This afternoon I went to Katsel Dharma Center to be with my Vajra brothers and sisters. Although Sunday afternoons are scheduled as "Introduction to Buddhism," without any beginners, the three of us did Amitayus Sadhana Practice. This was probably only the third time for me to do this practice since the empowerment, but it was very rewarding to do it with others. I feel strongly inclined to make Amitayus Sadhana Practice togther with Medicine Buddha Sadhana Practice the foundation of my daily practice during the present phase of my journey through cancer. The "plan" of my daily practice is to rotate through all the practices for which I have received empowerment, but this would seem to be a better choice for a while.
During the practice, a couple of times I noticed the Tibetan letters in connection with the phonetic rendering of familiar mantras and prayers. Although it has occured to me before, I am strongly motivated to make my first step toward learning the Tibetan language trying to learn the alphabet, the starting point in learning any language, by picking out the letters just to be able to pronounce the chants from the Tibetan text rather than just from the phonetics. When I started going to the Russian Orthodox Church, that was how I first handled the prayers in Old Church Slavonic. Eventually, it became a language of prayer for me not just meaningless sounds. Perhaps with practice the same process may work for me with the Tibetan language, maybe with actual language study I might progress to full understanding eventually.
On a different track, I had long thought that I wasn't a very materialistic person, but the process that I described to a friend as "liquidating my own estate" is showing me that I've kept so many things that are really useless to me. This is turning out to be more about spiritual discovery than just about the practical need for transportation funds. The more "stuff" I get out of here, the more freedom I feel. I think I'll be expanding this process to include everything, even things with no resale value, asking, "Why do I have this thing? Does it bind and constrain me?" More of my "stuff" will be going out even if it goes to the garbage.
It is so strange to remember that when I left St. Herman of Alaska Monastery, Platina, California, to move to Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, New York, I only had what I could pack in a backpack. When I moved back here to this area, I only added a few boxes of books that were mailed to me. In the years since then, I have accummulated so much unnecessary "stuff" that doesn't make my life better, but rather less free. I feel so sad for those who are bound and enslaved by so much more "stuff" in their lives. For me, the wealthy are more to be pitied than envied.
With my present circumstances, I am aware of some of the many stresses that fill our daily lives. Even in the limited circle of my friends I am not the only one coping with financial strains from the current "economic downturn" and medical crises. Others are struggling with different combinations of stressors. Some of us cope better than others. Sometimes we cope better than at other times. At the best of times it is difficult to be "fully responsible" for our own actions and choices. In my present situation I already have symptoms that make me feel "not so good," but they are not so bad that I should let them keep me from doing what really needs to be done. I'm particularly thinking about my commitment to the Dharma both from taking refuge and from Ngakpa ordination. When I don't make it to the Dharma center, it is easier to blame the disease process rather than face the shortcomings in my coping. What will I do if the disease gets really bad or the treatments give me horrible side effects? Whatever it is, I'm still responsible for my choices.
I was talking to a friend about people we knew who had cancer but refused the usual pain meds because they wanted to keep their minds clear. Ani Drolkar said that it would interfere with her practice. Metropolitan Philaret who was head of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia worried that it would make him doze instead of pray. Could I exhibit that kind of strength and commitment to the Dharma?
This, like everything else in life, is a spiritual journey. What I go through is not important, but how I go through it is of ultimate importance.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Journey Through Cancer - Chapter 1
It has only been a few days ago that I received a diagnosis that is likely to shape my life for the next several months. I plan to "blog" my way through the process of treatment planning, the treatment itself and the recovery afterwards.
My previous blog "Walking with Death" serves as a suitable preface to the present work. Both my experiences under medical care and also my training as a nurse tend to make me interested in the technical aspects of what awaits me. Furthermore, it is most fortuitous that my first real introduction to Tibetan Buddhism was a Medicine Buddha Empowerment and Retreat. This together with my life experience shapes my attitudes toward the diagnosis and treatment.
A clearly good consequence has been that the looming prospect of cancer brought me to a deeper appreciation of "precious human life" and to a greater commitment to Buddhist practice beginning with "taking refuge." From that point I went on to take Ngakpa ordination, the especially inward nature of whose samayas seems particularly appropriate. Nevertheless, the thought of wasting what remains of my life motivates me to try to benefit my brothers and sisters at our Dharma center and in the wider community. Furthermore, it increases my desire and commitment to seek full monastic ordination.
I wrote my first email to my Root Lama about all of this happening as well what I've been doing. I believe that he understood and approved of my attitude toward this as the life lessons through which I must live and learn. I have to keep my focus on what is truly important which has nothing to do with dying nor even with pain. First of all, "stuff happens" and we really have little control over that, but rather we control our attitudes and actions, but even that takes a certain level of mental training to overcome "afflictive emotions" and "obscurations" enough. I need to keep growing in my practice and maintain my determination to keep my samayas as a Ngakpa and to move on toward becoming a monk. The real danger for me in all of this is that I could get so focused on my own pain and so obsessed with death that I cease to grow in compassion. Like everyone else my death is certain, but my life is not certain.
