Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [153]
Breath by breath, forgive others. Forgive those from the past—those with whom you no longer have contact, as well as those who are still around you. Forgive yourself. Accept others for what they are. Accept yourself totally. Let go and let be. This is wisdom working.
Breath by breath, let go of fear, expectation, anger, regret, cravings, frustration, fatigue. Let go of the need for approval. Let go of old judgments and opinions. Die to all that, and fly free. Soar in the freedom of desirelessness.
Let go. Let be. See through everything and be free, complete, luminous, at home—at ease.
With this kind of meditation, the subtle layers of who we are start to sort themselves out, and we go more deeply into the natural state—the naked state of authentic being. This is here-and-now transformation. Spiritual rebirth.
DREAM YOGA:
WAKING UP FROM LIFE’S DELUSION
We practice illusory practice in an illusory way, in order to reach illusory enlightenment and deliver all illusory beings from illusory suffering.
—TWELFTH-CENTURY TIBETAN MASTER KHYUNGPO NALJYOR
I dreamt that I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I butterfly dreaming that I am a man?
—CHUANG TSU
Although all Buddhist teachers stress the transitory, dreamlike, and ephemeral nature of this world, the practice of dream yoga is unique to Tibetan Buddhism. This is a marvelous way to bring awareness training into our sleeping as well as our waking hours. Dream yoga is somewhat similar to what Western psychology has recently begun to call lucid dreaming.
Lucid dreaming refers to the ability to “wake up”—make conscious choices—within a dream while remaining asleep. Within the dream we can transform the circumstances and ourselves into anything we can imagine. This can be an extraordinarily meaningful and profound real-life experience. The dream state is one of the bardos. Remember that what we perceive in a dream might be as real as the things we see reflected in a mirror. Many psychic powers, including clairvoyance and recall of past lives, can be developed through these sort of esoteric practices on the border between reality and illusion.
Let’s say for example, that Nancy is dreaming that she and her mother are having one of their recurrent arguments in a fast-moving car. If Nancy were experienced in lucid dreaming, she might be able to change her dream. For example, Nancy might say to her mother, “We are driving too quickly. Let’s stop arguing; let’s stop and get some ice cream and then go fly over the rainbow. We can eat our ice cream on a beach in Hawaii.” Although Nancy would be aware that she is asleep and dreaming, she would still be able to make the choice to change a little nightmare into a loving, seaside picnic.
Tibetans call this “seizing the dream.” By seizing our dreams, we can learn to play with and change the outcome of our dreams in ways that help us to realize the insubstantial and dreamlike nature of all of our experiences. We take hold of the dream, rather than the dream having a hold over us.
Tibetan dream yoga exercises can vastly help us to achieve certain benefits for both self and others. By seizing a dream we can perform spiritual activities, multiply our bodies, as well as go to pure realms of existence to receive teachings and blessings from Buddhas, transcendent Bodhisattvas, and saintly sages. In this way we train to master altered states and different ways of being, including astral travel and other out-of-body experiences; for in dreams we are less encumbered by our corporeal form, moving through the lighter, more subtle “mental body” or “illusory light-body.”
Lucid dreaming has another significant purpose: The lessons we learn from dreams often carry over into our waking life. Since our psyche in dreams is so much more light and sensitive and free from the sheath of gross corporeality, it