I’ve been trying to maintain fatigue resistance deeper and deeper below the waterline. I’m definitely making progress, becoming tougher. But I still crack, still fail. Which lets me identify design faults, hence the post.
At below waterline, willpower and focus are practically nonexistent, so you only get space for one koan, and it must be a highly efficient motivator. Any kind of “become chains” or “I am chains” koan works ok in the shallows, but fails at middle depths. It has too much pride and boast in it. Past a certain point, those sources no longer supply any emotional impetus.
So I can’t rely on the reflex of conscientiousness, or the reflex of pride, or the sting of conscience, for my motivator. What’s left? The lights of the surface world are winking out as we plunge into the deep.
Ah, but there’s still something – a fairy glow off to the right. Sure, it’s only the glow-worm lure of a lantern-jawed monstrosity. But we can use it.
In deep fatigue, the mind fractures into disconnected rambles. The inner monologue may even lose intra-sentence coherency. The situation seems hopeless.
But there is one reflex that remains – a lizard reflex, old as pain and survival. Or at least, a monkey reflex… the fear of banishment from the troupe. The emotional processing of one’s value and place in the troupe hierarchy. For eons, this has been a matter of life and death. As long as a spark of awareness remains, the brain will keep processing that core data stream.
So I wait for the little jolts of pain, anxiety, shame or uncertainty to run down that main info trunk. And when one hits, I indulge the frontal cortex’s reflex to make up a story about it, to “explain” the situation “rationally”. Then I hijack the explanation’s content, switching it to “I have chains.”
At first glance, it’s just an excuse (albeit a good one). A topical anaesthetic. But that’s camouflage over the real payload. The excuse is also the solution – the chains of limitation and suffering are the same as the chains of meditative practice. Having them means being unable to escape them, and having them means practicing them. Seeing them, naming them, is becoming aware of them, is doing them.
So the koan “I have chains” is a prisoner’s ironic answer to his depressed lament, “I have nothing.”
I think this might be the theoretical limit. I can’t imagine any “light sources” that exist deeper in fatigue than this one. It still needs testing, though, and maybe if I hang out there long enough I’ll find some ocean vent.
The next trick is making the eyes close more reliably, preventing procrastination and enforcing rest. “Eyes are a privilege” was also a pride-based koan, and fails past the shallows. “Link lids” might work better.