Zen, zazen and awareness in sleep/lucid dreaming as a practice

[Jundo]

The future of "Dreams on Demand" ...

Dream-shaping tech from MIT channels suggestions into your dreams

MIT scientists have figured out how to manipulate your dreams by combining an app with a sleep-tracking device called Dormio. In their new study, the researchers were able to insert certain topics into a person's dreams, with some pretty bizarre outcomes.

To do so, the researchers at MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces — a group that develops wearable systems and interfaces to enhance cognitive skills — used a technique called targeted dream incubation (TDI).

Prior studies have shown that during a rare dream state known lucid dreaming, in which a sleeper is aware that a dream is taking place, dreamers can use that awareness to consciously shape aspects of their dreams. TDI takes advantage of an early sleep stage, known as hypnagogia, to achieve a similar result (though not quite "controlling" dreams outright) ...

During hypnagogia — a semi-lucid dream state that occurs during the onset of sleep — TDI introduced "targeted information" to a sleeper, "enabling direct incorporation of this information into dream content," the scientists wrote in a new study, published in the August issue of the journal Consciousness and Cognition. They conducted dream experiments by performing "serial awakenings" during daytime napping sessions in 25 participants.

Subjects first recorded audio prompts in an app, such as, "remember to think of a tree" and "remember to observe your thoughts," and then prepared for sleep, according to the study.

A hand-worn sleep tracker monitored the subject's heart rate, electrical changes on the skin surface, and the amount their fingers were bent or relaxed, to detect when a sleeper entered hypnagogia and was therefore "open to influence from outside audio cues," said lead study author Adam Haar Horowitz, a doctoral candidate in MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces Group.

... "Simply put, people tell us whether the prompts appear in their dream," Haar Horowitz said. "Often, they are transformed — a 'tree' prompt becomes a tree-shaped car — but direct incorporation is easily identified."

The scientists found that 67% of the subjects' dream reports mentioned dreams that incorporated a tree. "I was following the roots with someone and the roots were transporting me to different locations," one participant recalled. Another mentioned "a tree from my childhood, from my backyard. It never asked for anything." The same subject, in later awakenings, described "trees splitting into infinite pieces" and "a shaman, sitting under the tree with me, he tells me to go to South America."

...

Creative brainstorming would likely be the most immediate application for targeted dreaming, Haar Horowitz said. But as many of the mechanisms that control sleep and dreaming are not well understood, it's too soon to say precisely how nudging a dream's content or achieving a state of awareness while dreaming could directly benefit a sleeper in other ways, he added.

"Every benefit shown to be correlated to dreaming deserves an experiment on whether it can be causally shown to come from dreaming," Haar Horowitz said. "This ranges from past work on nightmares and PTSD to current work on language learning in sleep, or creativity and eureka moments in dreams."

https://www.livescience.com/dream-ma...n-machine.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Seishin]

sat lah dreamt

[Jundo]

Seishin, I dreamt that you would post this ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX45pYvxDiA

Gassho, J

STLah

[Inshin]

Sat

[brucef]

In my Tibetan Buddhist days, I was taught that the Vajrayana practice of dream yoga was primarily a means of preparing for the Bardo, that transition state between rebirths. By learning to function in the dream body, we learn to function in the bardo body after death, thus helping to ensure a good rebirth (or even enlightenment). I was therefore taught it as an integral part of the whole karma/rebirth package that I used to believe in 100%.

These days though, I don’t know.

Gassho
Bruce
Sat lah

[Inshin]

In my Tibetan Buddhist days, I was taught that the Vajrayana practice of dream yoga was primarily a means of preparing for the Bardo, that transition state between rebirths. By learning to function in the dream body, we learn to function in the bardo body after death, thus helping to ensure a good rebirth (or even enlightenment). I was therefore taught it as an integral part of the whole karma/rebirth package that I used to believe in 100%.

These days though, I don’t know.

