs, very much like a school cafeteria. A monk chopped up a snake and was cooking it in a pan. I knew I had to eat a piece of it. Eating the snake was somehow connected to meditation practices. I gagged on the bit of snake that someone spooned into my mouth, but ended up swallowing the piece whole. Then I sat up in the folding chair because I remembered that I was supposed to open my mouth and let a live snake slither down it. I kept telling myself, “I can do this. I did it last time I was here.” Someone in the room was holding a live snake: it was thin and graceful and kept wriggling around, making shapes in the air.
When I woke up, I thought to myself, “That’s the weirdest snake dream I’ve had yet.”
