Thank you for having me. You know, first of all, I'd like to thank Maria Kozhevnikov for this kind invitation to participate in this workshop. It really looks exciting after looking at the program to all the organizers at the National University of Singapore.

I think this kind of intercultural and interdisciplinary dialogue between humanists scientist but as exemplars is critically important, and I'm glad to be involved.

Today, my work is to stimulate a mutual slow think about how dream yoga practices might inform contemporary scientific research on the one hand. And on the other how dream research might contribute to better understanding and describing performative and cognitive dynamics of Buddhist dream practices.

My approach to this kind of intercultural and interdisciplinary work with Buddhism and science is foremost to translate language and ideas across contexts historical, cultural, philosophical, and otherwise, from my perspective, I'm translating and interpreting Tibetan language materials that propose certain ideas, in this case about dream yoga practices. I'm drawing on language and ideas and contemporary scientific thought to point out analogues and resonances of languages and ideas. For me, this is largely an intercultural translation project. Secondarily, my approach is to engage epistemic differences. My task is to draw attention to how each side formulates and articulates a given idea. However, diachronic were synchronic when synchronic this does not mean that understandings are parallel, but rather than a given idea, in this case about dreaming, is a mutual inquiry. Both sides have something to say about it. Identifying where there are convergences and conflicts allows a kind of analogical mapping, which I'll argue is not about either side being invested in what the other thinks, but more about

what we can, as third party scholars discern what each side has to say about the idea at hand. This is what makes it an epistemological project. New Knowledge can emerge when each siding is engaged in how it understands and articulates a given idea, not how each side is invested in its truth claims. I recognize that to intentionally work to avoid these taking sides in this way is to walk a tightrope.

Today, rather than offer a polished presentation, in the spirit of dialogue, I'm taking the approach of offering some raw materials about Dream Yoga for the sake of provocation, consideration and discussion. For this, I'm sticking to the letter. That is I'll be reading select passages from Tibetan meditation manuals on Dream Yoga.

To set the stage for our discussion, I'll begin with some broad strokes about the Buddhist philosophy of dreams and cognitive illusions, and how of Vajrayana practices of sleeping and dreaming align with other broader Himalayan Buddhist discourses on dreams. I'll then shift to Dream Yoga instructions which comprise the lion's share of what I'll discuss. For this the focus is passages that I've translated from the section on training and dreams. By the 17th century scholar Tāranātha from his work, the expensive plane of profound meaning, or the tongue dharma. This guidance manual cheek details practices in the sixth Dharmas of Niguma, a series of six yogic techniques attributed to the 11th century Indian Buddhist female adept Niguma. After some discussion of the descriptive structure mechanisms and operations that comprise dream yoga practices. According to these instructions, I'll zoom out to open a broader discussion on possible areas of intersection and collaboration between advisory on a Dream Yoga, the cognitive sciences, and cultural psychology.

So, forget to begin well, we'll talk a little bit about the Buddhist philosophy of dreams.

Because of the tenuous correlation between experience and language and the need for language to communicate experience, especially non normative or ineffable experiences, Buddhists have played with the tensions inherent between metaphor and real. A prime metaphor is the central Buddhist idea of Bodhi the experience of Buddhahood. As an experience, some kind of language is required is required to communicate this experience, making experience and language inextricably intertwined. As soon as language is put to work about experience to describe or articulate Buddhahood for instance,

We are one degree removed from that experience, this is evident in English translations of the Sanskrit word Bodie. The word is translated as enlightenment, a metaphor in English that means to bring light to fill with light, so as to shed darkness, body is also translated as awakenment.

