PureInsight | April 17, 2015
[Pureinsight.org] The other night, I felt a little bit hungry, I forgot to discipline myself so I went ahead and ate quite a lot of food. I was very full after the meal. When I began to send forth righteous thoughts at 6, 7 and 8 o’clock respectively that night, I felt I was very sleepy. I also felt sleepy when I started to study the Fa and couldn’t concentrate my mind. I then decided to take a nap and continue to study the Fa afterwards. When I woke up, it was already past 10 PM. I then continued to study the Fa. When it was time to send forth righteous thoughts again at 12 AM, I felt sleepy again. I struggled to finish sending forth righteous thoughts and went to bed right away afterwards. Yet when sleeping, I was interfered with by the lust demon, and I even enjoyed the feeling of being admired and cared for by a member of the opposite sex in my dream. Only after I was awakened the next morning by the morning exercise alarm clock was I ashamed of the state I was in during the night. How could I have been reduced to such a situation? Eating, sleeping and desire, I was behaving exactly like the piggy character in the Monkey King story.
People use the terms such as “eat to sleep”, or “eat three times a day and then sleep” to describe someone who is lazy. There is also a relationship between one’s eating and sleeping. From the perspective of human biology, it is understood that one will easily get sleepy after a heavy meal, as the internal organs will begin to work hard to digest the food. For a cultivator, it is an attachment to be hungry for food all the time, even though one may not be picky with one’s food. As a Dafa practitioner in the current Fa rectification special period, one’s time is immeasurable in value. In many Fa lectures, Master will greet the audiences with the following phrase: “You’ve been working hard!” In the lecture “What is a Dafa Disciple”, Master says: “Dafa disciples are no doubt working very hard. And that’s because the historic responsibility entrusted to you and that you shoulder is so great, and your historic mission dictates that you must, at this critical time, shoulder such a historic responsibility.” Also, in “Fa Teaching Given at the 2014 San Francisco Fa Conference”, Master says: “When are you going to do something about it? When are you going to do something about it? Time is running out. “
With such a great responsibility on our shoulders, and with such a tight schedule, there is no excuse whatsoever for us to slack off; there is no reason why we shouldn’t work hard. We have to do the “three things” whole-heartedly every day. If we feel sleepy while sending forth righteous thoughts, it is just the same as neglecting sending forth righteous thoughts. If we feel sleepy while studying the Fa, it is disrespectful to the Fa as well as to Master. What a sin that is!
My sleepiness the other night was all caused by my indulgence in foods. Indulgence in foods is thus not a trivial issue. Ancient cultivators used to say that one should not eat foods past noon. Why didn’t I pay attention to this aspect? I said to myself: “I will have to get rid of my indulgence in foods from now on.”
I still can’t enlighten to the relationship between sleep and lust at my current cultivation level. For me, it seems that as whenever I sleep for a little bit longer, I will be interfered with by lust in my dreams. For example, whenever I sleep past the morning exercise time (3:50 AM), or whenever I decide to take a noon nap when I am supposed to do things, or whenever I decide to sleep before 10 PM, I would get interfered by the lust demon. I have always thought that I have already gotten rid of my attachment to lust. Then why am I still tempted in my dreams? A few fellow practitioners have also shared similar stories with me. If one’s desire to sleep can bring out the lust demon, such a desire is not a trivial issue. There is a particular program in the Shen Yun show in which two young cultivators are meditating. One sits quietly without being influenced by any outside activities, while the other falls asleep and then gets ruined by the lust demon.
In Shen Yun’s performances, we often see the piggy character from the Monkey King literature, and each time, piggy is shown to be indulging himself in eating, sleeping and his own desires. At the same time, the monkey king is shown fighting and eliminating demons with full of enthusiasm. I suddenly enlightened to that contained within was Master’s concerns and hints towards us disciples.
I wrote this article to alert myself! I’d also like to alert other fellow practitioners who might have similar issues. We need to be mindful of our indulgences in food and sleep. We must learn from the monkey king. We should not learn from the piggy character!
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/node/142989