Gassho
Bruce
Sat lah

I found Tibetan practices to difficult, to much foreign visualisation for me. What fascinates me is the possibility of cultivating awareness in sleep and dream in a similar way we can do it during the day. Being aware of getting lost in internal storytelling, daydreaming, emotions etc, being open awareness during sitting zazen, noticing thoughts passing by - similarly we can be aware and notice that we are asleep and dreaming (the contents of lucid dreaming and what we can do with it is not that important - the lucidity is) and maybe possibly in a dreamless deep sleep we can notice open awareness...

Gassho Sat

[Tomás ESP]

I tried to do dream yoga for some time while I was practising in a Tibetan Sangha. The few times I was actually lucid during the dream state I woke up the next day much more tired than usual and I even had a hard time sometimes to distinguish reality from dreaming. I feel that sleeping is a sacred act, in the sense that our whole body needs to rest. No need to mess with consciousness in our sleep.

Gassho, Tomás
Sat

[Jundo]

I tried to do dream yoga for some time while I was practising in a Tibetan Sangha. The few times I was actually lucid during the dream state I woke up the next day much more tired than usual and I even had a hard time sometimes to distinguish reality from dreaming. I feel that sleeping is a sacred act, in the sense that our whole body needs to rest. No need to mess with consciousness in our sleep.

Gassho, Tomás
Sat

I tend to agree in the Zen world as well, in which some folks go to extremes with sitting sometimes. I posted this elsewhere this week, about Sawaki Roshi, Buddha love him, and his extremely sleep deprived Sesshin, his successor Uchiyama Roshi, and his successor Okumura Roshi's "Sanshin" group in the USA. From an essay by Okumura Roshi,

"Sawaki Roshi's emphasis was on zazen. He and his students held monthly sesshin, during which they sat 50-minute zazen periods from 2 am to midnight, with three meal breaks. From midnight to 2 am, no one carried the kyosaku and practitioners could sleep for those two hours sitting there on their cushions."

"Uchiyama Roshi also decided that human beings need a certain amount of sleep in order to maintain mental health, so his sesshin schedule allowed for 7 hours of rest rather than two hours' dozing on the cushion. Under this schedule, he said, there was no excuse for sleeping during zazen. He did not change the 50-minute zazen and 10-minute kinhin periods, and these still make up the pattern of practice at Sanshin. ... [At Sanshin,] The day consists solely of fourteen 50-minute periods of zazen, with three one-hour meal periods and about six hours of sleep."

Some monks, especially in the Rinzai traditions (although some hard core folks in Soto too as shown above) undertake the practice of sleeping in the Lotus Posture (from p. 193 here, describing the practice in Korean Son [Zen] Rinzai monasteries):

https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=hF3sDwAAQBAJ&q=lying+down+sleeping#v=snippet&q=lying%20down%20sleeping&f=false

Sleeping in a sitting position without ever lying down (changjwa purwa) is one of the twelve ascetic practices sanctioned by the Buddha,23 which
he recommended for developing vigor and for counteracting the hindrance of sloth and torpor. Most masters have tried this practice themselves and recommend it for particularly intensive periods of meditation. In Korea, most monks who cultivate it simply sit on their ordinary sitting cushion, perhaps allowing their heads to nod as they sleep. The supports and straps that were so common among Chinese monks who engaged in this practice were never used in Korea, so far as I know; Koreans told me that if you were going to undertake this practice, you might as well do it right or not even try it. Leaning against the wall when trying to sit up is also discouraged: touching the cold mud wall of the typical Korean building is considered to be extremely unhealthy, causing everything from colds to arthritis.

