Modern Buddhist Healing

by Charles Atkins

  Upon that sobering news, I chanted three times and asked the nurse to begin the treatment. The time had come for me to turn poison into medicine. It was time to attack cancer.

  1 At that time, I was reading an edition of the work that is now out-of-print. This account can be found in “The Actions of the Votary of the Lotus Sutra,” in the new edition, The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin (Tokyo: Soka Gakkai, 1999), pp. 763–782.

  2 “MOPP” and “BAP” are acronyms for the drugs involved in the therapy.

  CHAPTER 6

  Cellular Warfare

  My first experience with chemotherapy raised a big red flag of doubt that I could handle the treatment. My nurse said that I might experience a slight metallic taste after the nitrogen mustard and other drugs were administered. I understood that they were poisons that attacked cancer cells as well as healthy cells. Understanding the nature of chemotherapy has no redeeming value beyond knowing that you will soon be feeling very ill. Dispensing the drugs into my system took about twenty minutes. I just lay on the bed, trying to feel something happening in my body. For one brief moment, I thought that I might breeze right through the treatment. That's when I got my first taste of nitrogen mustard in action. There are probably cancer drugs with similar or greater effects, but I pray that I never have to experience any of them. Nitrogen mustard turned me inside out with nausea and vomiting. None of the other drugs were quite as ruthless in attacking my body.

  After thirty minutes of vomiting, I grabbed some sick bags and went to meet my wife downstairs. Every minute or two, an uncontrollable wave of nausea would stop me. I made it downstairs and waited in a corner, watching for my family, and heaving into a bag. We had no opportunity to rejoice about my release from the hospital after my month-long stay.

  I was scheduled for six cycles, twice monthly, of aggressive combination chemotherapy, and faced the possibility of four more cycles if the disease wasn't expunged from my body within six months. My clinical trial also called for randomized selection for radiation therapy right after the chemotherapy. If I survived, the clinical trial would keep track of my progress over the next ten years.

  I was really hoping that I would be one of the lucky ones, take my chemotherapy, and walk out as if I had received a common flu shot. The sessions when I received nitrogen mustard turned into a waking nightmare. After the first administration of that agent, I could smell its odious stench through its plastic chamber on the other side of the room. Even with all my chanting I could not stop the problems in my stomach. I took some consolation from the fact that nitrogen mustard was derived from mustard gas developed by the Germans for chemical warfare because of its extremely irritating, blistering, and disabling effects. As a pacifist, I found it wonderfully ironic that a substance created to kill or harm was now being used to heal.

  The day after my first treatment, I was shocked when I looked in the mirror. My face was moon-shaped in appearance, all round and puffed out. I went home with a half dozen bottles of pills that comprised the oral medications that were part of the Southwest Oncology Group 7808 protocol. Lynn got me organized with a computer printout that enabled me to keep track of taking the medications at the right time. There were few problems that week except for increasing pain in the arm where the chemotherapy drugs had been administered. By the time of the second phase of the first cycle, my arm felt like someone had poured caustic acid on it. That was the beginning of a seemingly never-ending supply of painkillers. By the second treatment my whole body was experiencing pain.

  For some inexplicable reason—even the oncology staff was amazed—my second phase of chemotherapy produced no nausea. I sat down, received the treatment, and half an hour later I drove home as if I had been injected with saline solution. However, it was not long before the progressive nature of my chemotherapy began to erode my quality of life to the point that I wanted to quit. My strong determination met face to face with my inner coward—a voice that would tell me to kill myself and avoid the suffering.

  For the first several months, I had to consciously override and drown out the inner coward with my chanting. In retrospect, I can now clearly see that the inner coward has many manifestations. It takes the form of self-doubt, guilt, self-pity, remorse, escapism, and self-destructive urges. At the time when I was fending off the devilish voice, I thought I might be going insane from all the drugs and the pressure. The inner coward would speak in a sinister whisper, “Your family has suffered enough, you'll never make it, why don't you drive the car into a big oak tree. Oh, that would be too messy. Why don't you hang yourself in the stairwell?” The inner coward is nothing more than the fundamental darkness that is inherent in human life.

  CORNERED

  Cancer is a ravenous monster that backs you up against death's door. Within a few months, we were on the verge of bankruptcy, and the Internal Revenue Service was threatening us with seizure of what little assets we had. I had nowhere to run or hide. As far as my material possessions were concerned I could not have cared less. I worried only about my family. The IRS could take everything if they had to, but they couldn't take my life. In my heart there was no false attachment to material things, but there was no way that I wanted the IRS to come and disrupt our life. Lynn and Devin were strong, but they didn't need to find out how to live with nothing but the shirts on their back, especially not now. Still, the inner coward would speak up, trying to break our fighting spirit. My wife and daughter were also plagued by their own inner cowards.

  We were under siege. Adding to our obstacles, my father-in-law suffered what was first thought to be a heart attack and was hospitalized. Now Lynn had to divide even more of her time between two households, trying to support everyone and hold everything together. Devin could not understand why both her father and grandfather had to suffer so much, let alone at the same time.

