The Lesson of the Snoring Man

Have you ever noticed how judgmental we can be? Oh, we like to think we aren't. We like to say that we are such wonderful people because we don't judge on physical appearance, religious beliefs or whatever discerning feature some 'other' might have. But if we're being honest about it, we're always pretty judgey - a word my students might use, as in: 'Stop being so JUDGEY!!' - even if we're checking ourselves constantly and not allowing thoughts turn into words or actions.

I was delighted to hear that my best friend, a senior Vipassana teacher and a meditator in this capacity for over twenty years, is judgey. She thinks it's hilarious, and one of her favourite games is to sit at the airport (she travels alot to meditate and teach) and watch her mind do that judgey thang. Like: 'Oh my god - is she really wearing beige socks with those shoes?' 'Why would you say that to your little child, that's mean' 'oh gosh - he's so fat, what must he eat to get like that?' and 'leopard print? with that dress? Oh dear!'. I guess I was delighted because it made me normal - it reinforced the understanding that the human mind judges. It's what it does. No need to think we are being terrible meditators or bad people - thoughts come, thoughts go, and some of them are harsh and critical just as they are praiseworthy.

My husband laughs and asks me if I've got my internal clipboard out. We used to talk about it when we did Bikram yoga years and years ago. If you haven't heard of it, it's yoga in a 40 degree room. It's hot and sweaty, and 'invented' by Bikram Choudry who tried to patent his 26 asanas and 2 pranayam sequence, fancied himself a bit of a guru (in leopard skin pants) and was accused of sexually assaulting students that came along for his teaching training. Anyway, all that was on the periphery as we were going through this yoga obsession together. It did teach us a lot at the time - we were both pretty stressed from our jobs so this practice helped us out alot at the time.

The intense heat was actually a way to focus - if you focussed on how hot and sweaty you were and how you were never, ever going to make it through the 90 minutes of Bikram's torture chamber, as it were known, you'd be a crying puddle on the floor. The great thing about that sweat is that no one sees you crying. It's likely just sweat coming out your eyeballs. And most of us knew that you couldn't look sideways because if you focussed on the person next to you, you were going to start losing your balance, or the ego was going to get involved: 'Oh, my camel pose is so much better than hers! Why can't I get my leg straight in padungasthana? And god she looks hot in yoga pants - shit, my ass looks awful, I hope the person next to me isn't looking at it!' and so on. And then my internal clipboard would come out. 'Why is that person in the front row - they can't even do a backbend right! Why does she keep wiping herself with that towel? It's distracting, and she's just making it worse! Does that man HAVE to grunt when he's doing it - it's not porn! And ew - why didn't he wash his feet before class?'.

I think sometimes it's about power - if we feel superior, that give us this wierd kind of pleasure. Like that 'I know better, I wouldnt do that' kinda thing. That can sometimes hide the pain or suffering underneath: 'I'm not good enough/he's causing me suffering so me feeling superior gives me my power back'. Be honest here. Think about a time when you've got indignant, irritated, or annoyed at what someone is doing. Cutting you off at the lights. Being dishonest at work. Not wiping the toothpaste off the bathroom sink again. The politician that is clearly corrupt. There's always an underlying suffering underneath it all.

This brings me to the snoring man.

The snoring man is the guy in the yoga room who just as you slip into the fields of eternal consciousness lets out a huge snore because he's fallen asleep. The snoring man is the heavy breather next to you when you're trying to concentrate, or the woman whose perfume is really strong on the train, the colleague at your office who eats kippers at lunchtime, the person in the queue at the supermarket who can't find their credit card and is holding everyone up, the person who always parks just over the parking line so your car doesn't fit, the husband who knows the door to the meditation room is shut so I MUST be meditating, but still yells out: 'ARE YOU MEDITATING?' after slamming the front door shut, or the toad that brushes against your leg in a tent in Portugal (if you've missed that#mindfullife in joke, click here - you won't regret it).

The snoring man is a blessing.

Wait what? How can anything that makes me irritated, annoyed, rattled, angry, anxious, nervous or whatever it is I'm feeling be a blessing?

Because it teaches us, time and time again, to monitor our reactions. It's not that these people (or toads) are inherently evil or just irritating. It's that we are causing our own suffering by reacting to them in such a way. The snoring man is an opportunity to deepen our practice, to understand that we have the ability to respond in a way that we choose. It's an opportunity for self knowledge - to know what makes us rattled and inquire into why that might be, so that we can change it to ease our own suffering.

To just breath and sit and think: oh, I am judging rather than identifying so strongly with this perceived injustice is a really interesting process, and one that serves us much better in the long run. The key is to recognize what our mind is doing and how that causes strong sensations in the body, and sitting with it until it passes (because it always does). It's when we really recognize that we're judging ourselves, others or a situation and that judgement is causing us pain or suffering, that the suffering eases somewhat, or in many cases, entirely dissipates.

Just please don't snore next to me in savasana, or I might throw my water bottle at you.

Only kidding. I'd like to think I'm a little more enlightened that that. Just.

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