The Dalai Lama on the Dreamless Sleep State

CONSCIOUSNESS AT THE CROSSROADS:
Conversations with the Dalai Lama
on Brain Science and Buddhism
edited by Zara Houshmand,
Robert B. Livingston, and B. Alan Wallace
more...

Dalai Lama Quote of the Week

Allan Hobson: I should like to understand what, according to the Buddhist tradition, is the state associated with nondreaming sleep? How is it experienced? What are its characteristics?

Dalai Lama: Within the Buddhist tradition, we don't speak in terms of the brain but rather of subjective awareness, and also energies as these are experienced subjectively. Within that context, a distinction is made between grosser and subtler states of consciousness associated with grosser and subtler state of energy within the body. In deep sleep, the five sensory modalities have become inactive, and correspondingly the centers associated with them have become inactive. These changes are considered relatively gross. They also take place in a sequential process of going into deep, dreamless sleep, with these grosser states of awareness going dormant and the more subtle state of purely mental awareness becoming evident.

In the mind that is untrained in meditative practice, this sequence of the mind becoming more subtle will frequently not be evident. There are eight stages in this process of going into deep sleep. For a mind that is very finely disciplined in meditation each of those stages will become evident experientially. In relation to the nondreaming sleep state, the dreaming state is understood to be somewhat more gross. And according to certain texts, there are physiological processes that correspond to these different mental states, and these are associated with subjectively experienced energies in the body.

--from Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism edited by Zara Houshmand, Robert B. Livingston, and B. Alan Wallace, published by Snow Lion Publications

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