Most monks who decide not to lie down to sleep often do so for only limited periods, one month to one retreat season being the most common. Some monks claim to have done it for much longer. Songch'ol sunim, the Son [Zen] master at Haein-sa, is well known not to have lain down to sleep for fourteen years during his training, not even deigning to lean against a wall to rest. One older monk I knew, who was the succentor of the meditation hall for a winter retreat at Songgwang-sa, had continued with the practice for a number of years and said that it made him feel more energetic. Sleep, he felt, was like a drug that only numbed the spirit and he always encouraged other monks to cut back as far as possible on the number of hours they slept. The only concession he made to his advancing age was to allow himself to lie down when he was traveling; otherwise, he always sat up. Occasionally, a group of two or three monks might make a vow together never to lie down in the meditation hall, as a kind of a mutual support pact.

As with so many other ascetic practices, monks who have slept sitting for long periods all say that the first month is particularly trying, but that later the difficulty gradually subsides until finally one actually feels more energetic. But many monks I have talked with questioned the efficacy of never lying down over long periods of time. They pointed out that eventually there is so much accumulated tiredness in the body that one tends to fall asleep whenever one is sitting, rather than just for a few hours each night. Then meditation suffers, as sitting degenerates into a convenient excuse for sleeping all day long. These monks advocated that it was better in the long run to keep to a regular schedule of three or four hours of deep sleep, which give one the rest one needs to meditate without indulging in recumbency. From my own observations, monks who were practicing never lying down tended to nod off during meditation, suggesting that their critics had a valid point. Sometimes they even fell forward, their heads resting on the floor in front of their cushion, snoring.

Incredibly, the Koreans also engage in a grueling week of seven days without sleeping at all (my research indicates that it is a few days short of when serious brain damage can set in) ...

During yongmaeng chongjin, the monks in meditation hall do not sleep for seven straight days, breaking from their practice only for meals. ... The hope is that several days of sleeplessness will apply enough pressure on the meditators that they will be able to have a genuine breakthrough into their hwadu [Koan word or phrase]. Just before yongmaeng chongjin begins, the Son master tries to impress upon the meditators that the only way they will be able to survive the week is to remain concentrated at all times on their hwadu ... By sheer force of will, and an acute sense of embarrassment at the prospect of being forced to drop out of the retreat, I was managing to maintain at least some semblance of practice during the first couple of days. But after the third day, even this trace was lost. I had degenerated to the point where I could no longer tell whether I was asleep or awake. I remember several times being totally confused as to whether the guard carrying the stick was actually hitting me, or whether I was dreaming the whole thing. During walking meditation I might as well have been walking in space, so ungrounded and amorphous did I feel. I was not alone in that. During one walking session, one of the other monks fell asleep while rounding the corner of the room and walked straight through one of the wood-and-paper doors along the side of the hall. He was rudely awakened as he toppled onto the wooden veranda outside. At the end of the retreat when we were finally allowed to sleep, I collapsed at my seat, utterly exhausted. Although we were supposed to awaken at three in the morning to begin anew our regular meditation schedule, I could not be roused. The monks left me laid out on my cushion and sat and walked around me. It was not until just before the late-morning meditation period began at eight that I finally awoke. Fortunately, in subsequent retreats my practice had matured to the point where I could maintain extended periods of concentration on the hwadu. Then it really was quite remarkable how effective—even almost refreshing, in a bizarre sort of way—such intensive practice could be. (p. 189)

While I believe that Zazen can substitute in some ways for sleep (my personal experience during a few sleep deprived Sesshin), I find the above extreme and unhealthy. I believe that people engaged in Shikantaza should sleep healthy amounts, e.g., normal sleep of 7 or 8 hours.

Gassho, J

STLah

(Sorry, ran way too long without resting here too)

[Jundo]

PS -Even in Soto monasteries, sometimes folks would sleep in the Lotus Position. In order to accomplish this, they would put a stick under their chin, and loop a rope from the ceiling under their arms. They used a special wooden support called a "Zenpan" to hold the chin up.

