Practice Library

Dreaming of Reality: Sleeping, Dreaming & Dying in Tibetan Buddhism

Seven days of teaching with Lama Alan Wallace connecting lucid dreaming research with the Tibetan practice of dream yoga.

Modern scientific research into lucid dreaming draws a sharp distinction between the waking state and dreaming, and it has developed practical methods for inducing lucidity, namely recognising that we are dreaming while we are dreaming. The ancient Buddhist contemplative tradition of dream yoga points out deep similarities between the waking and dreaming states, encouraging us to become lucid at all times, throughout life, the dying process and the bardo. To fully awaken to the nature of experience is to be a Buddha, an Awakened One, and this is the ultimate aim of dream yoga. Across seven days of teaching recorded in 2019, Lama Alan Wallace works through the connection between lucid dreaming and dream yoga, drawing out the presentations of the dreamlike nature of reality found across the schools of Buddhist philosophy and culminating in the Great Perfection. He also teaches the daytime and nighttime practices of dream yoga themselves. A good deal of the retreat is given to the ground those practices rest on. There is sustained instruction in shamatha, from settling the mind in its natural state through to awareness of awareness and shamatha without a sign, and a vipashyana enqui

What this course covers

• Where lucid dreaming research and Tibetan dream yoga agree, and where they part
• Daytime dream yoga: state checks, dream signs and the three ways we are dreaming
• Nighttime dream yoga, falling asleep lucidly, and false awakenings
• Shamatha, from settling the mind in its natural state to awareness of awareness
• Searching for the mind that observes, and Padmasambhava's pointing-out instructions
• The dreamlike nature of reality across the schools of Buddhist philosophy
• What materialism cannot explain about consciousness

Sessions

1. D1S1 - Are You Human? The Three Poisons and the Substrate 100 minutes
2. D2S1 - State Checks and Dream Signs 100 minutes
3. D2S2 - Falling Asleep and Becoming Lucid 65 minutes
4. D2S3 - What Materialism Cannot Explain 99 minutes
5. D2S4 - The Third Balance: Vividness 43 minutes
6. D2S5 - Evening Questions on Mind and Memory 89 minutes
7. D3S1 - Free Will, and the Three Qualities of a Student 107 minutes
8. D3S2 - Generic Ideas and the Second Instant 42 minutes
9. D3S3 - Three Ways We Are Dreaming 98 minutes
10. D3S4 - Thoughts in Real Time, Emotions Only in Hindsight 66 minutes
11. D3S5 - False Awakenings and Dream Karma 94 minutes
12. D4S1 - The Sautrantika View, and the Instruction to Bahiya 95 minutes
13. D4S2 - Causality Without a Mechanism 60 minutes
14. D4S3 - The Space of the Mind 91 minutes
15. D4S4 - Introspection and the Black Box 63 minutes
16. D4S5 - Why Shamatha Cannot Be Skipped, and Questions on Dying 82 minutes
17. D5S1 - Watching Thoughts Like a Cowherd 96 minutes
18. D5S2 - Shamatha Without a Sign 55 minutes
19. D5S3 - Awareness of Awareness 88 minutes
20. D5S4 - Probing the Mind as Agent 71 minutes
21. D5S5 - Prospective Mindfulness, and Questions on Karma and Free Will 87 minutes
22. D6S1 - Looking for the Observer 92 minutes
23. D6S2 - The Grand Finale of Shamatha 62 minutes
24. D6S3 - Looking for the Mind That Thinks 87 minutes
25. D6S4 - Searching for the Mind 63 minutes
26. D7S1 - Padmasambhava's Pointing Out Instructions, and Innate Ignorance 92 minutes
27. D7S2 - Pointing Out Pristine Awareness 59 minutes
28. D7S3 - Nighttime Dream Yoga 80 minutes
29. D7S4 - Open Presence and the Rainbow Body 87 minutes