The second of the five great fears in Buddhism is fear of illness. In the time of the Buddha, and for most of human history until quite recently, this was a formidable fear indeed. Disease was everywhere. Infants and small children, as well as adults, were regularly taken away by cholera, diphtheria, influenza, smallpox, and other infectious diseases that today are curable or controllable. How quickly we forget that penicillin—and all subsequent antibiotics—was only discovered a little over a hundred years ago. In America and other industrialized countries where people have access to modern medical care, we live in a bubble of seeming safety.
I say seeming because the fear of illness is deep, and never far from the surface. In dharmic terms, fear of illness, like fear of death, is rooted in our ego identification with the body, and the constant low-level vigilance about threats to it which is hardwired into our nervous system. Traditional Buddhist monastic training—so punishing to the physical body, with its poor diet, exposure to heat and cold, and little sleep—is designed in part to cut through this identification with the body, so that we can see a deeper reality than ego. Such training is possible for the young and hardy, but these days people of all ages and physical conditions—including those with chronic illnesses—want to practice the Dharma. We need to find other ways.
I have been ill a lot in my life. I count ten years out of my life when I was either fighting a life-threatening illness, or weak and in recovery from one. Illness has been central to my practice life. I have had to deal with it; I had no choice. During any of my illnesses—cancer, neck injury, encephalitis—I would think, “I’d give anything not to be this way.” But I was that way, and there was no choice. Illness was a harsh teacher, but now that I look back, I know that illness also brought me gifts, not the least of which is some freedom from fear about it. When you have gone through the worst, nothing is worse by comparison. The ego is a little liberated from its anxieties.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, he is marching in the dead of winter with other prisoners of war. Everyone is frost-bitten, shivering and miserable. Occasionally someone would keel over, dead. The German guards forced them to keep going. There was one prisoner who kept trying to cheer everyone up with this litany: “Cold, this ain’t cold. Troy, New York, winter of ’36—now that’s cold!”
He kept saying this in a cheery voice, trying to distract the other men from their suffering—right until the moment he himself keeled over, dead. His litany, I’ve often thought, was a kind of mantra against fear. He knew about Troy, New York, winter of ‘36. He had had some training.
More next post on this second great fear—fear of illness.
Thank you for this; as a person who has had lupus as my companion since 1997 or so, I have to agree with you that there are gifts of training here. (I resist the idea that I am a “lupus sufferer” unless I am also a “life sufferer” in the sense that suffering permeates all and our job is to release that, release the delusion that we have to struggle against what is… I also resist saying “I am sick with lupus”—that si so, but the reality is, there are lots of germs and microbes living in and on me, in addition to this alteration of the body workings that organized medicine has called “lupus”—like the self itself, isn’t whatever sickness we have, even a lifelong chronic uncurable one like lupus, really a matter of a set of temporary conditions? “not always so” works to help me think about this.) So I say I have it as my guest or companion on this trip. Or, that’s how I’m thinking about it these days (would be glad to hear of other options that work for people).
One gift lupus has given me is the idea of continuum: we’re all mortal and will all sicken and die of one thing or another; having a clear diagnosis of lupus has helped me see that I’m just like everybody else, maybe with a little clearer label on what’s happening.
A gift related to that is compassion, of course: one feels more for the ills of others.
Another gift, probably an obvious one, is the gift of urgency that I guess many seriously ill people feel. Because I have to rest so many hours in a day, there is less time in my day for activity. With very limited hours, I have to choose extremely well which activities I will and won’t do. This has made it necessary, and now easier and easier, to think through what really truly matters to me, how the hours can be most constructively spent. I think of the evening gatha a lot more than in the evening (“let me respectfully remind you…do not squander your life”)—except it is really urgent in a daily, hourly way, with a disease like lupus. Saying no to people and things was hard at first but grows easier, and I think lupus has made me a stronger and clearer person, has forced me to examine what exactly I’m doing with my life.
I’m looking forward to your suggestions about the “other ways” we can train ourselves to not fear illness, without having to endure illness and physical suffering first.
Lucky me, I’ve never been very ill, nor suffered much pain or hardship. Not even while sitting zazen.
I imagine it’s in finding ways not to identify “with the body, so that we can see a deeper reality than ego” (to quote your blog). But we have to do this with the body, don’t we? It’s what we have.
To put ourselves into certain situations, listen “feelingly” and watch, and practice.
Yesterday I was up on a ladder cleaning out my gutters(instead of down in the gutter) and putting in screen to keep leaves out, when the ladder shifted and I grabbed onto the gutter with my left hand and at the same time tried to balance the ladder into a stable position, which I did, but my left arm stretched so far I felt like I was Plastic Man and then it hurt!