Yesterday I got a call from the Radiation Oncology Department at the VA Hospital, setting the appointment for my "evaluation" and the first of many tests that lay ahead. I can't afford to let all of this divert me from the truly important. In fact, as the expression is "this is where the rubber meets the road." The teachings of the Buddha work in just such circumstances as this not just in the little routine things in life. In fact, they seem to have the potential of turning the most exceptional circumstances into routine.
Next month when Khenpo Tsultrim is here for teachings, I plan to talk to him about the facilities for retreats at Tibetan Meditation Center in Frederick, Maryland. In the Spring, after my treatments are finished, I think it may be a most appropriate time to make a retreat.
As I progress through this whole process of treatments, tests, and just life, I'll continue to blog. One of the preparations that I have already begun is the process of raising funds to cover the gas I'll need to make it to all my treatments. I was already starting to get rid of "stuff" that I no longer need. Now I have started selling some of it on eBay and have my sister list the books in her inventory for sale. I've already made some substantial sales to go into that transportation fund.
Another spiritual development is that several people have offered to help me get to treatments or otherwise support me in them. They may not realize that they are being given the opportunity to accumulate merit which is something we all need. This also could be my own opportunity to purify karma?
My previous blog "Walking with Death" serves as a suitable preface to the present work. Both my experiences under medical care and also my training as a nurse tend to make me interested in the technical aspects of what awaits me. Furthermore, it is most fortuitous that my first real introduction to Tibetan Buddhism was a Medicine Buddha Empowerment and Retreat. This together with my life experience shapes my attitudes toward the diagnosis and treatment.
A clearly good consequence has been that the looming prospect of cancer brought me to a deeper appreciation of "precious human life" and to a greater commitment to Buddhist practice beginning with "taking refuge." From that point I went on to take Ngakpa ordination, the especially inward nature of whose samayas seems particularly appropriate. Nevertheless, the thought of wasting what remains of my life motivates me to try to benefit my brothers and sisters at our Dharma center and in the wider community. Furthermore, it increases my desire and commitment to seek full monastic ordination.
I wrote my first email to my Root Lama about all of this happening as well what I've been doing. I believe that he understood and approved of my attitude toward this as the life lessons through which I must live and learn. I have to keep my focus on what is truly important which has nothing to do with dying nor even with pain. First of all, "stuff happens" and we really have little control over that, but rather we control our attitudes and actions, but even that takes a certain level of mental training to overcome "afflictive emotions" and "obscurations" enough. I need to keep growing in my practice and maintain my determination to keep my samayas as a Ngakpa and to move on toward becoming a monk. The real danger for me in all of this is that I could get so focused on my own pain and so obsessed with death that I cease to grow in compassion. Like everyone else my death is certain, but my life is not certain.
Yesterday I got a call from the Radiation Oncology Department at the VA Hospital, setting the appointment for my "evaluation" and the first of many tests that lay ahead. I can't afford to let all of this divert me from the truly important. In fact, as the expression is "this is where the rubber meets the road." The teachings of the Buddha work in just such circumstances as this not just in the little routine things in life. In fact, they seem to have the potential of turning the most exceptional circumstances into routine.
Next month when Khenpo Tsultrim is here for teachings, I plan to talk to him about the facilities for retreats at Tibetan Meditation Center in Frederick, Maryland. In the Spring, after my treatments are finished, I think it may be a most appropriate time to make a retreat.
As I progress through this whole process of treatments, tests, and just life, I'll continue to blog. One of the preparations that I have already begun is the process of raising funds to cover the gas I'll need to make it to all my treatments. I was already starting to get rid of "stuff" that I no longer need. Now I have started selling some of it on eBay and have my sister list the books in her inventory for sale. I've already made some substantial sales to go into that transportation fund.
Another spiritual development is that several people have offered to help me get to treatments or otherwise support me in them. They may not realize that they are being given the opportunity to accumulate merit which is something we all need. This also could be my own opportunity to purify karma?
Friday, September 19, 2008
Walking with Death
When I was growing up, I sometimes heard my mom talk about an incident when I was just an infant. She said that I just went limp almost like I was dead. This was particularly frightening for my parents, because this was barely more than a year, if that long, since my brother died as an infant. In a very understaffed ER, it happened again and Mom just prayed, "Please don't take this one." I survived.
While there were some health issues, my elementary school years passed uneventfully until I was 12 when doctors became alarmed at the implications of the murmur that I had since birth. There began years of cardiologist consultations and just about every new noninvasive test that came along. Finally, when I was 16, they decided that I was old enough to have a cardiac catheterization. After they had examined all the test data and the motion pictures of the fluoroscope images, they informed me that I was healthy enough to "go out and chop logs." Years later a surgeon would have taken exception to such a prognosis, but he had the advantage of direct observation, far superior to any indirect test.
Over the years, during my drinking years, there were many "close calls." However, I easily dismissed all of these even one in 1973 which involved a fractured vertebra which the orthopedic surgeon said should have "at least paralyzed" me. That only served to get me to my first alcohol rehab and my first AA meeting. A few days out of the hospital I drank again.
