Rating: 
Summary: One of the great books.
Review: A must read for anyone interested in their true self.We are fortunate to have this great teacher in our midst.The book is very readable,Tenzin Wangyal expresses the teachings in a form that anyone can understand.I will read this book many, many times.Truely one of the great books ever written.
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Summary: An Excellent Guide to Tibetan Bon Buddhist Practice
Review: After reading Sogyal Rinpoche's "Tibetan Book of Living and Dying", I was intrigued by the practice of "Dream Yoga", which, although mentioned and discussed several times in Sogyal's book, was never covered in any depth. "Living and Dying" didn't include any instructions in the practice of this exercise either, so I decided to look elsewhere. While glancing through the Eastern Religion section of a local bookstore, I stumbled upon this fine little volume.Wangyal Rinpoche delivers more than a guide to the practice of Dream Yoga- he delivers a guide to a complete nondual practice. The book includes meditation instructions, Guru Yoga and Dakini practices, breathing instructions, a guide to basic Tibetan bioenergetics, a little history of the Bon tradition, a brief introduction to Tantra and Dzogchen, and even a glossary filled with Tibetan and Sanskrit terms used throughout the book. There is enough here to begin a spiritual practice beyond dream yoga. To the seeker looking for a guide to Tibetan mysticism, look no further- "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep" is the perfect introduction.
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Summary: Remarkably well-written and informative.
Review: Even for a seasoned lucid dreamer like myself, this book was highly useful in offering traditional Tibetan practices for lucid dream induction, as well as various suggestions for activities to attempt within a fully lucid dream. However, what is most amazing about this book is its instructions for abiding as the pure, empty Awareness (rigpa) that is our true Self. As a Zen Buddhist, I am quite familiar with maintaining this "mirror-mind," but I usually cannot maintain it for very long, and I've never held it past the dream stage, into deep dreamless sleep. The practices in this book are helping me to change all that. Maintaining meditation practice during sleep--literally 24 hours a day--accelerates things profoundly. When the gross, manifest world of spacetime has dissolved into the subtle realm of souls and dreaming, and when even that realm has dissolved into Emptiness, your truest self shines forth clearly as the one and only Mind behind all illusory manifestation. Truly, the awareness within you that is right now reading these words is the Buddha. Your true nature is absolutely vast, silent, empty, blissful, and timeless Consciousness as Such--the source and substance of all that seems to exist. When you become identified with this Consciousness, your true Self, and not merely with the deluded, individual mind (or ego), you find yourself in a state of constant consciousness--never blinking, never fading, 24 hours a day--remaining completely "awake" even during dreaming and deep sleep. You'll have discovered your true Home--the Home you've never left, the Home you couldn't possibly leave, but a Home that you refused to admit you were in while you suffered for lifetimes in this silly dream.
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Summary: Fantastic Book - extremely well written
Review: Even though this book is about dream and sleep Yoga it contains one of the best - non-technical, non dogmatic explanations of karma I have ever read. It also has a great explanation of non-duality. The entire book is written in an exceptionally clear manner with wonderful explanations and a great glossary. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
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Summary: Ancient & Profound Wisdom
Review: I found this book philosophical, religious and profound. It's not a philosophical book in the Western sense, although Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche takes on various western thoughts and expounds the Eastern Bon view. Apparently, the Bon Tibetan view predates the Tibetan Buddhist, although both are very similar and inter-connected. I found this book truly impressive, especially where Tenzig touches on certain philosophical ideas.
The definition Tenzig states on karmic traces is profound in itself.
"The Karmic Trace is that of every action - physical, verbal, or mental - undertaken by an individual, if performed with intention and even the slightest aversion or desire, leaves a trace in the mindstream of that individual. The accumulation of these karmic traces serves to condition every moment of experience of that individual, positively and negatively." p. 215
His essay arguing against some Western psychologists who oppose lucid dreaming, I found entirely credible, more dynamic in the control needed to direct our lives both in this life and the hereafter. From pages 131-132
"Some schools of Western psychology believe it is harmful to control dreams, that dreams are a regulatory function of the unconscious or a form of communication between parts of ourselves that should not be disturbed. This view suggests that the unconscious exists and that it is a repository of experience and meaning. The unconscious is thought to form the dream and embed in it meaning that will either be explicit and obvious or latent and in need of interpretation. In this context, the self is often thought to be composed of the unconscious and conscious aspects of the individual, and the dream is thought to be a necessary medium of communication between the two. The conscious self can then benefit by working with the dream or from the balancing of physiological processes through the dream-making activity.
