These activities include everything from holiday dinners to special events, such as weddings. Having to sit upright for extended periods, trying to focus on a conversation while the room is full of noise, not feeling we can leave (or not having the means to leave) even though our bodies are crying out for us to lie down — these are but a few of the features of these activities that exacerbate the physical symptoms of the chronically ill. People who struggle with mental illness face similar challenges; imagine the toll on someone who has developed social anxiety but still must attend multiple winter holiday parties. Even someone in good health is likely to be mentally and physically exhausted after several of these gatherings, so it’s not surprising that they can have such a devastating effect on those who are already chronically ill.
To me, broken-glass practice is particularly helpful in these situations. A guide at the end of the book lists several additional practices that can help us adjust to this most difficult aspect of impermanence — a change in our lives that keeps us from participating in or enjoying activities that we may have counted among our greatest joys. I find comfort in contemplating that my ability to participate in these activities was already broken, in the sense that this change in my life will befall everyone at some point and quite possibly by surprise. This is simply how and when it happened to me.
Then I reflect on impermanence — the fact that every aspect of my life is uncertain, unpredictable, and in constant flux. Finally, like Ajahn Chah, I look after each moment, cherishing what I still can do, aware that everything could change in an instant.
5
Who Is Sick? Who Is in Pain?
What I am, as system theorists have helped me see, is a “flow-through.” I am a flow-through of matter, energy, and information.
— JOANNA MACY
BEFORE BECOMING CHRONICALLY ILL, I had the good fortune of attending several retreats at Spirit Rock co-led by the Theravadan teacher Kamala Masters. At one retreat, she told us a story about her root teacher, Munindra-ji, who lived in India.
Munindra-ji had always wanted to see the Buddhist sacred sites. He was getting quite old, so Kamala traveled to India with some friends to take him to some of the sites. One day they were waiting in a train station. The train was five hours late. It was blazing hot. They had no food. There were no restrooms. The platform where they were to catch the train kept changing, so they had to keep getting up and moving. Munindra-ji would sit down in each new location and rest his head on his arm. He looked so frail that Kamala began to worry about how he was holding up, especially since she and her friends were barely coping with the conditions. She finally asked him if he was all right. He replied, “There is heat here, but I am not hot. There is hunger here, but I am not hungry. There is irritation here, but I am not irritated.”
I recalled Kamala’s story one day as I lay in bed after becoming sick, so I silently said, “There is sickness here, but I am not sick.” The statement made no sense to me. But, inspired by the story, I persevered, repeating over and over, “There is sickness here, but I am not sick. There is sickness here, but I am not sick.” After a few minutes, I realized, “Of course! There is sickness in the body, but I am not sick!”
It was a revelation and a source of great comfort. After a time, however, I decided to investigate more deeply. When I did, this question arose: “Who is this ‘I’ who isn’t sick?” This question led me to consider the most radical implication of the universal law of impermanence — that what I think of as my “self” is also in constant flux. This is what the Buddha called the third mark of experience — anatta — which is usually translated as “no-self” or “no-fixed-self,” depending on the context. It is the principal way in which he broke from the religion of his birth, Hinduism.
Of course, to communicate with others we have to use conventional terminology such as “I Me Mine” (to borrow from the title of the George Harrison song from Let It Be). If I’m unwilling to use the term Toni Bernhard, I can’t get a driver’s license or a disability check. And, as this very paragraph illustrates, I’ll continue to use self-referential terms in this book. But I can use the word I and, even as the word emerges from the mind, still contemplate questions such as “Who am I? What is Toni Bernhard? Is Toni Bernhard a solid physical and mental entity with an inherent self-existence, or is Toni Bernhard a label attached to an ever-changing constellation of qualities?”
When people are first introduced to this teaching, some find it perplexing, some are even disturbed by it. I hope, like me, you find it worth investigating.
We all have a vague or even specific sense of “I am.” It is this sense that leads the mind to imagine the existence of a permanent, unchanging self or identity around which our whole life revolves. Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield express this beautifully in Seeking the Heart of Wisdom:
Just as we condition our bodies in different ways through exercise or lack of it, so we also condition our minds. Every mind state, thought, or emotion that we experience repeatedly becomes stronger and more habituated. Who we are as personalities is a collection of all the tendencies of mind that have been developed, the particular energy configurations we have cultivated.
Consider who you were ten years ago. The part of your personality that seems to be consistent from then until now results not from any permanent entity carrying over from one moment to the next but from each moment being conditioned by the previous one. You cannot identify a permanent self that has carried over from ten years ago until now. “I” is a thought and a feeling, held on to so resolutely that the experience of a fixed person appears to be real.
Think of a bicycle. It’s a temporary assemblage of steel, plastic, and human intelligence in a particular combination we conveniently designate “bicycle.” There is no inherent “bikeness.” It is the same with humans. There is no immutable, unchanging personality (“Toni Bernhard”) that exists as an entity separate from the arising and passing of physical and mental activity — activity that is conditioned by preceding causes. No phenomenon — mental or physical — exists separate and independent from the conditions that give rise to it. This view is in contrast to religions that posit an immutable, eternal being or spiritual essence that is beyond cause and effect. As Steven Collins says in Selfless Persons, “There is nothing more to the ‘person’ but a temporary assemblage of parts.”
