Manas Discerns All Dharmas Within and Outside of Dreams

If the dream state during sleep can connect with the state outside the dream, it shows that the manas can discern all dharmas both inside and outside the dream, and that it is the manas that first discerns the situation of the real world outside the dream; because it pays close attention to that situation, it turns the state outside the dream into a dream, allowing the mind consciousness to also participate in discerning it.

Although a person's six consciousnesses cease when asleep, the manas can still rely on the tathāgatagarbha to discern all dharmas. The sound of Dharma teachings playing on the recorder outside can also be heard by the manas, but its wisdom of discrimination and discernment is not that strong; since it is interested in the Dharma teaching, it creates a dream and lets the mind consciousness discern the Dharma teaching within the dream. However, the manas does not discern the state outside the dream very clearly. Although the dream is related to the external state, there are still some differences, which shows that for many states, the manas has not figured them out.

From this we know that whether the manas is awake or asleep, it knows all dharmas among the states of the six sense objects; the key is how detailed and accurate its knowing is. If it is something the manas has been extremely, extremely familiar with since beginningless kalpas, its discernment is extremely fast and extremely accurate; if it is something not very familiar, its discernment is slow and inaccurate, with many errors, and the dream it produces will differ somewhat from reality.

When I first encountered the Buddhadharma, one day at noon my family was playing a video about deliverance rituals. It showed several esoteric Buddhist masters performing deliverance rites for herds of cattle awaiting slaughter in Tibet. There were an enormous number of cattle; the deliverance ceremony in front was very solemn, while the cattle-slaughtering scene behind was extremely tragic, with blood flowing like a river. The cattle were terrified and their cries were pitiful. The video played for roughly half an hour to an hour. Since I was not yet a complete believer in Buddhism, I fell asleep while the video was playing. As I slept, I could hear the sound of the video, and then a dream appeared. The dream was exactly the same as the content of the video playing outside—wherever the video played, the dream followed. In the middle I wanted to wake up but just could not. I also knew the content of the video; what appeared in the dream were all bloody scenes, along with the miserable cries of the cattle—some of the cattle even knelt down before the people.

This dream was entirely produced by the manas. Although the six consciousnesses could not see while asleep, the manas was very interested in this matter and so produced the dream, converting the external image-object (bhājana) representation into an Image-Only Object, allowing the mind consciousness to also discern it. The manas could simultaneously be aware of both the internal and external states: it knew the content of the video outside, and it also knew the dream state within. The dream vividly depicted the scenes of the deliverance ritual and the slaughter of the cattle herds; the states inside and outside the dream were almost identical. The mind also knew that those scenes were changing one after another, yet wanting to wake up, I just could not wake up.

When the dream has no connection with the external reality, it also shows that the dream content is what the manas was interested in, thought about, and paid attention to during the day; at night the manas produces the dream. As one thinks by day, so one dreams by night: the manas attends to it during the day and also attends to it at night, and thus the dream arises. From one's dreams one can judge the level of a person's cultivation, so some dreams still carry a certain significance.