a translation that is more accurately resonant with its etymological root, bud, meaning to open or awake, to wake, wake up, a metaphor that signifies waking up as if asleep throughout the Buddhist tradition to be a Buddha as metaphorically rendered, as the state of having undergone a long deep sleep when myriad delusional experiences unfolded. The dreams of samsara and by recognizing samsara to be like a dream, the dreamer awakes dream yoga practices transmute this metaphor to contemplative technique, both riffing on the idea that experiences are dreamlike as well as utilizing the material of dreams. This prime metaphor of waking from the spellbound state is used throughout Indian Buddhist literature they illustrate examples of ordinary experiences and eventually enumerated and codified into typical sets of eight or 12 similes of illusion. Similes of dream and illusion and so forth are cited in early Buddhist suttas, throughout Indian Mahāyāna literature, and became frequent tropes in the Prajñāpāramita or Transcendent Wisdom sūtras as well as for Madhyamaka and Yogācāra authors. These similes along with their dual facets of how each manifest – as either saṃsāric or nirvāṇic – become important for Tibetan developments of contemplative practices, especially those of illusory body and dream yoga. For instance, the typical set of eight similes are likened to different kinds of experiences so that a practitioner can switch similes according to change of circumstance, like changing your attire. According to the weather. These similes of the illusory indicate the insubstantial and transitory nature of experience, a Buddhist philosophy of dreams and illusions. While we might consider the theoretical underpinnings of Dream Yoga, is a Buddhist understanding of how perception of temporary tangible phenomena of ordinary experience derives from a cognitive errancy. Tibetan term is loktok, which means literally a backwards idea, in the sense of an errant cognition, the full phrase used as illusions of errant cognition loktok gyuma, referring to the perversions or erroneous conceptions about how things exist that inform perceptual processes. The suggestion is that a cognitive operation fundamentally misapprehensions and misinterprets, what we believe, to be real.

Now, we live under the influence of mistaken cognitions and produce cognitive illusions. The Tibetan word in this context tokpa, in Sanskrit, vitarka, which is a concomitant mental factor that is translated as conception or selectiveness, and Abbe Dharma literature this process works in tandem with discernment, or in Tibetan, we say Toba or the Chara in Sanskrit, to apperceive and mediate the contents of consciousness, this process of cognitive selectiveness couples with its environment through a discursive cognitive process that distorts perception, but is not perception per se. An important point here is that the Buddha's sources emphasize a cognitive errancy and see over that have perverted perceptual processes. That is, the claim is there as a distortion of perception derived from a cognitive errancy. This errancy is not necessarily due to sense organs or perceptual capacities, or even objects of perception out there in the world, being impaired or distorted, but rather that cognitive processes misinformed perceptions. In this model cognitive errancy see is due to forces of habitual tendencies, the bakchak or vāsanā, that include memories and other latent unconscious impressions that are conditionally propelled to the fore of consciousness during both waking and sleeping. These cognitive illusions derive their power of pretense and deceit from running deeply in the human organism, and are not merely habits of comfort or convenience or even preference, but our congenital creature habits that operate largely by implicit forces within the neural visceral and somatosensory

systems of the Mind Body world complex. Habitual tendencies are biased or arise based on previous moments of consciousness and conditionally triggered activities that emerge from thoughts, vocalizations and behaviors. These inveterate habits are understood to form and inform ordinary dreaming process. As an aside, I think the processes of cognitive selection and appraisal share resonances with the use of the term hallucination and predictive coding models of the brain specifically defined as everyday perceptual inferences and simulations that our brain makes constantly to predict a world and that this is one area where Buddhists can contribute fresh ideas.

So now let's look at some dream yoga practices and more specifically, while the North Star of these practices is a Buddhist philosophy of dreams, the yoga of dreaming is steered by practical methods. Tibetan authors refined the classical set of eight or 12 similes of illusion, dream and so forth. devise methods to learn how to dream, practice the yoga of dreaming, milam nodular, and trained in the oeneric life. At the heart of a Buddhist philosophy of dreaming is the idea that one can dream oneself awake. By recognizing and training and dreams, the dream yoga practitioner learns to seamlessly and intentionally traverse the liminal thresholds of consciousness so that the lines between waking and dreaming are blurred. Waking Life is as dreamlike, as dream time is real.

So what the dream yoga practitioners do in their sleep by reading a Dream Yoga instruction manual, I'm interested in discerning contemplative and performative dynamics that are prescribed for Dream Yoga. Let's keep in mind that practices of dreaming vary across Buddha's advisory on its systems. There are several phrases in Tibetan use to describe associated practices of sleeping and dreaming,

such as direct instructions on dreaming, milam menngak or milam damngak, sleep meditation, nyel gom, the yoga to be observed while sleeping, nyelwa mikgyi neljor, and so on and so forth. There's also a distinction between dream yoga practices and those of deep dreamless sleep.