Contemplating the truth of no-fixed-self has helped me tremendously since I became chronically ill. Haven’t we all at some time thought, “If I could only get away from myself!”? Intuitively we know what a relief it would be to take I Me Mine out of the equation. (George Harrison’s voice gently reminds us of the unremitting presence of “selfing” when he sings, “Even those tears, I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.”) Experiencing no-self lifts a burden and brings a sense of spaciousness and freedom to everyday life.
Looking deeply at impermanence can help us experience no-self. Joseph Goldstein said during a retreat I attended that the mind and the body feel substantial, set, and solid, but if we watch carefully, there’s nothing to hold on to. “Where’s the mood you were in five minutes ago?” he asked. “Where’s the thought of a few seconds ago? Where’s that expert knowing self of two hours ago?” He suggested the answer was, “Gone!” When I contemplated his words, I understood that the mood, the thought, the expert were just momentary arisings in the mind.
Joseph went on to explain that we take these momentary arisings and string them together and soon they feel like something solid. Again, I contemplated this. “Ah, yes,” I thought. “I string my thoughts together and then feel like the fixed entity ‘Toni Bernhard.’” He asked us to see if we could control this fixed entity by issuing commands such as “Let me only have pleasant moods!” or “Let me not have this aching back!” I tried but could not get the mind or the body to obey these commands. What happens in life arises out of conditions, not from a “me” in control.
I like to purposefully think “I am Toni Bernhard” and then contemplate if this
is true. People call me “Toni Bernhard” and I respond when they do. (I get up from the waiting-room chair at the doctor’s office when those two words are called out!) But I can find no fixed, unchanging, permanent entity. There is no Toni Bernhard. And that’s fine. Life is an unfolding process and will take whatever course it takes.
Contemplating the perennial question “Who am I?” can also help us experience no-self. This question is a tool used by Western philosophers and Eastern mystics alike, although their answers to the question may differ. For example, in The Only Dance There Is, spiritual teacher Ram Dass discusses the difference in the Western and Eastern approaches to this question. He compares Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am” with the more no-self-flavored formulation, “I think, but I am not my thoughts.”
While in India in 1967, Richard Alpert became a disciple of the Hindu sage Neem Karoli Baba, who gave him the name Ram Dass. Neem Karoli Baba didn’t give formal discourses. He told stories and sometimes spoke only a few words to a disciple before sending him or her away. Many years ago, I read an interview with Ram Dass in which he said that when he was preparing to return to the United States, he asked Neem Karoli Baba what teaching he should take home with him. The sage told him to simply keep asking the question “Who am I?” as he went about his daily activities. Zen masters also use this question as a koan, giving it to students to contemplate.
So, who am I?
Am I my body?
No. If I were my body, it would obey the command not to be sick.
Am I my mind?
No. If I were my mind, it would obey the command not to ever feel down or depressed.
Who am I?
In the epigraph that heads this chapter, Joanna Macy answers the question like this: “I am a flow-through of matter, energy, and information.” This may not be your answer, but keeping the question in the mind helps break down the sense of a solid, permanent self that leads to fixed (and limiting) identities such as “I am a sick person” or “I am a caregiver for a sick person.” Shedding these fixed identities opens possibilities for seeing the world with new eyes.
The answer to “Who am I?” remains a mystery to me — and I’m content with that. Mysteries are compelling and intriguing and, in this case, also quite liberating.
Sky-Gazing Practice
To help me experience no-self, I use a practice called “sky-gazing” from the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. I lie down in my backyard, look up at the sky, and relax my gaze. After a while, the experience takes on an openness and a spaciousness. All notions of a separate self — in body or in mind — dissolve. There may be a sound or a sensation of a breeze going by or a thought arising, but it’s simply energy, flowing through. Although this spaciousness may last only a few seconds, in those seconds, there’s no Toni Bernhard.
Even when the illusion of Toni Bernhard reemerges as a solid, separate entity (as it always does!), those few seconds without it are so liberating that a serene glow stays with me for a while. Gradually the glow fades and identities start piling on: former dean and law professor, wife, mother, dog owner, sick person. But I can always sky-gaze again.
I use a variation of sky-gazing while lying in bed, especially at night when I’m unable to sleep due to pain or other symptoms. I close my eyes and consciously switch my focus away from awareness of unpleasant bodily sensations by letting my pupils roll upward toward the top of my head. This signals that I’ve made a shift in consciousness that’s the equivalent of sky-gazing. Soon identities start peeling away, including the identity “sick person.” The body is experienced as pulsating matter, teeming with energy. The mind is experienced as a conduit for information that flows in and flows out.
“No self, no problem,” a popular Buddhist saying goes. And everything is okay just as it is — sickness and all.
