Dreams and sleep

31 teachings in the library are about this.

Afternoon Session Charlie Morley · 200 minutes · recorded January 31, 2026
Charlie leads two guided rehearsals of Guru Rinpoche's nighttime dream yoga practice: falling asleep as a chosen deity, head resting in the guru's lap, attention on the throat centre, and a repeated affirmation to recognise the dream state. He covers sleep position, why Chenrezig needs no empowerment, and dream planning, deciding in advance what to do once lucid. Questions touch on hypnagogic imagery and insomnia. He closes the two-day course with a dedication and retreat details.
Ignorance & Emptiness David Oromith · 89 minutes · recorded June 4, 2024
The session opens with a brief guided meditation to settle the breath, before David turns to ignorance as the root of attachment and aversion, and to emptiness, the lack of inherent existence in people and things. He uses the cup, the car taken apart and the dream state to show how things exist only dependently, not as solid separate entities. Questions range widely: perception and the shared lamp, applying emptiness when someone is hurtful, and how to love someone who lacks inherent existence.
D7S4 - Open Presence and the Rainbow Body Lama Alan · 87 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
The final session opens with Lama Alan Wallace objecting to open presence being flattened into bare attention, a practice he says a marmot could manage. A silent 24 minute period builds through shamatha and vipashyana into open presence itself. He then reads Padmasambhava on entering lucid dreamless sleep with attention at the heart, the elements dissolving as sleep comes, and how the clear light of sleep prepares one for the clear light of death, closing with the levels of rainbow body.
D7S3 - Nighttime Dream Yoga Lama Alan · 80 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Yangthang Rinpoche's pointing out instructions are completed and then practised, awareness resting in open presence, body relaxed, voice silent, mind unmodified. Lama Alan Wallace then takes up Padmasambhava's stages of dream yoga, beginning with falling asleep in the lion posture, Padmasambhava at the throat and a request to recognise the dream. Recall and vividness come first, then the dream is transformed, one thing multiplied into many. Last comes seeing through it, by jumping into a river.
D7S2 - Pointing Out Pristine Awareness Lama Alan · 59 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Lama Alan Wallace gives one more reason for his research centre, a controlled experiment on past-life recall, and Michelle Alexander's New York Times column asking what if we are all coming back. The guided practice carries Yangthang Rinpoche's root text from shamatha through vipashyana into pointing out, the mind found to be neither existent nor non-existent, its emptiness the dharmakaya and its luminosity the sambhogakaya. He closes on the Vajra Essence, the ground frozen by dualistic grasping.
D6S4 - Searching for the Mind Lama Alan · 63 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
A second pass at vipashyana, this time following Padmasambhava's Searching for the Mind: is the mind that is placed the same as the one placing it, has it any location or size, and is it an emptiness that is nothing? Lama Alan Wallace then draws out what a basis of designation is, teasing one participant over whether a waving hand counts as seeing his body. He argues that the close applications of mindfulness are phenomenology, and belong with the ontology of the perfection of wisdom.
D6S3 - Looking for the Mind That Thinks Lama Alan · 87 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Vipashyana on the nature of the mind, guided from the pith instructions of a fourteenth century mahamudra master: what colour, shape or gender has the mind that observes, and where does it arise, abide and cease? Lama Alan Wallace turns from that unfindability to how things do exist, taking the Higgs boson: in dependence upon prior causes and conditions, on its attributes, and finally on conceptual designation. He brings in Wheeler and DeWitt: no observer, and time falls out of the equations.
D6S2 - The Grand Finale of Shamatha Lama Alan · 62 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
A review fires Descartes, materialism and the Buddhist schools in turn on the way to Madhyamaka, before Lama Alan Wallace turns to what he calls the grand finale of shamatha without a sign. He guides awareness cast upward, to each side and downward through the space of awareness, then down into the heart, then released whole into space. Padmasambhava's text gives the indications of flawless shamatha, an oil lamp unmoved by wind, and warns against being introduced to pristine awareness too soon.
D5S5 - Prospective Mindfulness, and Questions on Karma and Free Will Lama Alan · 87 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
The session opens with a silent period, with a choice of methods and two combinations Lama Alan Wallace likes, earth and wind and earth and sky, mindfulness of breathing leading into settling the mind or into awareness of awareness. He reviews prospective mindfulness: resolving to notice an anomaly or a dream sign and do a state check, and catching the moment of waking so the dream can be re-entered. Questions follow on free will, whether an android could be conscious, and whether watching an affliction arise accrues karma.
D5S4 - Probing the Mind as Agent Lama Alan · 71 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Consciousness is defined as luminous and cognizant, and Lama Alan Wallace turns Padmasambhava's next phase inwards: who or what is it that concentrates and releases the attention? In the guided practice we keep the oscillation going and probe the sense of being the agent, which he says can cut through to pristine awareness. The Heart Sutra and the Diamond Cutter Sutra follow, where even nirvana is like a dream, the Dalai Lama on why that turns sympathy into compassion, and lucid dreaming as the footstool into dream yoga.
