Guide Illusions Gate: What we see, depends on the clarity, with which we look

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The text tells us that the Buddha used his superhuman powers to see what his student was doing and, out of compassion, flew into the cave to help him. Entering the cave this way does not make much noise anyway! Let us stop here and rejoice in the fact that we are not alone. A mind affected by sloth and torpor, we learn from this story, is not a hopeless case. Sloth and torpor, sleepiness or low energy are all very common experiences well known to the meditation practitioner. The myth of Maha Mogalana reassures us that sleepiness does not necessarily indicate lack of motivation.

In this context, however, I would like to start from the beginning by looking into this physio-mental condition. Sleepiness may be a result of two different sets of conditions. The first is lack of sleep or rest; it is, therefore a physical condition with potential mental repercussions.

We are sleepy and tired because we are tired. Sometimes it looks as if meditation makes us tired. When the body and mind are kept busy and hyped-up we may not even notice this accumulated tiredness. It may happen when we finally go on a holiday, fall ill or practice meditation. As it drops, we feel what has been buried underneath — a thick layer of tiredness. There is a lot of moss in the pond of our body and mind. Meditation may, in this case, serve us as a stop sign, an inverted wake-up call. We may eventually get the message and try to find a better balance in our life, a balance that takes into consideration the body and its needs and not only the mind with its greeds.

However, we often have to hit the wall of tiredness pretty hard before we are willing to change. We are so stubborn and short of compassion towards ourselves, or we just lack the required imagination for changing habits and patterns.

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So we may know we run ourselves down and still do it for a while. For this reason, it is crucial to see how tiredness comes about and how it conditions the mind. The experience of tiredness can be quite pleasant. One feels a sense of lightness and ease both in the body and mind. We may feel a bit spaced out when the intensity, density and demands of our ab normal endless stream of thoughts eventually slows down.

We may even be aware of the shift in the mind as we actually drift into sleep: thoughts become more random, less coherent and often fascinating, original and amusing. People often misperceive this state to be a deep relaxation or meditation. In relaxation and meditation the body does relax significantly; mussels ease their tension, the metabolism slows down and the breath becomes slow and shallow.

Yet — the mind is utterly sharp, alert and focused.

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The thinking processes as well as the mind itself are seen vividly and clearly. The pleasantness of tiredness is also to be aware of. As discussed before, desire and clinging often follow pleasant feelings. Pleasure and relaxation are indeed very much liked effects of meditation. In a beautiful metaphor the Buddha describes a person searching for heartwood for his use.

This person does not know what heartwood actually is- his knowledge of the heartwood is merely second handed. So he collects leaves, barks and branches, mistakenly assuming this is what he needs. Using the wrong materials he fails to create whatever he needs. So it is with the spiritual life; it brings many benefits- in the same way a tree give lovely leaves, branches and so forth. But it would be a mistake and a great shame to take them as signs for achieving the final goal and drop the search all together. Sleepiness is not totally and entirely pleasant; the Buddha often reminds his listeners that whatever is conditioned is subject to change and therefore is Dukkha- actually or potentially unsatisfactory and unpleasant.

When we feel tired we simply want to lie down and sleep. With sleepiness, therefore, there is a strong desire.

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And like with any desire, not being able to fulfil it is potentially painful. Some years ago there was a rather clever advert for a soft drink. A guy goes to a pub every night, sits at the bar and orders the same soft drink — Kinley. He sits there for sometime and leaves without ever touching his drink. With these, as any other desire, all we are really looking for is its end. So it is with tiredness; being aware of sleepiness as a desire to sleep gives us a chance to see the dynamic of desire, craving and clinging. In seeing these patterns and tendencies lies the potential for liberation from unconscious grip.

Watching tiredness and the way we handle it can teach us a lot about the mind and our relationships with it. You may misread, misunderstand or write the wrong thing in the wrong place. In your working environment you will only or so one would hope! Tiredness makes us vulnerable and reactive. We are not on the guard; we may misunderstand, overreact or get off the track altogether. Another relationship we can watch is the one between body and mind. A key concept in Buddhist thinking is the one of dependently co-arising.

Things exist only in and due to relationships with other things. A mother only exist in relation to a child, trees only exist due to the contact with air, earth and water, thoughts only exist on the base of mind faculties and so on — everything coexist depending on conditions. On the other hand, when we see things for what they are, which is the same as seeing them in the context of what conditions them we can appreciate them without delusion and clinging; meeting them without becoming bound by them.


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Tiredness, like all phenomenons is impermanent. It comes and goes like everything else.

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In turn, tiredness supports the appearance of some mental states like desire, negativity, agitation, anger and hurt. But because tiredness is one of there conditions it is not the same as these mind states. In other words, when we are able to see the causality of body and mind, we are enabled to create space between them. We can be very tired and yet neither miserable nor angry. This is a truly liberating insight, especially for those of us spending so much of our life being tired.

Realizing only this level of freedom is enough to opens another non-existing locked gate on our way to happiness.

So far we have looked at tiredness as a physiological phenomenon and its effect on the mind. At times, we feel tired and sleepy, the hindrance known as slot and torpor is well present in our meditation, despite the fact that we are not lacking sleep and are actually not physically tired. Yet we drift off; we nod, yarn and fall asleep.

We can call this a secondary sleepiness, an acquired slot-like behaviour. This kind of sleepiness is there to hinder or cover over something else.

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The bodily sensation may still be the same and yet when we investigate, discriminating body from mind, causes and conditions we see that sleepiness follows an unpleasant sensation, emotion or thought; it is an escape mechanism. Applying the principle of dependently co-arising again, in a reversed order, we chase back what came prior to sleepiness, rather than identifying what follows it.

Seeing sleepiness as a result of an unpleasant feeling is the key. Chasing back our thoughts, feelings and emotions we realize that a split second before we dozed off, a memory triggered an unpleasant emotion such as shame, hurt or frustration.

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Alternatively, we may discover that it was some bodily discomfort or even mild boredom. Aversion can take many different forms — subtle or gross — but, unless we see it with clarity, we will automatically try to escape it.