Finding Peace and Joy
6
Finding Joy in the Life You Can No Longer Lead
We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.
— SHUNRYU SUZUKI
AS WITH MANY oral traditions that transmit their spiritual teachings from generation to generation by word of mouth, the Buddha’s teachings were often passed down in lists — like the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, which many people have heard of even though they’ve never studied Buddhism. Lists work because they make the teachings easier to commit to memory. Nevertheless, Buddhists like to joke about both the staggering number of lists and how so many concepts appear on multiple lists.
No matter which list we use to enter the teachings, it won’t be long before we reach the Buddha’s core teaching: the fact of mental suffering in our lives and the practices that can lead to the end of that suffering.
For me, the sweetest list is what the Buddha called the brahma viharas, often translated as the four “sublime states.” I love the dictionary definition of sublime: “so awe-inspiringly beautiful as to seem heavenly.” Simply put, these are mental states we would be wise to cultivate because they are the dwelling place of a mind that is awake and free. Indeed, in Pali, vihara means “dwelling place.”
The four sublime states are the following:
Metta — kindness; treating ourselves and others with openhearted warmth and friendliness
Karuna — compassion; reaching out to help alleviate suffering in others as well as ourselves
Mudita — empathetic joy; feeling joyful when others are happy
Upekkha — equanimity; being at peace no matter what our circumstances
Neem Karoli Baba often told his disciples, “Don’t throw anyone out of your heart” — and “anyone” would, of course, include ourselves. This one powerful sentence encompasses all four sublime states, and I would only temper his words by invoking the same intention as the Zen teacher Robert Aitken did whenever he began a recitation of the Buddhist precepts: “I undertake the practice of . . .” I like this because words such as don’t or always can set us up for failure. I won’t always succeed in my efforts to cultivate the four sublime states, but I vow to undertake the practice of cultivating them — the practice of not throwing anyone out of my heart.
Cultivating empathetic joy (the subject of this chapter; the next three chapters will cover the other sublime states) has been central to coming to terms with the life I can no longer lead. Without the ability to share others’ joy — even just a little — I’d be steeped in envy. Because our activities are so limited, it’s hard for the chronically ill not to feel overwhelmed by envy for those who are fortunate enough to be able to keep doing the things they always have. Many of us must stay at home, unable to join family and friends when they go to a movie, or take a bike ride, or go on vacation, or attend a wedding or other major life event.
Even those who are not housebound have to pace themselves carefully and cannot always spontaneously visit or go out for a meal with family and friends. These limitations often apply to caregivers, too, because they must frequently forgo cherished activities either because their loved ones need care or because the activities aren’t enjoyable to engage in alone. Tony finds it hard to enjoy weddings and the like without having me there to share the experience with him and to talk together about it afterward.
So it’s not surprising that envy arises easily in the life of the chronically ill and their caregivers. It can be so overpowering that it feels as if it’s eating us alive — and it has sometimes been like that for me. When envy is strong, it drives away any chance of feeling peaceful and serene. In addition, the emotional stress brought on by envy exacerbates our physical symptoms. The latter is not surprising; Buddhism understands an emotion to be a thought plus a physical reaction to that thought.
Thankfully, empathetic joy can be a powerful antidote to the emotional pain of envy. After becoming ill, it took me a long time to be able to evoke this sublime state easily. At first, feeling joyful just because others were happy was a sheer act of will. I’d learn that people I knew were going to the Mendocino coast, which used to be
a favorite haunt for Tony and me, and envy would rear its ugly head. I’d think of this practice and try to feel happy about it, silently saying, “It’s so nice they’ll be seeing the ocean,” but I’d be saying it through gritted teeth. It felt like fake joy. I stuck with the practice, though, and slowly, slowly, slowly fake joy began to turn into genuine joy.
Here’s a crucial point, and it doesn’t only apply to empathetic joy — it applies to all four sublime states. Their cultivation is not to be looked upon as a pass/fail test. For example, with empathetic joy, if you feel even a bit of joy in the midst of envy, you’ve succeeded and can cultivate that seed, knowing that you’re heading in the right direction.
That’s why sticking with a practice even though it might feel artificial or fake still allows that practice to enter your heart, your mind, and your body. This begins to change your conditioned response. With empathetic joy, as your ability to share others’ joy grows stronger, you’ll feel better yourself. For me, this is the magic of practicing this sublime state: feeling joy for others feels good because when you feel others’ joy, that feeling resonates in you, giving rise to feeling joyful yourself.
It took time and patience with this practice for me to feel joyful along with others. At first, when Tony would call from his cell phone while he and our granddaughter Malia were off on an adventure in Los Angeles — at the California Science Center, the Santa Monica Pier, the La Brea Tar Pits — envy would arise in my mind and take hold of me like the tar in those pits. I hated not being there. I hated not being able to fulfill the dream I’d had of being an active grandparent, showing Malia all around the city of my birth.
How to Be Sick Page 5