D5S3 - Awareness of Awareness Lama Alan · 88 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Lama Alan Wallace takes up shamatha without a sign, awareness of awareness, which the Buddha counted among the ten kasinas and the subtlest of the methods Padmasambhava teaches. We use an oscillation of arousing the attention and releasing it into space, and three things mean you are doing it incorrectly: distraction, grasping, and losing clarity. Conduct between sessions follows: rely upon unwavering mindfulness, picking thought up and putting it down like a knife and fork.
D5S2 - Shamatha Without a Sign Lama Alan · 55 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
A guided 24 minute practice from Yangthang Rinpoche's root text on the view, meditation and conduct of Dzogchen. Turn awareness in upon that which is aware, follow no thought of past or future, and rest loosely without modifying anything. Lama Alan Wallace then reads the Vajira Sutta, the one place he has found in the Pali canon where the outer world is questioned: the nun answers Mara's who made you with the chariot that is only a word, but leaves suffering as real as it gets.
D4S5 - Why Shamatha Cannot Be Skipped, and Questions on Dying Lama Alan · 82 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Lama Alan Wallace sets the physics notes aside and gives the rest of the retreat to Buddhadharma. He recounts asking the present Dudjom Rinpoche why hardly any Tibetans really teach shamatha, and is told they get bored and Westerners come for empowerments. Lucid dreaming that never questions the daytime reality changes nothing. No practice tonight: the hour goes to questions on karma in dreams, near death experience and dying sedated, closing with a burning coal melting through a cone of snow.
D4S4 - Introspection and the Black Box Lama Alan · 63 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Lama Alan Wallace makes the case for introspection as a science, taking William James's three-pronged psychology and the way mathematicians corroborate what only they can perceive. A silent period follows, shamatha on the space of the mind turning into vipashyana once questions are posed. He then uses Dignaga and Dharmakirti's inference of fire from smoke to argue that the objective world is a black box, and cautions with Heisenberg against granting existence to what is unknowable in principle.
D4S3 - The Space of the Mind Lama Alan · 91 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Lama Alan Wallace fills in the piece most easily overlooked in shamatha on the mind: when nothing arises, attend to the space itself. Mickey Mouse balanced on his head and the Big Dipper's imagined lines show that the space of the mind is not inside your head. In the guided practice we move from shamatha into vipashyana on where thoughts come from and dissolve. He then reads the physicist Henning Genz on real things as excitations of the vacuum, shapeless in itself until it takes on a shape.
D4S2 - Causality Without a Mechanism Lama Alan · 60 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Causality in Buddhism is phenomenological rather than mechanical: had this not happened, that would not have followed, and no bumping is required. Lama Alan Wallace points out that physics is in the same position, since nobody can picture how matter warps spacetime or how measuring one photon collapses the wave function of another light years away. In the practice we deliberately arouse a pleasant feeling, children playing, so that a subjective impulse can be watched arising and fading.
D3S5 - False Awakenings and Dream Karma Lama Alan · 94 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Thoreau on going to the woods to front only the essential facts of life, read out in full, then an unguided period, offered as half subduing thoughts breath by breath and half settling the mind in its natural state. The questions that follow take in false awakenings, one dreamer waking nine times over, and people certain they have achieved shamatha. Lama Alan Wallace gives the Buddha's answer on whether a non lucid dream accrues karma, and the experiment he wants run on where memories are held.
D3S4 - Thoughts in Real Time, Emotions Only in Hindsight Lama Alan · 66 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Settling the mind in its natural state, with a way in for anyone who keeps failing: deliberately generate a thought, Mary had a little lamb, syllable by syllable, watch where it dissolves and hold your attention there so the next arising is caught as it comes. The same is done with an image of a piece of fruit. Lama Alan Wallace explains why thoughts and images can be caught in real time while desires and emotions are only ever noticed afterwards.
D3S3 - Three Ways We Are Dreaming Lama Alan · 98 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Total withdrawal, deep into the formless absorptions, or total immersion in the world: Lama Alan Wallace goes through the two strategies and why Gautama found neither was an escape. Then twenty one counted breaths, observation of the somatic field, distinguishing sensations from the feelings we meet them with, and the same attention turned on the space of the mind. The three marks of existence follow as three dreams, one of them a cup of ginger and lemon that could never have made anyone happy.
D3S2 - Generic Ideas and the Second Instant Lama Alan · 42 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
In the guided practice we take one domain at a time, the visual field, then sound, then the tactile, then the mind, each nakedly, asking whether any of it is owned. Lama Alan Wallace names three ways of not knowing something: not paying attention, projecting what is not there, as racism does, and a blockage that hides what is in plain sight. He then gives the old two-instant account: the first gets what reality is dishing up, the second superimposes a generic idea, static where reality is in constant flux, and fusing the two is delusion.
D2S5 - Evening Questions on Mind and Memory Lama Alan · 89 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
One silent period, each person following whichever method of mindfulness of breathing benefits them most. The rest of the evening goes to written questions. Lama Alan Wallace argues that memories are stored in the substrate consciousness rather than the brain, since your apps are not stored in your keyboard. He gives consciousness two defining characteristics, making appearances manifest and knowing, and calls panpsychism, integrated information theory included, the last gasp of materialism.
