Insomnia: robber of clarity, attention, precision. Hence a robber of the apprehension of beauty, since the good, the true, and the beautiful can only be discerned through a disciplined and sustained concentration. This being the case, I am puzzling about why the world’s contemplative traditions prescribe so much sleeplessness. There are orders of the Benedictines whose first services begin at 3:30 AM. The monks at Abhayagiri stay up all night long once a month. When I try it, the world is simply a weary blur. I don’t much care for the beauty and the divine order because the order of the mechanism of my body and my senses is in disarray.