Night 5 · Unfolding

Medicine for the Night You Have

因病而药

日间工夫，觉纷扰则静坐，觉懒看书则且看书，是亦因病而药。

In the day's practice, when you feel scattered, sit quietly. When you feel sluggish, go and read. This too is giving medicine according to the illness.

Wang Yangming, Instructions for Practical Living (Chuanxi Lu), Part I, recorded by his student Lu Cheng

02 Tonight

Body heavy, mind bright. You've tried lying still, tried counting, tried the app with the rain sounds. Every one of these works for somebody. Tonight none of them fits, and trying them one after another has become a small job of its own.

03 How the ancients saw it

The Chuanxi Lu is a record of conversations between Wang Yangming and his students, written down by the students, a bit like a notebook kept in the back row of a classroom. Some entries are long arguments. This one is two sentences, and very practical.

Scattered, sit quietly. Sluggish, go and read. He calls it “giving medicine according to the illness.” No single practice suits every state. Which one to use depends on what is wrong right now.

Wang Yangming knew something about illness. His lungs troubled him for much of his adult life, and he coughed often, so the medical comparison was not a casual one for him.

It runs against a habit many of us have at night. We look for the one technique, and when it stops working, we apply it harder. Wang Yangming's point is plainer: see what state you are in first, then choose the remedy.

He was talking about daytime study and self-cultivation, not sleep, so carrying this into the night is our borrowing. The principle of diagnosing before prescribing travels well, though. On a bright, scattered night, the medicine is subtraction: stop adding input, sit up for a few minutes, feet on the floor. On a heavy, dull night when sleep still won't come, the medicine may be a quiet and slightly boring page.

04 One line for the pillow

First notice which kind of night this is. Then choose.

05 A quiet image to end on

A cup of warm water on the nightstand. A thin line of steam rises, bends, and thins out. By the time you notice, the cup is only warm against your palm.

Words of the night