A friend of mine told me about a dream he had.
In his dream he saw a cloud. Suddenly it started to change it’s shape until it transformed into a number. Then another one. And yet another one. He woke up and quickly wrote down the numbers he saw. He had no doubt those were the lucky numbers, so he called his girlfriend and asked her to buy lottery tickets with these numbers. She did so, but they won nothing. Probably the numbers meant something else, decided my friend.The following week he didn’t buy any tickets. Apparently he could win a jackpot in national lottery, as the numbers from his dream were the winning ones. However weird it sounds, things like this happen sometimes.
Especially in the country I live now, Thailand. Everybody here seems obsessed with charms, signs, lucky numbers and special amulets bringing fortune. You can see people praying for luck in the temples, bank notes with lucky numbers for sale, as bringing luck, and lottery tickets wendors everythere, usually on the bicycles with an open suitcase attached to the bike containing tickets.
I wonder if the mass obsession or belief can affect chances.
A while ago I’ve read in a newspaper about such a case. There was a taxi with a number plate 7777… On the 7th of July this year (07/07/07) in the evening it picked up a heavily pregnant woman. Her labours had started, and she asked the driver to quickly take her to hospital. She delivered a baby on the way. Bangkok is notorious for its traffic jams :). So when they were finished, the driver looked at his watch. It was 7 in the evening. So he thought, 7 is a lucky number this week. He bought as many tickets containing as many 7’s in them as he could find. He told about the case his friends. Within 2 days everybody in the city was hunting for such tickets. Speculation started, and any ticket with 7 was resold up to 10 times it’s price, so much they were sought after. The craze shoot through the roof. “Bangkok Post” published an article about it, and that’s how I found out the details and had a laugh about the story.
Anyway, the following week the winning lottery number contained five 7’s, and everybody who had at least three 7’s in their tickets won.
Whatever the story about the taxi driver was truth or a myth, it turned out a very fascinating story. I’d love to read here more stories about such, as they call it in Russia сон в руку, dreams, bringing luck or giving hints about the future.
Boris Kislitsin
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It’s funny that buddhists can be so supersticious. The Buddha considered such practices as fortune telling, wearing magic charms for protection, fixing lucky sites for building, prophesizing and fixing lucky days to be useless superstitions and he expressly forbids his disciples to practice such things. He calls all these things ‘low arts.’
“Whereas some religious men, while living of food provided by the faithful make their living by such low arts, such wrong means of livelihood as palmistry, divining by signs, interpreting dreams… bringing good or bad luck… invoking the goodness of luck… picking the lucky site for a building, the monk Gotama refrains from such low arts, such wrong means of livelihood.”
D.I, 9-12
, and, about luck:
Being deeply learned and skilled. Being well-trained and using well-spoken words; this is the best good luck. To support mother and father, to cherish wife and child and to have a simple livelihood; this is the best good luck. Being generous, just, helping one’s relatives and being blameless in one’s actions; this is the best good luck. To refrain from evil and from strong drink, and to be always steadfast in virtue; this is the best good luck. Reverence, humility, contentment, gratitude and hearing the good Dhamma; this is the best good luck.
Sn. 261-265
Here’s another one, a different take, the analyzis of American Megaball lottery:
http://www.omninerd.com/articles/Pattern_Analysis_of_MegaMillions_Lottery_Numbers
It looks like different numbers have different “weight”, or appear with different frequency. Winning balls are random, but some balls more random then others, as stats and graphs showing, e.g (quoting):
The number 34 was drawn the most on 14 occasions while 51 appeared only once. Overall, each MegaBall has appeared an average of six times.