Understanding emptiness radically changes our understanding of the dreaming process. These three entities - the unconscious, the meaning, and the conscious self - are all entities that exist only through imputing reality to that which by itself has none. It is important to understand what is being said here. The concern that the encroachment of the conscious mind upon the unconscious is damaging to natural processes makes sense if you posit the elements of the situation as discrete elements of the individual, working in cooperation with one another. But this view understands only one dimension of the individual's internal dynamics, often to the detriment of a more expansive identity.
As mentioned earlier, there are two levels of working with dreams. One involves finding meaning in the dream. This is good, and it is the level of most of the Western psychologies that accord value to dreams. In both the East and the West, it is understood that dreams can be sources o creativity, solutions to problems, diagnosis of ills, and so on. But the meaning in dreams is not inherent to the dream; it is being projected onto the dream by the individual examining the dream and then is "read" from the dream. The process is much like describing the images and they seem to appear in the ink-spot tests used by some psychologists. The meaning does not exist independently. Meaning does not exist until someone starts to look for it. Our mistake is that rather than seeing the truth of the situation, we begin to think that there really is an unconscious, a thing, and that the dream is real, like a scroll with a secret message written on it in code that if cracked, anyone could read.
We need a deeper understanding of what the dream is, of what experience is, to truly utilize dreaming as an approach to enlightenment. When we practice deeply, many wonderful dreams will arise, rich with signs of progress. But ultimately the meaning in the dream is not important. It is best not to regard the dream as correspondence from one another entity to you, not even from another part of you that you do not know. There is no conventional meaning outside of the dualism of samsara. This view is not a giving in to chaos; there is no chaos or meaninglessness either, these are more concepts. It may sound strange, but this idea of meaning must be abandoned before the mind can find complete liberation. And doing this is the essential purpose of dream practice.
We do not ignore the use of meaning in dreaming. But it is good to recognize that there is also dreaming in meaning. Why expect great messages from a dream? Instead penetrate to what is below meaning, the pure base of experience. This is the higher dream practice - not psychological, but more spiritual - concerned with recognizing and realizing the fundament of experience, the unconditioned. When you progress to this point, you are unaffected by whether there is a message in the dream or not. Then you are complete, your experience is complete, you are free form the conditioning that arises from dualistic interactions with the projections of your own mind."
Now you must have degrees of faith to endorse this thesis, but in realty, all philosophies, religious ideals, even scientific analysis, all take in paradigms that require enveloping subjectivity to objectively observe and follow course with the particular thesis. And ultimately, besides this philosophy, written in clear, definable, educated language, it carries the childlike naïve ability in it's required faith in visualizations, verbal mantras and the very idea of existence after death.
Ultimately, it is one essay on the Mind and the Rigpa that I personally found enlightening and opening to other venues of thought. And this brings much more meaning to the act of meditation itself, as it reveals there is more to meditative concentration then the benefits in this life, but also in death to either prevent oneself from entering the bardo of becoming or handle such existence with more clarity and possibly bring forth rebirth in higher frequencies of existence.
From pages 188-191 "The conceptual or moving mind is that familiar mind of everyday experience, constantly busy with thoughts, memories, images, internal dialogues, judgments, meanings, emotions, and fantasies. It is the mind normally identified as "me" and "my experience." Its fundamental dynamic is engagement with a dualistic vision of existence. It takes itself to be a subject in a world of objects. It grasps at some parts of experience and pushes others ways. It is reactive, wildly so sometimes, but even when it is extremely calm and subtle - for example, during meditation or intense concentration - it maintains the internal posture of an entity observing its environment and continues to participate in dualism.
