Buddhist doctrine and dream
yoga
By His Holiness the Dalai Lama
The basic foundation of the whole Buddhist tradition
is known as the Four Noble Truths. What is the point of recognizing
these Four Noble Truths? It is related with our basic longing
concerning happiness and suffering, and with specific causal relationships.
How does suffering arise? How does happiness arise?
The central themes of the Four Noble Truths are the issue of causality
as it pertains to happiness and suffering.
This emphasis specifically focuses on natural causality, instead
of suggesting an explanation that invokes some external creator
or primal substance that controls the events in life. There are
four statements pertaining the Four Noble thruths respectively:
Recognize the noble truth of suffering; abandon the noble truth
of the source of suffering; and cultivate the noble truth of the
path. All of this is to be done by the individual who is seeking
happiness and wishing to avoid suffering.
In this context, the self becomes something very important. The
person who is experiencing suffering is one’self, and the
one who needs to apply the means to dispel suffering is also one’self.
And the cause of this is within one’self. When Buddhism first
appeared in ancient India, a fundamental distinction between Buddhist
versus non- Buddhist views concerned the self, when applied to
the self as and agent and to the self as the experiencer, becomes
very problematic. From the very beginning, there was a great deal
of though and discussion concerning the nature of the self.
According to non-Buddhist treatises, a self does exist quite separate
and autonomous from the aggregates of the body and the mind. In
general, all four philosophical schools within Buddhism agree
in denying the existence of a self that has a separate nature
from the aggregates. However, these schools have different views
concerning how the self exists among the various aggregates of
the body and the mind.
Dream yoga
In order to train in the path that would allow us to transform
death, the intermediate state, and rebirth, we have to practice
on three occasions: during the waking state, during the sleeping
state, and during the death process. This entails integrating
the self with spiritual training. Now we have three sets of three:
1. Death, intermediate state, and rebirth
2. Dharmamakaya, Sambhogaya and Nirmanakaya
3. Sleep, dream, and waking.
In order to achieve the ultimate states of Dharmakaya,
Shambhogaya and Nirmanakaya, one must become acquainted with the
three stages of death, intermediate state, and rebirth. In order
to become acquainted with these three, one gains acquaintance
with the states of dreamless sleep, dreaming, and waking.
To get the experience during sleep and the
waking state, I think is crucial to become familiar, by means
of imagination, with the eightfold process of dying, beginning
with waking conscious state and culminating in the clear light
of death. This entails a dissolution process, a withdrawal. At
each stage of the actual dying process there are internal signs,
and to familiarize yourself with these, you imagine them during
meditation during your daytime practice. Then in your imagination,
from the clear light, you visualize your subtle body departing
from your subtle body and you imagine going to different places;
then finally you return and the subtle body becomes re-absorbed
in your normal form. When you are experienced a visualizing this
during daytime practice, then on falling asleep, an analogous
eightfold process occurs naturally and quickly. That’s the
best method for enabling you to recognize dreamless sleep state
as the dreamless sleep state. But without deeper meditative experience
of this in the daytime. It’s very difficult to realize this
dissolution as you fall asleep.
In the Highest Yoga Tantra practice there are two stages for any
sahana or visualization practice; the stage of Generation and
the stage of Completion. In the stage of generation, the more
basic of these two, this whole eightfold process of dissolution
is experienced only by the power of imagination. You by means
of Prana Yoga, including the Vase Meditation, you bring the vital
dissolution into the central channel, and you actually bring about
such dissolution, not just with imagination, but in terms of reality.
You bring about such dissolution, and at certain level of this
practice the clear light will manifest.
If you’ve gotten to that point in your experience and practice,
and then it’s very easy for you to recognize the clear light
of sleep when naturally occurs. And if you have gotten to the
point where you can recognize dreamless sleep as dreamless sleep,
then it’s very easy for you to recognize the dream as the
dream. This discussion concerns the means of ascertaining sleep
as sleep and dream as a dream by the power of vital energy. That’s
one avenue leading to that result. Now going back to daytime practice,
if one has not reached that level of insight or experience through
the vital energy practice, then during the daytime you accomplish
this by the power of intent, rather than power of vital energy.
Intent means you have to strive very diligently, with a lot of
determination. In such practice, recognizing dreamless sleep is
harder than recognizing the dream as dream.
Different factors are involved in the ability to recognize the
dream as dream. One is diet. Specifically, your diet should be
compatible with your own metabolism. For example, in Tibetan medicine,
one speaks of the three elements: wind, bile and phlegm. One or
more of these elements are predominant in some people. You should
have a diet have helps to maintain a balance among these various
humorous within the body. Moreover, if your sleep is too deep,
your dreams will not be very clear. In order to bring about clearer
dreams and lighter sleep, you should eat somewhat less. In addition,
as you’re falling asleep, you direct your awareness up to
the forehead. On the other hand, if your sleep is too light, this
will also act as an obstacle for gaining success in this practice.
In order to deepen your sleep, you should take heavier, oilier
food, and as you’re falling asleep, you should direct your
attention down to the vital energy center at the level of navel
or the genitals. If your dreams are not clear, as you’re
falling asleep you should direct your awareness to the throat
center. In this practice, when you begin dreaming it’s helpful
to have someone say quietly, You are dreaming now. Try to recognize
the dream as the dream.
Once you are able to recognize the clear light of sleep as the
clear light of sleep, the recognition can enable you to sustain
that state for a longer period.
The main purpose of dream yoga in the context of the Tantric Practice
is to first practice you focus your attention on the heart center
of your dream body and try to withdraw the vital energy into that
center. That leads to and an experience of the clear light of
sleep which arise when the dream state ceases.
The experience of the clear light that you have during sleep is
not very subtle. As you progress in your practice of dream yoga,
the first experience of the clear light occurs as a result of
focusing your attention at the heart center of the dream body.
Although the clear light sleep at the beginning is not very subtle,
through practice, you’ll be able to make it subtler and also
prolong its duration.
And excerpt from the book Sleeping, Dreaming and
Dying.
Francisco Varela & J. Hayward
Shambala Publication. Boston, 1992.
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