Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The “fire” thought-experiment — how shouting “fire” can wake a deeply sleeping person, and which consciousness is responsible — anchors this 29-minute discussion by Khensur Rinpoche on Buddhist psychology of sleep and mind. He explains that both deep sleep and meditative concentration share the same mechanism: the sense consciousnesses withdraw into mental consciousness, leaving the body unresponsive (illustrated by pressing a pin into a sleeping person’s hand). He then draws out the key difference — in meditative concentration the mind can fix on any object without distraction, whereas sleep simply obscures it. A student asks which level of attainment ends the need for sleep altogether; Rinpoche answers: the eighth bodhisattva ground. The session closes on waking with no external trigger — sensing danger without sound or smell — which Rinpoche identifies as clairvoyance, a form of mental consciousness. Best suited to students with some background in Buddhist mind-science.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 19 AK 1988-11-17.mp3
UUID: 513cd54e-f213-4b48-a955-a20376cde47f
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Awareness and Knowledge 1988-1989 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1988-11-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 29.0 minutes
Words: ~1,184
I have I have to think about it. I don’t know what you have to think about. Rinpoche was saying that the sleep becomes lighter. And as the sleep becomes lighter, then hearing consciousness becomes operative as the hearing becomes lighter. As is but I I was arguing, why does the sleep become lighter?
You know? Or I, you know, was really going through many examples. Somebody yells, you were just sleeping one hour and you were sleeping very deeply and someone yells fire. Why do you wake up? You know?
Or somebody shakes you. Why do you why does your Sometimes it takes a certain amount of time before you use Mhmm. I’m just been going for a while. Yeah. So which consciousness is it when you you wake up suddenly with the start when something is happening?
And you which? Is that the yogic? She says not for me. You suddenly mom, you suddenly wake up. Done it, but say it’s sort of a tragedy or something, and you you go you wake up, you know, and you it’s just at the right moment.
What consciousness consciousness is that? Just at the right moment. So that’s a mental direct perceiver. Okay. I just wondered what state one needs to achieve so that one doesn’t need to sleep.
Is it is it if one could meditate, you know, like in the sense where all the senses aren’t operating? Is is that the stage that one doesn’t need sleep anymore? So when somebody attains the ability to get this meditative concentration. When they were able to withdraw all the sense consciousness withdraw, also the mental factor of sleep withdraws into the mental consciousness. One does not need sleep.
The factor of sleep has been withdraws along with the sense consciousness. So this meditative concentration and sleep are similar in the fact that when either one is present, then the sense consciousness withdraws into the mental consciousness. When asleep, then the sense consciousness withdraws into the mental consciousness. When you’re in meditative concentration, also the sense consciousness withdraws into the mental consciousness. When you’re in this meditative concentration, you can just set your mind on any object, and it will remain on it.
You won’t be distracted from that object. So when you’re falling asleep, the sense consciousness are beginning to withdraw from the different parts of the body, and they sort of collapse into the mental consciousness. That’s why everything becomes black. And then as you wake, they begin to move back to their place. So a sign of the withdrawal of the of the sense consciousness is that, for example, if you, someone gave you a coin and you were holding a coin in your hand, as you fell asleep, the body sense consciousness would begin to withdraw into the mental consciousness and your hand would slowly open and you would drop the coin.
Your your sense consciousness, your bodily sense consciousness would become inoperative. So this was a sign that you dropped the coin, that your sense consciousness was withdrawing from your hand. This would be a sign that your body sense consciousness withdrawn from your arm and you could, in the time of deep sleep, you can take a pen and stick it into his hand, and he can’t feel it because the body sense consciousness has withdrawn from his hand. And as you begin to awaken, it again begins to radiate out into the different places in your body. My question was, which stage did you need to attain to not need sleep?
Yeah. So has that been answered? No, I ask her that right now. Remember. Chitang.
Chitang. When you meditate, if you meditate or just in general? Just just so that some people, some some yoginis never sleep. What stage of meditative attainment would require that? You’re talking about people who meditate are you real or just some, know, insomniacs or some people just don’t need sleep.
I know that there’s somebody who are like a richest stage where they don’t need sleep. I was wondering with the what stage they reach where they don’t need sleep. Yogi is in yogini. Not not not. So the eighth ground, having attained the eighth ground, you do Is that the the the the the the the the Yeah.
Eighth. Eighth. You don’t need to sleep. The sense consciousness becoming inoperable, is that synonymous with the object appearing but not being a brand new? Is it synonymous?
Yeah. Synonymous? Synonymous. So, for example, at the time of deep sleep, then there’s not this awareness to which an object appears that is not ascertained because there is no sense consciousness at that time. Then how do you why do you respond to somebody screaming fire?
No. When you’re yeah. That’s what that’s what we were arguing. Due to this person yelling fire, the sleep becomes lighter and the consciousnesses become operative and return to their objects to do their work. This is the point I was arguing before, why does the asleep become lighter?
Does it always become lighter? Sometimes you wake up with the lighter. In what case? I think I’ve done it. I’m sure I’ve done it.
I’ve woken up or something. Yeah. No. Just some some like, you wake up because you think something’s wrong, and there’s no there’s no sense object. But that and then that would be I think that was answered before that was mental direct perceiver, but it would have had no sense cause, no cause.
That’s still direct mental perceive even though I can’t directly see why the sleep becomes lighter because it’s not through sort of some sound perception. Why does the sleep become lighter? No. It doesn’t why does it become lighter when there’s no no sound perceived, no external, but is is that’s still the direct mental perceiver. But what is the cause of perceiving when when it’s what would be what would make sleep lighter then when there’s no sense?
In general? There could be various reasons why sleep becomes lighter. It could be just either through habituation or by intention. For example, somebody is just habituated to sleep a specific number of hours, and then when that number of hours has passed, they automatically their sleep becomes lighter. Some people have the intention, I’m going to wake up at a certain time tomorrow.
And due to the force of that intention, it causes their sleep become lighter. Some people sleep more than they need, and then their sleep becomes an obscuration. Their mind becomes more and more obscured. He’s he’s citing some of the various reasons why sleep could could become lighter. Yeah.
But that wasn’t my question. My question was directly when there’s some form of disaster, like fire. It was sighted that someone would shout fire and then it would become lighter but sometimes one wakes up just because of some sensing of the fire that’s got no external sense precipitate. So this could be a, you know, a type of clairvoyance. Clairvoyant is a mental consciousness.