  It became crystal clear to us that we couldn't escape our karma, and it was closing in on us daily. We had no choice but to continue chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, no matter how badly we felt. One of our Buddhist friends encouraged Lynn by saying that despite our suffering now, the outcome would strengthen our characters and result in something positive. Our friend insisted that when we finally overcame all our difficulties, we would be able to look back at this period in our life together and feel a tremendous sense of appreciation, because we were able to defeat every obstacle, turning each problem into a golden memory.

  It was no small task gaining the upper hand on my weakness. Each day I felt poorly, as if I had consumed large quantities of hard liquor and now had to suffer the inevitable hangover. I had a tingling sensation in my hands and feet, 24 hours a day, as though waves of electricity were shooting from one appendage to another. At the same time, my hands and feet were so numb that I could not feel my toes or the bottom of my feet, nor could I feel the tips of my fingers. I started the treatments with a nice head of brown hair, which fell out in clumps, later growing back silver-gray and white, as if I had suffered a terrible fright.

  I was experiencing acute panic attacks that made me feel as if I was on the verge of a seizure and the top of my head was going to blow off. The fatigue became so overwhelming that a simple task like washing the dinner dishes was a big challenge that would leave me thoroughly exhausted for hours. As the pills and the treatments continued, my nausea would appear at any time and linger indefinitely. Some of my favorite foods became loathsome to smell, let alone eat. I was given pills, suppositories, and injections for nausea, but after the third cycle of chemotherapy, nothing worked.

  Off the record, my doctor advised me to try marijuana, which quickly stopped all nausea except for that experienced on treatment days. The interesting thing about using marijuana as an anti-nausea agent was the fact that it was legal in Illinois to prescribe it as a medicinal drug, but it could not be obtained legally through a pharmacy! The prescription drug Compazine that I had been given was utterly useless in my case. In me, it caused a psychotic side effect of panic attacks that were very frighteni
ng.

  I had no idea that marijuana was useful for nausea and stimulating the appetite. I thought it was nothing more than a recreational drug. I was wrong. As a medication, marijuana was far superior to any of the pharmaceuticals that I was being given. Its results were instantaneous, and the dosage could be controlled. It was infuriating that just because of politics, I was forced into the black market in order to secure a legal medicine, when I was so sick and weak that I could barely walk a city block without keeling over.

  Every day, my arms throbbed with excruciating pain caused by the chemotherapy drugs. My veins hardened like stone and could be rolled around like plastic tubes. It was nearly impossible for me to lift my arms over my head or pick up anything because the pain was so severe. My fingertips were so numb that I nearly had a nervous breakdown in the supermarket from just trying to separate some thin plastic bags for our vegetables. I couldn't feel the bags. I was panicked and ashamed, unable to solve the problem. I felt like crying because I had become so damn helpless.

  PROGRESS

  For more than three months after my treatment began, I would wake up at sunrise and chant from my bed, gripped in a seemingly never-ending fight with my illness. Later in the day, I would sit in my chair chanting and reading the writings of Nichiren. One of the most meaningful passages I took to heart was his encouragement to the parents of a small child who had become gravely ill. “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is like the roar of a lion. What sickness can therefore be an obstacle?”1 In my agony, I sought to make that verse my motto in fighting the onslaught of cancer, treatment, and financial devastation. My faith was being challenged by forces that were so overwhelming that the inner coward was delighted.

  The depth of my negative karma was obvious. As I looked back on my 36 years on Earth, I was hard-pressed for a reason why I was receiving so many negative effects in my life. Before I got cancer, my conduct had been both good and bad. But in my heart, I felt I had been a decent, hard-working, and spiritually-minded person who was working on improving himself. After some serious self-reflection I understood that if my past sins or misconduct as a young man produced the horrors I was now experiencing, then all the prisons in the world would be cancer wards and two-thirds of the world's population would be on their death beds. I reflected on why good people are often laid to waste in violence, disaster, or by illness, while seemingly evil and corrupt people often live long and stable lives. The key to the paradox is the inescapable law of karma. What doesn't show up in one life will surely appear in the life to follow.

  Fighting cancer, enduring the rigors of chemotherapy, and fending off imminent financial disaster was a heavy load to carry. With each passing day, I was challenged with the opportunity of moving forward or giving in to defeat. I looked for inspiration and strength in my faith. I studied and chanted as much as my strength and willpower would allow me. Even though Devin was so young, she would sit before our altar and pray for me every day.

  One morning, while we were having breakfast together before Devin went off to school, she told me that she had a dream about me the previous night. In her dream I had died and she walked with all her classmates by my casket at the funeral. I nearly choked on my toast. It was at that moment I knew that the pressure of this whole ordeal was getting to be too much for everyone and we needed a big breakthrough. I assured my daughter that people dream all kinds of things and most of them never come true. She didn't believe me. I knew I was getting better despite the obvious signs of physical deterioration, but that meant nothing to a child who saw her father getting weaker by the day.

