Tarab Institute International 4 July 2013 Ancient Tibetan Dream Wisdom Tarab Tulku Rinpoche1, 4 July 2013 Keywords: Unity in Duality – Dream 1Geshe Lharampa/Phd, Founder Unity in Duality and Tarab Institute International Correspondence: [email protected] Tibetan dream work has an extensive history protectors. As a Tibetan child I simply listened to incorporating pre-Buddhist folk religion, Bon and adults talking about spirits and protectors, I took Buddhism. Tibetans who experience problems part in their rituals from the age of one, where I with Nature spirits use dreams to resolve these, in was enthroned in my monastery in Kongpo as the addition to consulting with Oracles. The use of reincarnation Lama Tarab and from the age of spirits and oracles is entrenched in Tibetan four I started to lead those rituals, one of the roles culture; there is a State Oracle, and each person of the Lama. It was therefore natural for me to has a birth spirit or protector spirit, which helps deal with spirits both in Dreams and in the waken the person throughout his or her life. When people state. were disturbed by a negative spirit, they would call on their helping spirit, and whether this When I was ten or eleven my main teacher, occurred in the waken state or dream state made Ven. Kensur Gyaltsen Rinpoche, started to little difference. This facility of working with formally train me and three other Lamas in how to spirits in the dream state still prevails amongst work with the dream state. He did not teach us the Tibetans today. complicated formal practices of the Dream Yoga, but a simpler method. This was visualizing Tibetan Buddhism developed an even more Manjusri (the Deity of Wisdom), repeating his sophisticated system of working with dreams and mantra before going to sleep, and when in the the dream state, but still incorporating some dream state we would experience Manjusri and features of the Folk and Bön traditions. This ask him the questions our teacher had prepared for started with the transmission from North India to us. We were then expected to wake up with an Tibet of The Six Yogas of Naropa, Suggasiddhi’s answer. Six Yogas and Neguma’s Six Yogas. The Six Yogas belong to the Tantric tradition, and several We did this for about a month, asking Tantric works describe working with dreams and questions about different people’s health and so the dream state. Tantric dream work is connected on, every night on going to sleep. At the end of with attainment of lucid dreaming and mastering this time Kensur Rinpoche told me I had special the dream state especially for spiritual purposes. abilities for working with the dreams in the dream state. He must have told some of his other As a Tibetan Lama I was able to work with students too, because many people started to come dreams from an early age. In the beginning, I was to me asking questions about their health, how to strongly influenced by the Folk religion way of survive specific illnesses, and what to do in dealing with harmful spirits by calling my certain situations. I took their questions into my 1 Tarab Institute International 4 July 2013 dreams and tried to find answers, to gain clarity I found that many practices from both Sutra about their situation through my dreams. and Tantra can be used to heal our normal weakness experiences of ourselves, especially Kensur Rinpoche kept me busy taking Dream work, Energy work, methods using the questions into my dream state each night to find Death process as well as the final Death-like answers. The next morning I would tell him the experience. Practicing these methods and answers and he would teach me to interpret them. meditations can radically change our problematic I did this every day for about three years. When I experiences of reality, and thereby change our was thirteen I received the formal teachings of the negative way of experiencing and dealing with Six Yogas, including the Dream Yoga. So from our environment. Some of the important methods this time on I started to practice the Tantric way that I find most useful for transforming ourselves of working with the dream state, attaining the full in our normal lives are contained in the Ancient abilities of lucid dreaming, using the dream state Tibetan Dream Wisdom. for spiritual development. I continued the dream work alongside many other practices as well as In Tibet we did not have dream workshops, my formal studies for the Lharampa Geshe degree we had spiritual practices, we also trained in the in Buddhist ’science of mind and phenomena’, dream state, and we had the ancient ways of psychology, metaphysics, which I had just dealing with dreams drawn from the Folk religion completed when I was twenty four, and had just and Bön. However, I started to give dream fled Tibet. workshops in Europe at the end of the 1970’s. First I was asked to give a workshop on Buddhist It was under the circumstances of being in the psychology and psychotherapy at one of the first prison camp not knowing what would happen that International Transpersonal Conferences. I I seriously started to find out how this precious attended this conference in Lapland, north Finland knowledge I had received could be practically with my teacher, the former Kensur Rinpoche, useful not just for strict spiritual development whom I had invited to Europe. Subsequently I alone but also for everyday purpose for everyone was invited to give workshops at Esalen in at any stage of development. America by Stanislav Grof, I was also invited to Brazil and to various European countries. When I came to the West in 1962 and since I have tried to discover the best way to use the great Many of our unpleasant dreams arise because richness of Buddhist ’science of mind and our basic problematic mental pattern of vulnerable phenomena’ and practice that anyone despite self-references appears in the dream state. So, if belief and culture could benefit from. I wanted to we can deal with these dream appearances as they find out how normal people living in the West arise in the dream state, we can contact and could use the universal aspects of Eastern wisdom change the underlying patterns, which otherwise in their everyday lives. So, my guideline was how rule our lives. Therefore, the main practice I will people could practically benefit themselves in introduce is how to work directly with problems normal life from what I had learned in Tibet. I in the dream state. knew straight away that dream work, in particular in regard to transformation of one’s problematic These are old shamanistic methods and structures, of which the dreams are often an methods deriving from the Dream Yoga, and expression, could be useful for everyone. presents a very deep way to work with one’s problems. Essentially you resolve problems by fighting, transformation by means of dual 2 Tarab Institute International 4 July 2013 methods or by means of non-dual methods. Of The shamanistic tradition trains you to go course this is not as simple as it sounds. In the consciously into the dream state without the dream you must first attain lucid dream abilities, specific meditations suggested in the Buddhist otherwise you cannot transform the basic mental tradition. Tibetans grow up believing that in the patterns manifesting in this state. waken state we can contact a similar state as the dream state, raising our energy to a vivid However, if we have not yet attained lucid presence, whereby we have access to so-called dreaming skills, I am suggesting that we can work magical powers. This is part of our culture, so we in an imagery dream state. In this way we recreate know it is possible. and re-enter the dream, which is manifesting the problems you wish to transform. This imagery You will not find the dream work presented work is helpful, but the quality depends on how this way in either the shamanistic tradition nor in deep we can enter the imagery dream, how real it the Buddhist Tantras, but all aspects presented becomes to us. Particularly for transforming the here can be traced back to one of these ancient mental patterns using non-dual methods, we need traditions. I developed this particular way of to attain a deep imagery dream state to unite with working with dreams, specifically to enable the adverse object. anyone, despite his / her beliefs or cultural connection, to be able to transform their Once a student is firmly established in lucid problematic structures by themselves in a radical dreaming or in the imagery dream, I introduce way utilizing the ancient wisdom still available. transformation methods, which are methods drawn from the ancient shamanistic tradition. I do When I started teaching this Ancient Tibetan not actually introduce working with the spirit Dream Wisdom, and in this connection presented world, but some of the methods I use are based on the underlying philosophical / psychological the underlying knowledge of the ancient methods. theory, I noticed the importance to deeply engage The deeper non-dual methods of transformation in the philosophy and science of mind in order to are inspired by Tantric methods, which enables us understand the reality we experience and in order to reach our essential, basic energy in order to free to develop oneself. your-self from the problematic structures. Due to the importance of this connected These non-dual methods of transformation are understanding, I decided to make this material connected with the death process and the final available to people who are seriously working on state of death.