D2S4 - The Third Balance: Vividness Lama Alan · 43 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
Vividness is the third quality to cultivate, after relaxation and stability. The practice is the classic Theravada one, attention narrowed to the sensations of the breath at the nostrils. Lama Alan Wallace warns that the eyes must stay soft and out of it, since focusing them on the target area brings on headaches. He then adds introspection as quality control, catching excitation and laxity, and offers counting one to ten as a speed bump for a wandering mind.
D2S3 - What Materialism Cannot Explain Lama Alan · 99 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
The Burmese method of mindfulness of breathing, attention on the rise and fall of the abdomen, chosen here to enhance stability without losing the underlying ease. Lama Alan Wallace tells how Stephen LaBerge's recurring dream monster kept coming back until he gazed into its eyes and thought, you're just like me, wishing for happiness, at which it dissolved into his heart and never came back. Most of the teaching is a case against materialism: no theory of consciousness in 150 years, and the luminous ether as his parallel.
D2S2 - Falling Asleep and Becoming Lucid Lama Alan · 65 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
In Asanga's approach to mindfulness of breathing we attend to the sensations throughout the whole body correlated with the rhythm of the respiration, relaxing more deeply with every out breath without losing clarity. Lama Alan Wallace then offers it as a way to fall asleep, practised in the shavasana until the waves of drowsiness come in, rather than reaching for medication. He goes through the three researched routes into a lucid dream, and what to do when one starts to fade: rub your body, spin.
D7S1 - Padmasambhava's Pointing Out Instructions, and Innate Ignorance Lama Alan · 92 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
The Dzogchen day. Lama Alan Wallace settles body, speech and mind, then reads Padmasambhava's pointing out instructions from Natural Liberation while we rest awareness in the space in front, without a meditative object. He separates the ignorance we are born with from the acquired kind, such as racism or materialism, and quotes one of the masters whose texts he translated in Open Mind: the awareness of which you are aware can be viewed as a ray of pristine awareness, and walking up that ray gets you to the sun.
D6S1 - Looking for the Observer Lama Alan · 92 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
The third phase on the way to shamatha without a sign, guided: we rest awareness in the space ahead with no object, then turn in upon the mind that is observing, probing closely then releasing. Lama Alan Wallace gives Tsongkhapa's pith instruction, focus on the sheer luminosity and cognisance of awareness, and grants Shantideva's point that a candle flame does not illuminate itself: awareness illuminates only the bundle just before it. Pull the observation out of observed, observation and observer, and all three go.
D5S1 - Watching Thoughts Like a Cowherd Lama Alan · 96 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
In settling the mind in its natural state, eyes softly open and the gaze vacant, we watch whatever rises in the space of the mind from the stillness of awareness, as Dudjom Lingpa's cowherd watches cattle from afar. Lama Alan Wallace reads Lerab Lingpa on what the practice yields, empty forms and a non-conceptual sense that nothing can harm the mind, and warns with the story of the student who reached shamatha and did nothing but enjoy it, before mapping the four kinds of mindfulness that lead there.
D4S1 - The Sautrantika View, and the Instruction to Bahiya Lama Alan · 95 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
The guided practice is the Buddha's instruction to Bahiya, in the seen only the seen, carried through sight, sound, touch and mental events, and we ask whether we are found by way of them. Lama Alan Wallace sets it inside the Sautrantika account of perceiving the world by way of appearances, and is precise about what is refuted: a self that is autonomous and substantial, running body and mind like a chief executive. The day's task is to notice the thought of I and check its referent.
D3S1 - Free Will, and the Three Qualities of a Student Lama Alan · 107 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
In a detailed preamble Lama Alan Wallace argues that the dispute over free will is the wrong question, and offers Shantideva's counsel to remain like a piece of wood when the mind comes under a mental affliction. The practice that follows is a fourth approach to mindfulness of breathing, from the Dzogchen side: we rest awareness in its own place, knowing itself while the breath is noticed peripherally. He names the three qualities that make a suitable vessel: open-minded, perceptive, eager to practise.
D2S1 - State Checks and Dream Signs Lama Alan · 100 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
The first full day opens with a detailed preamble: Lama Alan Wallace asks how anyone can be harmed inside a dream, and answers that we identify with what is neither I nor mine, and reify everything. A guided practice of settling body, speech and mind in the natural state follows, ending in self-knowing awareness. He then turns to Stephen LaBerge's research: the three requirements for lucid dreaming, state checks such as jumping or reading a text twice, and a dream journal to find your own dream signs.
D1S1 - Are You Human? The Three Poisons and the Substrate Lama Alan · 100 minutes · recorded January 1, 2019
The opening evening is teaching only, with no practice. Lama Alan Wallace starts from a Pali Canon exchange in which the brahmin Dona asks the Buddha whether he is a god, a spirit or a human, is told no to each, and hears the reply, I am awake. He works through the three poisons of the mind, and the dualistic grasping that is the taproot of craving and hatred, runs the ten Buddhist analogies for illusion, and lays out the substrate and substrate consciousness.

Dreams and sleep

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