Manas Discerns All Dharmas Within and Outside Dreams

If the scenes in a dream can connect with the scenes outside the dream, it shows that the manas can discern all dharmas both within and outside the dream, and that it is the manas which first discerned the situation of the real world outside the dream; because it paid considerable attention to that situation, it turned the scenes outside the dream into a dreamscape, 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 a tape 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 so that the mind consciousness can discern the dharma teaching within the dream. However, the manas does not discern the scenes outside the dream very clearly; although the dream is related to the external environment, there are still some discrepancies, showing that there are many scenes the manas has not figured out.

From this we know that whether awake or asleep, the manas knows all the dharmas among the realms 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 over beginningless kalpas, its discernment is extremely fast and extremely accurate; if it is something not very familiar, its discernment is slow and inaccurate, with relatively many errors, and the dreamscape it produces will differ to some degree from reality.

When I first encountered the Buddhadharma, one day at noon a video about deliverance rituals was playing at home. It showed several Vajrayāna dharma masters performing deliverance rites for herds of cattle awaiting slaughter in Tibet. The number of cattle was enormous; the deliverance ceremony in the front was very solemn, while the cattle-slaughtering scene behind was extremely tragic—blood flowed like a river, and the cattle, terrified, cried out miserably. 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 still hear the sound of the video, and then a dream appeared. The dream I had was exactly the same as the content of the video playing outside—wherever the video played, that was where the dream went. 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, and some of the cattle even knelt down before people.

This dream was entirely led forth 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 externally present image—the object-aspect with basis—into a subjectively imagined realm, allowing the mind consciousness to also discern it. The manas could simultaneously be mindful of both the internal and external realms: it knew the content of the video outside and also knew the dreamscape within the dream. The dream vividly depicted the scenes of the deliverance ritual and the slaughter of the herds of cattle; the realms inside and outside the dream were almost identical. The mind also knew that those scenes kept changing one after another, but though I wanted to wake up, I just could not.

When a dream has no connection with the external reality, it likewise shows that the dreamscape consists of content the manas was interested in, thought about, and paid attention to during the day; at night the manas produced the dream. As the saying goes, what one thinks about by day appears in one's dreams by night—the manas attends to it during the day and also attends to it at night, and that is why the dream appeared. From a person's dreams one can judge the degree of that person's cultivation, so some dreams do carry a certain significance.