Given the diversity of Dream Yoga practices described across different contemplative systems in Tibetan Buddhist literature, including including Dzokchen, Kālacakra, Guhyasamāja, etc. My focus today is dynamics Dream Yoga described an instruction manuals in the Shangpa system are the six Dharmas of Niguma. One of the most well known forms of Tibetan writing on dreams as a contemplative technique, Niguma's six fold set of practices are enter heat, illusory body, dream, radiance, transference of consciousness and the in betweens or Bardo.

While these six practices are identical to their sibling set of practices, the six dharmas of Naropa they differ in sequence in specific instructions. In Niguma’s system, the yoga of dreaming is the third of these six dharmas or yogic techniques.

In this tradition, the earliest formula for Dream Yoga as articulated by the 11th to 12th century Tibetan yogan Kyungpo Neljor, born 1050 progenitor of the Shang pakokku, who was credited with having received these instructions directly from the Guma. In his concise work, lucid lines of the six dharmas, Kyungpo Neljor distinguishes six distinct procedures for a dreamer to perform, to recognize, train, increase, conjure, transform, and ascertain objective appearances. These six procedures proposes the sink sequence for a practitioner to operationalize Dream Yoga. The guidance that we'll be reading by Tara Natha, elaborates on this pith formula

Procedures.

For our purpose we'll focus on the second procedure, training and dreams

Tāranātha begins his instruction on training and dreams by gesturing towards intentional shifts and oscillations induced throughout these practices between daytime and nighttime sleeping and waking, dreaming and habitual life. He points out that once a practitioner recognizes a dream and becomes lucid while dreaming, the next step is to train and recognizing this cognitive lucidity.

To do so the dreamer practices shifting the object of meditation. Here this is the technical term MACBA used throughout Tibetan contemplative literature to denote a focal point.

That is a point of practice, which can also mean visualization. Training in dreams involves these shifts, and letting go or attentively focusing on a given meditative object. Turn out the rights. One stability A is attained and recognizing dreams, which is the first procedure.

It is imperative to train in dreaming, which is the second procedure that we'll discuss. Furthermore, once dreams are recognized for the purpose of concentrating solely on training, cast aside the meditative object while meditating, don't regularly discard the object to be recognized. During retreat practice, recognize each night during each dream practice and repeatedly familiarize with the object of training, perform recognizing and training as a single aim, that is to say there is an oscillation here back and forth between recognizing dreams and training in lucid dreaming or Dream Yoga.

For the purpose of training and Dream Yoga, the idea is to gradually practice without a meditative object. However, in order to do this, the practitioner needs to familiarize and habituate with a meditative object or visualization during periods of intensive practice. This process of deep familiarization is training and the meditative object is engaged like training wheels, while learning to ride a bicycle. In this way, each of these practices integrate a complex interweaving of shifts between the tensions of effortful and effortless. It's about applying effort and letting go plying effort and letting go.

The first focal point that we'll discuss

the Tara Natha introduces is a visualization that you begin before you fall asleep.

In the place below, you imagine that you are on an extremely steep precipice, like being on the ledge of a cliff.

Imagine that you are sitting on the lip of this precipice in the sky, one arrows length above.

[17:36] Then suddenly look down. At that instant, I fallen asleep.

The practice is to visualize yourself elevated above the ground on a steep ledge and to look down into an abrupt it to an abyss. Abruptly, the hypnagogic imagery conjured is as if to induce a sleep star or somatic experience of sudden muscle jerks with these kinesthetic images of falling into a precipice.

instruction goes on to read. These appearances are the appearances of a dream. Since these are the appearances of a dream think, why are you afraid?

Let yourself fall down with a thump, not falling, you'll almost hit the ground. Imagine that you will vanish into things or alternatively, come higher and higher above. By flying.

Like before, sit on top of the precipice with an intense interest. in similar ways, train again and again

reminding the dreamer that the experience is a dream is recurrent throughout Dream Yoga instructions. For instance, to enhance recognition of dreams sometimes it is recommended to have someone whisper in the dreamers ear while sleeping sentences like this is a dream.

