ARANI SERIES
Spark 50
Sunday, December 23, 2018
MUCH SLEEP IS NOT GOOD
This danger operates on three levels
The great hero of Mahābhārata, Arjuna, is referred to as the ‘conqueror of sleep’ – Gudākesha – in the Geetā on four occasions1. He had earned that name, it seems, during his student days when he practiced archery day and night. To keep away from the bed and work hard on something is itself commendable. Are not a lot of people in this world so attached to the comfort of their beds that duty is very often their second priority? Control over sleep, when required, is thus a mark of industrious people who are fired by certain passion for excellence. Being fond of physical gratifications is the first level of sleep that is indeed dangerous.
Sleep not in para-dharma
On a second level, ‘sleep’ can mean ignorance of swadharma, expressing itself as being busy with everything else except what we ought to be doing. There are many frustrated people in this world, who run from dawn to dusk but remain discontented. They turn a deaf ear to their own conscience, which keeps whispering to them about their true calling. They are not much attached to the comfort of their beds, unlike the first category we examined before. They work hard but in the wrong place. Why don’t they change to the right place? False pride, wrong attachments and other forms of confusion keep them postponing getting down to the work that holds the promise of deeper satisfaction. Even when some friends tell them to give up their wasteful activities and move to their swadharma, they timidly say, “Well, we are not yet ready for it.” When will they get ready? When will they wake up?
Apte’s Sanskrit dictionary gives two meanings to the word ‘gudākā’ – sloth and sleep. Both these can be applied to the two levels – gross and subtle, physical and mental. Excessive attachment to pleasures of the flesh is indeed sleep, causing sloth too. On the subtle level, our mind can be asleep even though we are physically up and active.
Life teaches us lessons and we grow inwardly to realize what we must truly be doing, and what can really bring happiness to us. They say a buffalo has a very thick skin. When somebody beat a buffalo once with a stick, the animal thought somebody was beating someone else somewhere! It was only after sometime that the buffalo realized he was himself being beaten. That is ‘sleep’ figuratively.
“I throw them again and again (to fields where they get harder lessons),” says Shri Krishna2, pointing to the “School of Life” where we have no other option but to learn and grow. The compassionate Lord supplies the suitable environment and the right messages but the onus is on us to be receptive and to change for better.
Sleep not in swadharma too
Overcoming sleep (gudākā) and becoming ‘conquerors of sleep’ (gudākesha) is surely the grand plan of all spirituality. On the third and the subtlest level, we must rise from the sleep of ‘ignorance of the Self’. This means that it is not enough if we get up from ‘para–dharma’ (the domain where we do not really belong) to ‘swadharma’ (the domain where our true calling is). We must move on and wake up to ‘svaroopa–dharma’ (our true nature, which is free from doing anything, devoid of all attributes).
In the context of Geetā, Shri Krishna primarily awakens Arjuna to his true calling. The Lord’s teachings however have the higher dimension too – of awakening any of us who are ready to our true nature.
Swāmi Chidānanda
Notes:
1 Chapter numbers and shloka numbers: 1.24, 2.9, 10.20 and 11.7
2 kshipāmi ajasram – Geetā 16.19
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