眾生無邊誓願度
煩惱無盡誓願斷
法門無量誓願學
佛道無上誓願成

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Dharma Teachings

27 Jun 2020    Saturday     2nd Teach Total 2429

In dreams, is there discrimination by the five consciousnesses?

The realms experienced in dreams are all subjectively imagined realms, all mental sense-object (dharma-viṣaya) realms; there are no relatively more real real-form five sense-objects. Because the five sense-objects are lacking, the subjectively imagined realm is incomplete and deficient, and the mental objects discriminated by the solitary consciousness (mano-vijñāna-eka-citta) alone are not very clear—they are approximate, extremely illusory and unreal. Therefore the mind consciousness and the manas cannot discriminate very clearly, and mistakes are inevitable; sometimes there are especially many and especially great errors, often mistaking one thing for another. In dreams, discrimination by the manas is dominant; the manas has weak discriminating wisdom toward unfamiliar realms and lacks accurate judgment, so what it discriminates is unclear and indistinct.

If there were five sense-object realms in a dream, the five consciousnesses would participate in the discrimination, and then it would be no different from being awake—there would be no dream state and no sleep.

——Master Sheng-Ru's Teachings
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