Or recall that you are dreaming.

With this recognition the training is for the dreamer to become increasingly comfortable and familiar with the dream state. The instruction is reflexive for the dreamer to ask herself why she is afraid, suggesting a degree of self awareness. The dreamer is encouraged to make choices to fall off the steep precipice and land on the ground with a thump or almost hit the ground, or to vanish, or to incrementally fly upwards like a bird flapping its wings to ascend.

The Dreamers instructed to exercise for volitional powers. instruction to sit on top of the precipice with an intense interest is significant. The Tibetan term that I'm translating as intense interest can mean in this context simply to think of yourself on top of the precipice.

However the use of this term is deliberate. The term mö or möpa, abhimokṣa in Sanskrit is used throughout the Dream Yoga instructions with the term dunpa, chanda, in Sanskrit, which shares a semantic range of meaning, interest or intention. Typically coupled each term signifies a mere difference in degree of intentional attentiveness to a focal object.

In the Buddhist Abbe Dharma set of 51 mental factors these are classified as two of the five so called Object determined mental factors the evening now, along with mindfulness, concentration, and discernment,

the term dun pa denotes the cognitive faculty to become interested or involved with a given object, a meditative object.

This involvement is understood as serve as a basis for developing enthusiasm for familiarizing with that meditative object. The term mos pa meaning intense interest is this calm in this context denotes the cognitive faculty of being able to stay focused on a given object. The process being detailed here is how awareness becomes involved with an object

of visualization to the extent that cognitive involvement increases with deeper interest and enthusiasm through training so that object is made vivid and awareness is not distracted, distracted from that focal object.

Both of these terms support the application of effort or exertion during the practice and are used recurrently throughout instructions on recognizing and training and dreams

Tāranātha continues. Moreover, another way to explain is that one body stays at the peak of the precipice, and from there, a different body that is connected by a cord of light falls,

He explains that this is an alternative method of visualizing two bodies rather than a single body that falls. In this method, one body doesn't fall to the ground but stays on the ledge while the other body falls to the ground.

Then as if there is a climbing rope made of light, that body climbs up the cliff face to the other body that sits there on the ledge.

Tāranātha writes even though this is an oral instruction. It's not spoken. Reminding the reader that practices presented and manuals can be in sometimes are different than in person, oral instructions or shell tree

on how to perform a specific practice. Interestingly, his comment is that

his written instructions include more detail than what is usually orally taught.

Actual exercising the imaginative capacity this visualization descriptively suggests that the practitioner falls off a precipice into sleep. The practice invokes visual hypnagogic imagery, sitting on the ledge of a precipice, kinesthetic imagery, feeling of falling off a cliff to induce an exercise the dreamers bodily awareness, falling through the air hitting the ground levitating, vanishing, flying, climbing a rope, embodied spatial orientation, levitating above the ground, falling down, reflexive awareness, recognizing that you are in a dream, asking yourself why you are afraid. cognitive operations of volition and discernment, deciding not to be afraid, deciding to fall deciding to fly, as well as degrees of attentional focus during dream time, sitting on top of the precipice. With this we have a sequence of visual images that are intentionally generated with increasingly heightened degrees attentive interest to train a dreamer in recognizing a dream during her hypnagogia.

A second focal point, simulating a sublime body.

The second focal point is a visualization that concerns training the body with the mind while dreaming, the practice prepares the body to be in a dream space.

At the nine gateways of the manifest body of yourself as the deity, each with magnificent natural blue light with the syllable HUM.

in all the body hair pores, the subtle and immeasurable

blue light of HUM, shines forth and pervades the inner spaces without borders.

This visualization engages contemplative techniques of the generation stage process or deity yoga, a process of imaginatively simulating the bodily self as an alternate identity, transfiguring the ordinary self into a sublime body of a deity.

