Dharma No.9

After dinner, it is advisable to spend time reading good books that are helpful to gain wisdom. Around 9 – 9.30p.m, if you drink a glass of water, the digested food will move into the blood. Around 10 follow the dharma of rest. By that time food will be digested and so the stomach, intestines, liver, pancreas, etc., will also relax with you. This is possible only if you had dinner before sunset. If you are very hungry, drink water with honey, but don’t eat anything. At midnight, the excretory work begins. Now your day’s is complete.

Dharma of Rest

The dharma of rest doesn’t mean sleeping in an idle way. Every living thing must have a certain amount of work and a certain amount of leisure. Before electricity was invented, people rested at night. Now we work day and night. But our tired body needs some rest.

If we work for twelve hours and rest for twelve hours, our body becomes energized. When we take rest, however, only our hands, legs, nerves, joints and bones are refreshed. The parts that work constantly also need rest. Those parts, for example, are the intestines, liver, and pancreas. If we don’t give adequate rest at night, they cannot digest our food effectively. They cannot battle against microorganisms. So we become sick. Can we work properly for one day if we missed sleep the previous night? Does this not also apply to those parts like the liver? Rest doesn’t mean stuffing our stomach until midnight and then sleeping happily. Rest means charging the internal parts, which can then successfully discharge waste material.

This dharma of rest helps us fulfill the dharma of fasting. If these parts require rest, how can medicines provide us that rest? Do you think we can buy this dharma in the market? It is high time we realize medicines cannot rejuvenate us. They may further deteriorate us. So let’s hurry up. If we don’t open our eyes, we will be at the last stage of life at an early age.