I always think that sleeping is in a way a “small death.” Hence every night we face a “small death;” all these small deaths train us for the “big death,” and we thereby gain knowledge of how to die.

–excerpted from a teaching on sleep by the Venerable Gedun Tharchin, a Lharampa Geshe from Ganden Monastic University, reprinted from the Buddhist perioidical Snow Lion. Gedun Tharchin advocates sleeping on the right side with your right hand directly under your face. Unfortunately, I don’t do this. I sleep on my back. How do you sleep, and do you see the death connection? Seems like we’re more connected to, and engaged by, the sleep-death similarities as kids.