  Despite the debilitating complications of chemotherapy, it appeared that the cancer was responding to treatment. Dr. S. was very encouraged to see the lymph nodes shrinking in size. He was now quite familiar with my practice of Buddhism and told me to keep chanting. Despite feeling incredibly weak, I was holding up well under the torturous treatment. There was no complete remission yet, but something wonderful was happening inside me.

  The reason that the tides seemed to be turning was because I had been using the mantra-powered visualization on a daily basis. After my spiritual awakening in March, I had researched the subject of Buddhist visualization for healing, and was astonished to find that many people had used it successfully.

  It was uplifting to read about so many people with terminal disease who had successfully employed chanting, visualization, and guided imagery when medical science had reached its limit. Evidence from Japan and other parts of the world showed that life was frequently restored, improved, or peacefully ended. I found pride in possessing a viable method of body/mind healing. With the excellence of medical science and my visualization, anything was possible. Even in the face of death, which could happen at any moment, I felt confident in my faith and my future afterlife.

  Five years earlier, I had had the opportunity to witness the death of a Japanese woman, Mrs. C., who had sincerely practiced Buddhism for 30 years. In 1979, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent chemotherapy. We were overjoyed when she went into remission. At that time, her daughter was seventeen and her son was ten. Because she was a widow, if she had died at that time, her children's ability to live independently would have been in question. They had no relatives who could assume guardianship, so they would have become wards of the state. Shortly after her daughter turned 18, Mrs. C.'s cancer recurred with a fury, and she was again hospitalized. She had been in the hospital only a few days when I was informed that she had fallen into a coma. When her daughter and I arrived, she was lying very still. We started to chant and when she heard her daughter's voice she began to thrash around in bed in a struggle to wake up. She calmed down when her daughter stroked her head and told her everything was all right.

  Within two hours, about ten people had come into her room and joined in chanting for her. Elsewhere, at a fellow Buddhist's home, Lynn and Mrs. C's eleven-year-old son were chanting together with others. I had never seen anyone in the final stages of cancer, nor had I ever witnessed a person on their deathbed. I prayed for her with all my might.

  Before long, her eyes opened up and peered directly forward as if she was witnessing some great spectacle. Her arms lost their rigidity, gently sliding down her side and going limp. Her face was peaceful, and her cheeks a rosy hue. I believe that I witnessed Mrs. C. reach enlightenment. Moved beyond words, I had no idea her courageous struggle and dignity would be a model for me only six years later.

  On a daily basis, I used mantra-powered visualization to fight the unseen but ever-present enemy. In this process, my determined inner voice would first say, “Brain. Thank you very much. Your masterful work, keeping all the systems harmonized, is wonderful. Brain! I implore you, unless you wish your existence to cease, you must send your magnificent healing chemicals in the proper amounts to our problem areas at once.”

  I would take the same approach with my heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, stomach, muscles, bones, and all the integrated systems of my body. I would congratulate my lungs for their great effort, and praise my heart for beating with such perfect rhythm. I became fascinated with anatomy and could really see, visit, and experience each organ or system. My reality-based consciousness, merged with the collective unconscious, moved through my body like a warrior on a microscopic battlefield. While chanting, I would imagine glorious, holy light penetrating the areas where there was disease.

  I knew that many people had used the same basic techniques and produced spectacular results. Despite my enthusiasm there was a battalion of obstacles dead ahead.

  THE WALL

  Perhaps the most serious aspect of my cancer and the litmus test of mantra-powered visualization was the lymph node tumor that was pressing against the third vertebra of my spine. In 1985, before I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, I was experiencing serious back pain and was sent to a rheumatologist for diagnosis and treatment. The remedy was electrical and ultrasound stimulation, and the application of hot packs, which got me back on my feet again.

  In la
te 1986, I was again stricken with back pain so strong that I was taken to the emergency room, and referred back to the rheumatologist. This time the pain was completely out of control, interfering with my sleep cycle and bending my frame over.

  After another complete diagnostic work up, I was given more of the same kind of treatment, but this time it didn't work. I was taking strong medicine for pain and muscle relaxation, as well as ultrasound treatment three times a week. After a month of increasing agony, my Korean doctor recommended acupuncture. I had read many articles and heard the experts argue whether or not acupuncture was a legitimate therapy or if the results were produced by the patient's prior inclination to believe. I was aware of the power of suggestion, but I wanted to see proof. I trusted my doctor and had no positive or negative opinion about acupuncture. I didn't know what to believe. I just wanted to get out of the severe pain that conventional treatment couldn't quell. Acupuncture was painless and two weeks later my back felt normal again. When acupuncture stopped my pain, all the other cancer symptoms appeared at once; it was like being jumped in an alley by a half dozen thugs.

  Immediately prior to my final diagnosis in the V. A. Hospital, a team of doctors making their rounds came into my room. The chief of oncology asked me questions. He wanted to know if I was still having back pain. When I responded that acupuncture had stopped the pain, he shook his head in disbelief. Seven years later, we spoke of my case during a chance meeting at the V. A. He remembered me. His first comment after shaking my hand and patting me on the back was to say, “You were the one with the big tumor on your spine that disappeared.” He was from India, and I was surprised when he gave me a look of disbelief when I mentioned acupuncture seven years earlier.