Lecture Notes on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (Pitāputrasamāgamanasūtra) (104)

When we hear a beautiful sound and feel very comfortable and happy, this is actually the same as dreaming—both are illusory and unreal. When we hear beautiful music in a dream and feel delighted, this is even more illusory and unreal. The dream state is an Image-Only Object, a realm conjured up by the manas through its imputed nature (parikalpita-svabhāva). Relying on the manas's craving and attachment, the tathāgatagarbha directly transforms mental sense-objects out of karmic seeds for the manas to discern. Since the manas cannot make detailed discernment, it lets the mind consciousness appear to discern together with it; thus the mind consciousness engages in attention, contact, feeling, perception, and deliberation (volition) toward the music, giving rise to sensations of feeling, finding it beautiful and pleasing to the ear, and the mind becomes joyful and happy. In all this, the manas is conjured up by the tathāgatagarbha, the dream music is conjured up by the tathāgatagarbha, and the mind consciousness is conjured up by the tathāgatagarbha. Not a single dharma is real and imperishable; all are illusory and unreal, cannot be relied upon, and are neither the self nor possessed by the self.

After waking, the dream music vanishes without a trace, the solitary mental consciousness also ceases, and the solitary mental consciousness's sense of happiness no longer exists—there is not a single dharma that can be taken as real. In the dream, one hears beautiful music, sounds of praise, sees people and affairs one likes—dreams that are very delightful—but after waking, there is nothing at all. Although these phenomena appear in the dream, they are all illusory, false, and unreal. If a person takes the people and affairs he dreamed about as real, believes the dream he had at night is real, and from time to time fantasizes about it, recollects it, gives rise to grasping and craving, and remains immersed in the dream state, unwilling to come out, this person is truly foolish and without wisdom. Taking the dream as real while dreaming is already delusion and inversion; to still take it as real after waking is an even greater inversion.