Manas Discerns All Dharmas Within and Beyond Dreams

If the state in a dream can be linked to the state outside the dream, it indicates that the manas can discern all dharmas both within and outside the dream. Moreover, it is the manas that first discerns the state of the external reality, becomes particularly attentive to that state, transforms the external realm into a dream, and allows consciousness to participate in discerning it.

Although a person's six consciousnesses cease during sleep, the manas can still rely on the Tathāgatagarbha to discern all dharmas. The manas can even hear the sound of Dharma teachings from an external tape recorder, but its wisdom for discrimination and discernment is not particularly strong. Being interested in the teachings, it generates a dream for consciousness to discern the Dharma within the dream. However, the manas does not discern the external state very clearly. Although the dream is related to the external environment, there are still some discrepancies, indicating that the manas has not fully comprehended many states.

From this, we understand that the manas is aware of all dharmas within the six dust realms whether awake or asleep; the key lies in the degree of detail and accuracy of its discernment. For matters the manas has been extremely familiar with since beginningless time, discernment is very swift and precise. For less familiar matters, discernment is slower and less accurate, with more errors, resulting in dreams that differ somewhat from reality.

When I first encountered Buddhism, one noon at home, a video about liberation rituals was playing. It showed several Vajrayana masters performing liberation ceremonies for herds of cattle awaiting slaughter in Tibet. The number of cattle was immense. The liberation ceremony at the beginning was very solemn, while the subsequent slaughter scene was extremely gruesome, with rivers of blood and terrified cattle crying out pitifully. The video played for about half an hour to an hour. As I was not yet a complete believer in Buddhism, I fell asleep while it was playing. While asleep, I could still hear the sound from the video, and then a dream emerged. The dream was identical to the content of the external video—wherever the video played, the dream followed. I tried to wake up midway but couldn't, even though I knew the video's content. The dream presented bloody scenes and the cattle's agonized cries; some cattle even knelt before people.

This dream was entirely generated by the manas. Although asleep and unable to perceive through the six consciousnesses, the manas was very interested in this matter and thus produced the dream, transforming the external objectively perceived realm into mental images for consciousness to discern. The manas could simultaneously access both the internal and external states—it knew the external video content and also the internal dream. The dream vividly depicted the scenes of liberation rituals and cattle slaughter, with the states inside and outside the dream being almost identical. I was mentally aware of the continuous unfolding of these scenes one after another, yet I simply couldn't wake up.

When dreams are unrelated to external reality, it also indicates that the dream content reflects matters the manas was interested in, preoccupied with, or attentive to during the day, which the manas then manifests as dreams at night. As a man thinks, so he dreams. The manas remains attentive both day and night, hence dreams emerge. From dreams, one can gauge a person's level of spiritual practice, so some dreams still hold certain significance.