I should have been more careful, and gone slower and now my shoulder hurts…hopefully, it’s just a strained muscle…but I see how the physical pain can affect me emotionally and make me aware of my vulnerability in this life. It’s amazing that one little incident can alter what you think is going to be the direction of your life…we all know we’re not going to survive this life, but how we go through it is another mystery, too! Suffering can be an attachment that is hard for us to let go, because it implies that we associate our existence to our bodies and that is all…Of course, it’s hard to realize that our minds give us the choice of not being attached or continue to suffer…
I was accompanying my brother through his struggle with lung cancer, which did end his life at the age of 50. He was a Jesuit priest, and his spirituality completely imbued his life and his dying. One (of many) memorable moment: he was coming to terms with the reality that the treatment was not working. He was lying on a sofa, tears coming down his face. He said–its just hard. That’s all, just hard.
That really struck me. He did everything he could to stay alive, and did in fact really live until his last breath. And, at the same time, acknowledged that this acceptance of dying was hard.
He then wrote a deeply moving letter about his struggle with illness and that he was dying, and sent it out to a broad community of people whom he would not be seeing again. His way of dying was so helpful to so many people.
Karin, when I read those words, “His way of dying was so helpful to so many people,” I thought, “That is what we call grace, he was the embodiment of grace.” “Grace” is a Christian term, but there must be a Buddhist equivalent, as his life and death–and your perceptive understanding of it–are in my understanding what the Buddhist life is all about. Thanks for telling us this.
Our lives have evolved into this, time, being here now, to show compassion. And “my” illness, has been, and is – anger.
Anger breaks relationships between myself, my body and others around me. And sometimes I feel I use quiet, silence as anger, because the need exists from everyone to relate with on a level where I can help. Whereas I may be choosing to distance myself, into my own space, as silence is becoming a greed-based addiction, because without the silence a stirring is perceived which is noise based, in what “I” do not want.
I make the noise of not paying attention to the need of others to hear me listening to them, by closing a door or facing a wall, or computer screen… yeah.
I take a deep breath in, and let it out with the intention of reducing suffering, and using compassion to listen, to anger, in myself, or others.
“It’s hard” could be the mantra of everything life gives us. A lot of it doesn’t seem hard–we just go through each day. But actually it is hard. It’s hard to be a human being, fully.
Richard: when I started reading your post I was struck by several other stories of people I know about being on ladders that didn’t end nearly as well ( I won’t go into details but you can imagine). thank your arm for being there and knowing what to do, I guess.
–Lew
I await with interest the next posting on illness. My 2005 dance with Encephalitis turned out to be a blessing because it necessitated my inventing a new life for myself — a simple, quiet life, without pretense or ambition. There are still difficulties, (it doesn’t seem as though my recovery is as comlete as Lew’s) but most importantly, I know where to turn.
For the past two years, I have sat (not in the Buddhist sense) down with a spiral notebook, writing, reading, and sometimes, just breathing. Every morning I have the chance to sit and recall the wisdom I learned in all my years of reading and searching, and reframe it in my own words, to meet my present needs. But most of all, when I am alone, perhaps frightened, perhaps in pain, I know that I have someplace/something/someone to turn to. If I turn there first, I have succeeded, whether or not the problem is solved. I have succeeded because I have turned away from the fear and into the Light.
As I have aged (I just turned 61), I have thought more and more about illness. I would just say to myself, “If only I can die without pain and suffering.” Finally, one day I realized that it is very unlikely that I will die without experiencing pain. Once I accepted that fact, I felt my whole body relax. Yes, I’m going to experience pain, maybe very significant pain, before I die. That’s just a fact and the more I am able to accept that, the less of a problem it is for me. I’ve been lucky–while I’ve experienced some pain, it has not been chronic. I am aware that when I’ve been in pain, what works best is not to fight it by tensing up, which is the most common reaction I have. I also have in the past gotten angry with myself when I was ill, as odd as that may sound. I’ve learned to let go of the anger. None of what I have just said should lead others to believe that I don’t still feel fear, but rather that with the experience of fear comes the memory that pain and illness are inescapable and inevitable. I feel better able to meet the inevitable with courage and insight.
Actually, physical pain in the dying process can usually be well controlled now–even very severe pain. I have seen people with extreme pain be pain free as they approach death, due to modern pain medications. So even this is not inevitable.
As I laid in a death grip of illness the pain of leaving my infant daughter was far more poignant than the physical pain in my body.
I was 27. Reaching deeply into that profound and painful sadness shifted something. Life was not about me.
I’ve stayed away from this because the question is, intentionally or not, an explosive one. i guess that’s good, because some folks have taken the gloves off and are saying exactly how they feel. Easy to judge them. I’m trying not to lest I be judged. And I HATE to be judged. Unskillful effing Buddhist that I clearly am. :8-(
i take a different tack, admittedly personally, admittedly one that I do not intend to parse or defend.
I say, to myself, repeatedly, how I go out exponentially affects how I come back….
maitri,
John K.