The conceptual mind is not limited to language and ideas. Language - with its nouns and verbs, subjects and objects - is necessarily subject to dualism, but the conceptual mind is active in us before the acquisition of language. Animals have a conceptual mind, in this sense, as do infants and those born without the capacity for language. It is result of habitual karmic tendencies that are present before we develop a sense of self, even before we are born. Its essential characteristic is that it instinctively divides experience dualistically, beginning with subject and object, with me and not-me.
The fundamental reality of mind is pure, non-dual awareness, Rigpa. Its essence is one with the essence of all that exists. In practice, it must not be confused with even the subtlest, quietest, and most expansive states of the moving mind. Unrecognized, the nature of mind manifests as the moving mind, but when it is known directly it is both the path to liberation and liberation itself.
When the conceptual mind is free of grasping and aversion, it spontaneously relaxes into unfabricated Rigpa. Then there is no longer identification with the reflections in the mirror and we can effortlessly accommodate all that arises in experience, appreciating every movement. If hatred arises, the mirror is filled with hatred. When love arises, the mirror is filled with love. For the mirror itself, neither love nor hatred is significant; both are equally a manifestation of its innate capacity to reflect. This is known as the mirror-lie wisdom; when we recognize the nature of mind and develop the ability to abide in it, no emotional state distracts us. Instead, all states and all phenomena, even anger jealously, and so on, are released into the purity and clarity that is their essence. Abiding in Rigpa, we cut karma at its root and are released from the bondage of samsara."
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Summary: This is one of the most influential books I've read in years
Review: I have just bought my third copy of this book ... I keep giving them away to friends. Written with great compassion,the author stresses wisdom of developing mindfulness in daily life as a means to understanding the states of dream and sleep. It is one of the most important books that I have ever read, and I wish to express my appreciation to the author, and to encourage everyone with an interest to read this book and to engage in the practice.
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Summary: Excellent overview of subject.
Review: i really enjoyed this book. expext alot of tibeten
buddhist type practice, i try to just mix it up with my own beliefs for instance im christian babtist so i dont visualize dikinis etc. but very insightful. recommend to everyone whether you want to improve life awake or asleep both are the same difference. some parts are soo wisely written you have to read over a couple times or so to let sink in. Most of this book is kinda like that. you should start to improve while reading this whether you take any practice into it or not.
Rating:
Summary: yes
Review: i thoughoughly ? enjoyed this book. expext alot of tibeten
buddhist type practice, i try to just mix it up with my own beliefs for instance im christian babtist so i dont visualize dikinis etc. but very insightful. recommend to everyone whether you want to improve life awake or asleep both are the same difference.
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Summary: Clearly written and surprisingly accessible
Review: I was intrigued by this book when I first saw it, but was afraid, that it was like others in this subject, difficult to understand and written unclearly. What a pleasant surprise then it was to read this book. It is clearly written, concise, with a lot of examples that we, who are not experts in this practice, can relate to. What I really like about the way that Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche writes is that no only does he want to sincerely convey difficult teachings previously not taught to the General Public (see Final Words), but he writes with genuine Compassion. The Book begings with discussions on the Nature of Dreams and their relationship to "Reality" and Karma. He also provides an introduction to breathing, chakras and the nature of dreams before moving on to the actual practice. Here another great feature of the book is the emphasis that the practice can be gradually incorporated into one's life, but that already from the beginning one can benefit greatly. I think that this is very important, because otherwise potential practitioners might be discouraged, because the practice is quite involved and requires great discipline. The book ends with elaborations on the practice as well as kind encouraging words from the author. What a pleasure it is to finally have a book that describes these important practices, which are instructions for understanding our reality, our dreams, ourselves and are preparations for our eventual death. I highly recommend this book, and am looking forward to more books by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent overview of subject.
Review: I was surprised, having found most tibetan spiritual literature to be horribly wordy and dry, but when it's good, it's great. And this book is great. I think it helps if you have some background - like the six yogas of Naropa. But maybe that's not necessary. Certainly worth your time and money if you have any interest in the subject.
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