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Buddhist Monks Sleeping Upright!
Not often you get a story on the Beeb about Buddhist practice, but here's one:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8112619.stm
Has anyone here tried this?
Namaste
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8112619.stm
A group of Buddhist monks recently emerged from four years in isolation in a retreat in Scotland, having spent their nights sleeping in an upright position. Why?
Has anyone here tried this?
Namaste
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Comments
Palzang
She slept upright all the time.....
The blurb said she lived in a cave and grew her own food. It appears that she was only sleeping in the box but not in it 24/7.
I thought I'd read that there are cases of monks staying in these boxes all the time. Might be wrong though.
I've read the book. It's quite impressive. She lived at the top of a mountain, so sometimes the people who were supposed to bring her food would forget to do it, or maybe the weather was bad.....and she'd be without food for 3 or four days.....
Talk about dedicated!
Palzang
I have to sleep upright when my back gets bad sometimes. I meditate while sitting in a sort of lotus position but I don't put my feet up on my thighs (I don't know what this position is called...cross legged? No, that's not right. Anyway, you get the drift...) and there are three pillows behind my back positioned strategically. I can sit in this position, especially if I'm meditating, for an hour or longer so when the back gets too bad to lie down I sleep sitting up. I do this about 4 or 5 nights a month depending on what I've done to aggravate the injury. Just recently I've been sleeping like this because I had to clean my room and overdid it. So for the last three nights I've been sleeping sitting up.
I'm so glad I can sit cross legged for long periods of time and that I can use that sitting position to manage the pain. I can also sit that way out in public in a lot of circumstances because people don't find it that strange. That's how I sit when I'm waiting to see my doctor. But without the pillows and sitting on a hard surface I don't last nearly as long as I do at home.
Anyhoo, that's all I have to add.
I've tried it while sitting in a chair, but never in a lotus or similar position. It's very comfortable ina chair, but I found it hard to maintain the posture after I was out. I can't stay in lotus or cross-legged position for very long because of a leg injury, but I would love to be able to do something like that. Those guys are dedicated!
~nomad
They don't stay in the box permanently, and so they have an opportunity for a certain amount of exercise. Food is prepared for them by a special cook appointed to the retreat.
I know a western lama who's done 12 years in closed retreat - and she came out of the retreat in a perfectly healthy condition with a huge smile on her face!
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Yes indeed she was!
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Thanks Dazzle,
That's more like it, although like Palzang mentioned I've also heard of those 'sealed in'.
Did the lady come out of it enlightened btw?
She certainly didn't start declaring that she was enlightened!:D
However she's a very sweet, kind, and humble woman with a lot of understanding and insight, so I'm sure the retreat must have been beneficial for her.
_/\_
<dl class="dt-break"><dt>FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:</dt><dd>We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.</dd><dt>
</dt><dt>SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:</dt><dd>House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.</dd><dt>
</dt><dt>THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:</dt><dd>Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!</dd><dt>
</dt><dt>FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:</dt><dd>Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.</dd><dt>
</dt><dt>FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:</dt><dd>Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.</dd><dt>
</dt><dt>SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:</dt><dd>We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.</dd><dt>
</dt><dt>THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:</dt><dd>You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.</dd><dt>
</dt><dt>FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:</dt><dd>Cardboard box?</dd><dt>
</dt><dt>THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:</dt><dd>Aye.</dd><dt>
</dt><dt>FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:</dt><dd>You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.</dd><dt>
</dt><dt>SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:</dt><dd>Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!</dd><dt>
</dt><dt>THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:</dt><dd>Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.</dd><dt>
</dt><dt>FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:</dt><dd>Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.</dd><dt>
</dt><dt>FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:</dt><dd>And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.</dd><dt>
</dt><dt>ALL:</dt><dd>They won't!</dd></dl>
I know, I live there.:rolleyes:
I was thinking more along the lines of the siddhis Palzang mentioned that some of these walled up guys manage to achieve. Think about it, after 50 days your bowl's jiggered and you're walled up with another 58 days to go.
You've got 2 choices; you're either a raw resource for bone mala manufacturers or you get the siddhis going. There's no grey-area here.
If I cracked it, they'd break down the wall and find me reclining on a sofa with a couple of chicks watching MTV and scoffing a pizza.
All in the interests of Dharma of course;)
Palzang
A nice part of the country and friendly people, unless you happen to be a monkey that is!
Eee, wey gerraway, man !:p
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