The Dreamer imagines herself to embody her meditation deity. The nine gateways are the nine orifices of the body, two ears, two eyes, two nostrils the mouth, the anus, and penis or vagina. At each of these orifices of the chosen deities body, allow the dreamers body the dreamer imagines that Tibetan syllable HUM radiating blue and color. Sonic and hue vibrations of this syllable resonate infinitely throughout, so that the sound and color of these nine blue home syllables magnified to shines in the each pore of the simulated Sublime Body.

Tara Natha then reminds the practitioner to again intensively trained in this with an interest in dreaming,

reiterating the necessity of attentive engagement with the practice. He continues, from all the HUMs sent forth a chord of light. With transparent clear blue light beams like there is a blue flickering that radiates inside the body.

All these lights are subsumed and subsumed until they merge into one. Even though the interior and exterior of the body is covered, the deity is absorbed, and becomes a single ball of light.

The Sonic and hue vibrations of the blue HUM syllable radiate transparent light beams so that the simulated Sublime Body of the dreamer is twinkling, twinkling and flickering Palala

these myriad blue lights are incrementally subsumed so that the deities body inseparable from that of the dreamer, visualizing herself, becomes a resounding ball or orb of blue light. At this point, the dreamer is still simulated as the Sublime Body of the Deity in the ball of light. Tara Natha again encourages the dreamer to intensively train with interest in dreaming.

From its surface, this ball of light gradually dissolves, it gets finer and finer. It's merely a fist,

merely a thumb,

merely a little bean,

merely a mustard seed.

Finally, train until that also cannot be visualized.

Equally rest in the non conceptual mind.

This stage dissolves the visualization of the practitioner in the Sublime Body of the meditation deity. by shrinking the ball of blue light from the size of a fist until it disappears. The meditative object being visualized is let go and disappears.

Awareness rests without a conceptual reference

contemplative dynamics of this practice are manifold. Utilizing techniques of generation stage yoga practitioner intentionally simulates an alternate body. This transfigures habitual associations of bodily awareness through an

imaginary process. The practice engages dimensions of sound, color and scale to viscerally alter the sense of self image and body as subject through a sequence of visual imagery. The body is trained by the mind to become more familiar with being a dream body.

To complete this visualization, Tara Natha again reiterates

if discursive thoughts arise, he says, intensively trained with intense interest in dreaming

the third focal point is performing the dream body.

This is training in interest

or with interest intense interest.

Throughout his guidance Tara Natha emphasizes the need to train with a sincere level of interest in Dream Yoga.

This level of interest in the practice is applied to the body while dreaming.

The Wake physical body gets sick and feels pain. With a sleight of hand Tāranātha suggests that this physical body is not so different from the dream body or what he calls the mental body of a dream, milam gyi yidlü .

A mental body, yid kyi lü, is the non physical body that is experienced in the dream.

While dreaming the body is not experienced to be body as object, but rather body as subject that is one's own subjective embodied self.

This dream body however, just like the physical body is constituted of habitual tendencies. This means that the dream body is subjected to the same forces of habit, memory and mental inertia as the physical body. The instruction here is first to recognize that these underlying forces are identical and continuous across waking and dreaming embodiments. And second, to train in methods that cultivate a cognitive lucidity that retains attention to the features of the dream body. There are also physical exercises and gestures that are dream yogan trains to enhance recognition of the body while dreaming,

Tāranātha continues. Stay with your interest, right keep your focus, training being unimpeded to move upwards move downwards move diagonally move side to side across pillars, walls and the ceiling. Otherwise, enter into tiny smoke holes and so forth. precipices water fire, subdue wild carnivorous animals fly in the sky, slide on the ground, walk on top of water and so on. And some. This is how you train in the methods of being mindful.

With resolve the instruction is to return to dream time again and again to practice moving around and performing in unfamiliar ways. If the dream body becomes accustomed to walking, sit or run. If the dream body goes straight, move diagonally or in a crisscross fashion. Go through windows or skylights. Wrestle with wild animals, fly or slip and slide. The practice to is to imagine the dream body perform different kinds of activities because these activities disrupt the bodily habit patterns.

and the dreamer begins to familiarize with different somatic movements. The instruction segue from the dream body to thoughts emotions and the identity of the dream self.

