Hello Bhante, from some of your videos I have seen that you have said that not sleeping is healthy.
I'm confused really.
Isn't sleeping for at least a few hours per day very useful for both physical and mental health?
Please explain.
In most cases, yes.
It's really a function of your state of mind.
If you
If your mind is in a chaotic state, then you need more sleep to take time out and to calm down.
On the other hand, the sleep state of a mind that's in chaos is less restful and
Well yeah, so even more so because the sleep state of a mind that is chaotic, the mind that is distracted, the mind that is turbulent, the sleep state of such a mind is less restful.
And so it's actually exponential in a sense, or it's not just an inverse correlation, it's not one for one.
A person whose mind is calm, first of all, needs less sleep because they need less time to recuperate from the mental activities and even the physical activities which are generally more restful and more calm and more peaceful.
But also their rest time is more restful.
So they need exponentially, to some extent, exponentially less sleep as a result.
So there's no one answer.
You can't say more sleep is better or it's important to get so many hours of sleep or more sleep is always better for everyone, less sleep is always better for everyone.
But a restful mind is better for everyone and a restful mind needs less sleep exponentially.
So if one's mind is perfectly balanced
and one's situation is such that one doesn't have
it doesn't engage in activities that will disturb that sense of calm, then there is no need to, there might be no need to sleep at all.
So in the case of Chakupala, this monk who didn't sleep for three months, and that's not a unique case, it's actually a sort of a practice where people will not sleep for many days, but
You have to understand that they're in a state where their minds are so peaceful, so clear, so calm, that they don't really need the sleep.
What would you need the sleep for if your mind and your body are rested?
the body doesn't need to lie down necessarily if it's calm if it's in a in a restful if you train it to be in a restful state you'll be able to sit still and so on and certainly the mind doesn't either the brain doesn't either if the mind is calm so it has all to do with one state of mind