"Zenpan" description here:

https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=smNM4ElP3XgC&pg=PA389&lpg=PA389&dq=%22chin+rest%22+zazen&source=bl&ots=ZLtt1aC0fq&sig=iQHgegc98emRx0klcgoLti7d5sc&hl=en&ei=juIyTojFLPHnmAX3gpTxCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22chin%20rest%22%20zazen&f=false

[Bion]

PS -Even in Soto monasteries, sometimes folks would sleep in the Lotus Position. In order to accomplish this, they would put a stick under their chin, and loop a rope from the ceiling under their arms. They used a special wooden support called a "Zenpan" to hold the chin up.

"Zenpan" description here:

https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=smNM4ElP3XgC&pg=PA389&lpg=PA389&dq=%22chin+rest%22+zazen&source=bl&ots=ZLtt1aC0fq&sig=iQHgegc98emRx0klcgoLti7d5sc&hl=en&ei=juIyTojFLPHnmAX3gpTxCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22chin%20rest%22%20zazen&f=false

Wow.. it’s a stone trow’s away from the gruesome practices performed by the monks who used to mummify themselves in Japan... Some of those mummies I believe actually still have the rope tied to them..

[emoji1374] SatToday lah

[Inshin]

The reasons for so called "Zen sickness". I wonder why such drasctic methods that in a way lead to changes in brain and "artificially" alerted consciousness are seen as noble but ingesting psychodelic plants in it's original form (I don't mean drugs that lead to addiction) are seen as unwholesome?
Gassho
Sat

[Jundo]

The reasons for so called "Zen sickness". I wonder why such drasctic methods that in a way lead to changes in brain and "artificially" alerted consciousness are seen as noble but ingesting psychodelic plants in it's original form (I don't mean drugs that lead to addiction) are seen as unwholesome?
Gassho
Sat

Well, most Zen teachers that I know reject both.

A little experimentation is fine, but such practices as extreme sleep deprivation or drug use ... usually found in some extreme form of practice ... are frowned upon. Running or weight lifting is also a good activity, and maybe a marathon or pushing oneself now and then ... but some people can go to extremes there too. All in moderation and in its place.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Inshin]

[Rich]

I think that awareness excludes dreaming, So you rely on intuition or visions.
I think itÂ’s possible to have dreamless sleep and maybe even some kind of awareness of sleep but itÂ’s not something to strive for.
Just sitting is enough.

Sat
🙏💜

[Erik]

Hi Ania,
I had a period of a couple years around 20 years of age where I would spontaneously lucid dream almost nightly. I was quite fascinated by that state of consciousness, being aware during dreaming, and would record my dreams upon waking, which I believe supported the skill, recognizing and returning to that state.
Some years later, after having been studying some Buddhism and meditating off and on, I picked up a book called The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, a Tibetan trained in the Bon tradition. Rinpoche wrote "If we cannot carry our practice into sleep, if we lose ourselves every night, what chance do we have to be aware when death comes? Look to your experience in dreams to know how you will fare in death. Look to your experience of sleep to discover whether or not you are truly awake."
This struck a chord with me, sort of validating how I felt that my experiences were valuable. It made sense to me; why not utilize all those hours usually spent in unconsciousness, meditating, aware. I began to do some of the practices that promote lucidity, both from the book, and other techniques I had learned of elsewhere. They worked to varying degrees, mainly depending on how much I applied them. I never achieved a steady, relaxed state - I was always flying around and exploring/creating the rich and unbelievably realistic inner world.
Then busy life found me neglecting much of my inner pursuits, I did not actively seek to promote the state, and my lucid dreaming became quite infrequent.
Today, they occur here and there, and are always interesting, but not necessarily supportive of our shared goals here. Though, I still believe the state has great potential, in that it is a huge chunk of time where you can meditate, if you can train yourself to do so in that state (which I think is very possible if you can resist the urge to fly! I imagine that having an established zazen practice would be supportive of attaining lucid dreaming.
Thanks for the reminder and wishing you waking dreams,

Gassho,
Erik