More specifically subdued discursive thinking. Various types of difficulties are actually reifying attachment and these various types of

in these various types arises terror, anxiety, embarrassment, lonesomeness, every so often directly subdue whatever you encounter every so often with interest in illusions and dreams. Don't focused or get fixed, every so often reverse your meditation and think, I don't exist,

Every so often overcome unimpededly in a single instant.

While dreaming, the dreamer is encouraged to consider the life of dreams and apply contemplative methods accordingly. From time to time, the instructions suggest, encounter a thought or emotion that is disturbing and apply an antidote. Or let go or turn around a thought, or reflect on how it's a dream, or how the dream self is unreal.

These instructions are direct engagements with the waking life of the mind. As the shift to dreaming, again, signaling segways across these liminal boundaries.

As a way of concluding thoughts, I like to suggest that to have a constructive dialogue, both sides science and Buddhism must recognize that they are human enterprises and therefore deeply enmeshed in cultures.

If we are to talk about any given practice, or idea with a degree of sincerity, such as ideas about dreams, let's recognize that these ideas are entangled in contexts that are riddled with human complexities. These contexts can be metaphysical, doctrinal, poetic, empirical, contemplative, ritualized, cosmological, etc. This is to keep in mind that Buddhists' understandings of dream time and practices of dreaming emerge from a drastically different cultural, and philosophical milieu, from that of normative Western science, which continues to derive mechanical and computational assumptions from Cartesian dichotomies about the brain and the body. To unpack or at least point out these complex differences should be part of the broader Buddhism and science dialogue more than it has today. But this said, I also realized that a constructive dialogue between Buddhism and science need not be contingent on either side, accepting all of the cultural or metaphysical or methodological underpinnings of the other side to do so would be an enormous feat, to say the least.

And this is really where I think dreaming and research on mental imagery and imagination are particularly salient

intersections for for this dialogue.

But its practices of dreaming may be a particularly primary for collaborative research with neuroscience and psychology. While much of the science of meditation to date has prioritized mindfulness largely because it can be somewhat controlled and replicated in clinical settings. There are numerous areas where vaudrey On a Buddhist knowledge can contribute fresh ideas, and dreaming is certainly one of these areas. For instance, there are important discussions of the subtlety of mine across waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep states, as well as the time of death described in Tibetan contemplative literature.

There are elaborate theories of subtle body that detailed degrees of energetic and hydraulic movements in relationship to fluctuations of the breath in the nervous system, the neuroscience and pulmonary science could possibly benefit from understanding

A critical point of intersection that remains largely unexplored as the intentional utilization of imagination for self transformative means. Techniques of visualization self imaging are the forte of Vajrayana Buddhism. As we have seen, practices of conjuring, transfiguring and mobilizing mental imagery are imperative for excelling in Dream Yoga. Similar visualization techniques are part of the advisory on a repertoire, and are employed across different tantric contemplative practices, including those of illusory body and deity yoga.

Because dream is understood to be an expression of an active amount of pagination propelled by the forces of habit patterns. Linking mental imagery with dreams, the imaginative capacity of mind is deployed to induce dreamlike experiences.

But as contemplative techniques of visualization and simulation have potentially radical contributions to make about understanding dynamics of the self, body and world. This is an area of prospectively important intersection with the cognitive sciences, particularly with scientific dream research.

Though I'm only beginning to learn about the neuroscience of dreams, areas that seem particularly promising in dialogue with Dream Yoga, or those are the neuro phenomenology of dreaming, and this recent research on real time dialogue with dreamers possible first steps with such collaborations might include identifying dream yoga practices that can be replicated by dreamers, and studied empirically trained lucid dream subjects and methods recognizing dreams as well as the other more advanced practices of increasing conjuring, transforming, ascertaining object to that appearances, objective appearances. This includes training and practices to induce changes to the normatively real, like flying or walking through barriers, and training while asleep to be familiar with the seamless. The felt sense of the continuity of dreamlike experiences while awake, are part of training cognitive lucidity, and devise a phenomenological self report that, that queries elements related to the six procedures of Dream Yoga,

as well as conduct micro phenomenological interviews with dreamers, lucid dreamers and those trained in dream yoga.

Thanks so much.