The: Bardo of Dream
Kyema! Now, as the bardo of dream appears, I should, by giving up the dullness of unconscious corpse like sleep, With awareness and without distraction enter the true nature And, recognising dream, transform its manifestations and practise the clear light. Do not sleep like an animal! Practice which unifies sleep and the direct state is important.
What is to be understood by the bardo or intermediate existence of dream?
Now, in the daytime, the phenomena of relative truth appear to us. They are the appearances based upon delusion. Tomorrow we will again meet phenomena of relative truth. Our sleep lies in between. It sometimes happens in sleep that we dream. The dream scenes that appear to us are also based upon delusion. Since they appear between the phenomena of yesterday and those of today we speak of an intermediate existence, the bardo of dream.
Similarly our perceptions during dreams are not truly existent. If we dream for instance of a huge, blazing fire, what is the cause of the fire? Wood. This wood is, however, not present. But if the cause of the fire, the wood, is not present, then how does the fire come about? The dream fire has no true causes or conditions. It burns, nevertheless, in our dreams. It bums up all the wood, it burns me and everything else. It is a dream event without true existence.
Sometimes we dream about terrifying animals. We come across tigers, lions or poisonous snakes and develop great fear. In the meantime however, our body is in bed. There are not really any tigers or lions. Nevertheless in our minds there is fear and we experience the suffering as if we’d really come across tigers or lions. In the absolute sense, however, the tigers and lions do not exist.
For as long as we still have not destroyed our taking-for-real of the phenomena of relative truth, they will appear to us as truly existing. We hold them to be things which are really able to bring us harm or to help us. The same is true for a dream in which we come across frightening dream objects. For as long as we have not woken up from the dream, our experiences appear to us as reality, and we experience direct fear.
The line of transmission stemming from Jowo Atisha when he brought the teachings to Tibet was called the ‘Kadampa’
(Practice Instructions of the Buddha’s Word). The reason for this designation is that with a closer examination we find that the words of the Buddha represent genuine instructions for practice, and should therefore indeed be put into practice. The teachings described above are also instructions for
practice. That means that the appearances of the bardo of the natural place of birth are the relative truth and from the absolute point of view are not truly existent. Our dreams, the appearances of the bardo of dream, are also not truly existent. In the sense of the Kadampas, the point is to put these teachings into practice
How can we put the bardo of dream into practice? The appropriate instructions are contained in the teachings of the transmission lineage that begins with the Mahasiddha Tilopa. They are known as ‘The Profound Path of the Six Yogas of Naropa’. The instructions of dream yoga are contained within them.
In general four situations through which a human can go in the course of a day are described:
The condition of being awake is the present situation with all its appearances. The instruction to use the waking condition on the path is contained in the yoga of the illusory body. It teaches the method of meditating that all appearances of this life are like illusions or dreams.
The second situation is that of deep sleep, a phase of sleep in which we have no dreams. The instructions for using deep sleep on the path encompass the meditation on clear light.
In addition to deep sleep there is, within sleep, the phase of dream. This phase is known as the dreaming condition. The yoga of dream is the method for bringing dream onto the
path. The dream appearances, based upon delusion, are brought into the meditation here.
The fourth situation is the union of man and woman. The instructions of tummo, the inner heat, and certain subdivisions of this practice, are in order to bring that situation onto the path of practice.
Dream yoga is the method of recognising dream as such whilst dreaming, in order then to alter the dream pictures which are based upon delusion. If we practise dream yoga successfully we become able to visit the pure lands of all the buddhas and bodhisattvas. There we can ask them for dharma teachings,
for empowerments, and receive special instructions. We can also go to certain places, for example to India, to Bodhgaya or to the place where our lama is staying. It is similarly possible to visit the lower realms of existence such as the hells in order to understand the manner of such a birth and the suffering of the beings there. These abilities can be developed through the dream yoga.
Karma Lingpa, the discoverer of treasure texts who discovered the Tibetan Book o f the D ead or Liberation through Hearing in the Bardo, also possessed the ability to practise dream yoga. He had a son who, at the young age of eleven went into retreat and performed meditation on the goddess Vajravarahi for
seven days. He died at the age of about fifteen. With the aid of his yogic abilities, siddha Karma Lingpa visited the realms of the bardo in a dream, and found his son, who was at that time still in the bardo. “Tell me of your suffering in the bardo,” Karma Lingpa asked him, “tell me of your fear”. “Yes,”
replied the son, “I do indeed have a little fear and suffering. But since I had previously practised Vajravarahi for seven days, I am protected from great fear and from great suffering.” Karma Lingpa gave him the following advice: “Look at the true nature of the mind, and enter into a pure realm.” But his son
replied: “In my last life I died prematurely, so therefore, in keeping with the Buddha’s teachings, I’d like to keep working and to be of use to all beings. So I’d like to be bom either as a human again or in the realm of the gods.” Karma Lingpa agreed. “If you want to work for the benefit of all beings
and of the teachings, then make appropriate wishing prayers and through their strength take on a birth on earth.” His son was later born as a great bodhisattva in human form, who made it his task to spread all the treasure texts rediscovered by Karma Lingpa.
Another discoverer of treasure texts, Urgyen Chogyur Lingpa, who wrote extensively on the Vajrakilaya dances, also had the capability to practise dream yoga. In his dreams he visited the pure land of Guru Rinpoche, the Copper Coloured Mountain. He stayed there during an offering feast of Vajrakilaya, where the Vajrakilaya dances were also performed. Later he was able to pass these on to his students.
These are examples of the great temporary uses to which a successful practice of dream yoga can be put. A further benefit is the ability to recognise the appearances of the bardo for what they are after ones own death.
The Root Verses of the Six Bardos:
Kyema! Now, as the bardo o f dream appears, I should, by giving up the dullness o f unconscious corpse like sleep,
With awareness and without distraction enter the true nature
And, recognising dream, transform its manifestations and practise the clear light. Do not sleep like an animal!
Practice which unifies sleep and the direct state is important.
Now, as the bardo of dream appears,
I should, by giving up the dullness of unconscious corpse like sleep
As the bardo of dream appears, we should neither fall under the influence of dull sleep nor into unconscious distraction. Whoever falls into dull sleep, sleeps unconsciously like a corpse, without the slightest attentiveness. One should give up this kind of unconscious, corpse like sleep.
With awareness and without distraction enter the true nature
Instead one should put the instructions of dream yoga into practice, and with attention and without distraction one should remain in the true nature of the mind.
And, recognising dream, transform its manifestations and practise the clear light.
Recognising a dream as such and freeing oneself from the dream’s delusions allows the dream appearances to be transformed. With this method one trains oneself within the state of dreaming in the yoga of clear light. The dream must first be recognised for what it is, then the transformation of the dream appearances becomes possible. In this way, for example, I can allow my body to give rise to a hundred further bodies. If I am a lion in my dream, I can transform myself into a tiger. These are all the activities of the clear light of dream.
Do not sleep like an animal!
Aji animal does not possess the capacity to practise dream yoga. Whoever constantly sleeps unconsciously behaves in sleep like an animal.
Practice which unifies sleep and the direct state is important.
In this line ‘sleep’ refers to the condition of sleep and ‘direct state’ to immediate presence, the truth of dharmata, in other words the meditation of the true nature of the mind. The unification of sleep and the direct state is the meditation of the true nature of the mind in immediate presence. One should be able to maintain this meditation in sleep.