Although this may not be the experience of most people, it really isn't all that different. From the moment we are born, "Death" is not far from us. He is most likely to take us without warning when we least expect it, by a heart attack when we think we are healthy or when someone runs a red light and crashes into us or any of so many ways we couldn't even guess. Just that suddenly he came close to me in the spring 1983. I had been staying up too many hours and gotten too little rest (probably even already manifesting the sleep disorders that were diagnosed years later). While driving home one night, I fell asleep at the wheel, taking an exit unexpectedly. Still sleeping, I took out a stop sign and awoke to the pain of both arms breaking. The van crossed the intersection and perched in a tree where I waited to be rescued. With two broken arms, a fractured knee, a few holes in me, and unknown internal injuries I spent the night until firefighters and paramedics extracted me from my wrecked van. I had barely escaped "Death" once again, but I didn't know how close he still was.
Two weeks into my hospital stay, after so many tests chasing "poor lung function," the day before physical therapy is scheduled to start getting me out of bed, an intern is practicing reading Xrays by looking at the film and then checking the report to see whether he found everything the radiologist had. When he looked at my chest Xray, he saw a shadow that wasn't explained in the re;port. He called whoever was supervising him and asked about it. Up until that time all my chest Xrays had been "portable' chest Xrays because they hadn't had me out of bed. A normal chest Xray and an arteriogram clearly showed a traumatic tear of the descending aorta which was "seeping." A thin membrane was keeping me from "bleeding out" into my chest.
As they are giving me a healthy dose of Valium by injection, the doctors not only explain the seriousness of my condition but also inform me that I have to be transferred to the Army hospital on the other side of the Bay because the Navy hospital doesn't have a heart-lung machine and the helicopter is already on another case.
Not only was my aorta successfully patched but also the surgeon repaired a coarctation of the aorta, a congenital defect. In fact, he informed me that it is a wonder that I had grown to be an adult with such a serious degree of narrowing. "Death" had been walking with me all those years "just out of reach."
After surviving this wreck so dramatically, eventually found that I had also lost all fear of death. Adding to this the fact that I have clear memories from past lives that I have lived, I have complete confidence that not only could I live through anything but also, if I should die, I will live again.
Several months ago, when a high PSA score got me sent to Urology for evaluation and a lump was found and a biopsy was scheduled, my mortality once again came into focus. At my age and with a background of these kinds of experiences and unconstrained by not having a wife or even a girlfriend, how could I not conclude that there is no better way to spend the rest of my life than devoted to the Dharma as a Buddhist monk.
Now with the results of the biopsy showing cancer and a treatment plan set out for me, not only is my decision to pursue Tibetan Buddhist monasticism confirmed but I also can see "Death" hanging out with me just out of reach. I don't fear dying, but I do want to be of benefit to all sentient beings.
While there were some health issues, my elementary school years passed uneventfully until I was 12 when doctors became alarmed at the implications of the murmur that I had since birth. There began years of cardiologist consultations and just about every new noninvasive test that came along. Finally, when I was 16, they decided that I was old enough to have a cardiac catheterization. After they had examined all the test data and the motion pictures of the fluoroscope images, they informed me that I was healthy enough to "go out and chop logs." Years later a surgeon would have taken exception to such a prognosis, but he had the advantage of direct observation, far superior to any indirect test.
Over the years, during my drinking years, there were many "close calls." However, I easily dismissed all of these even one in 1973 which involved a fractured vertebra which the orthopedic surgeon said should have "at least paralyzed" me. That only served to get me to my first alcohol rehab and my first AA meeting. A few days out of the hospital I drank again.
Although this may not be the experience of most people, it really isn't all that different. From the moment we are born, "Death" is not far from us. He is most likely to take us without warning when we least expect it, by a heart attack when we think we are healthy or when someone runs a red light and crashes into us or any of so many ways we couldn't even guess. Just that suddenly he came close to me in the spring 1983. I had been staying up too many hours and gotten too little rest (probably even already manifesting the sleep disorders that were diagnosed years later). While driving home one night, I fell asleep at the wheel, taking an exit unexpectedly. Still sleeping, I took out a stop sign and awoke to the pain of both arms breaking. The van crossed the intersection and perched in a tree where I waited to be rescued. With two broken arms, a fractured knee, a few holes in me, and unknown internal injuries I spent the night until firefighters and paramedics extracted me from my wrecked van. I had barely escaped "Death" once again, but I didn't know how close he still was.
Two weeks into my hospital stay, after so many tests chasing "poor lung function," the day before physical therapy is scheduled to start getting me out of bed, an intern is practicing reading Xrays by looking at the film and then checking the report to see whether he found everything the radiologist had. When he looked at my chest Xray, he saw a shadow that wasn't explained in the re;port. He called whoever was supervising him and asked about it. Up until that time all my chest Xrays had been "portable' chest Xrays because they hadn't had me out of bed. A normal chest Xray and an arteriogram clearly showed a traumatic tear of the descending aorta which was "seeping." A thin membrane was keeping me from "bleeding out" into my chest.
As they are giving me a healthy dose of Valium by injection, the doctors not only explain the seriousness of my condition but also inform me that I have to be transferred to the Army hospital on the other side of the Bay because the Navy hospital doesn't have a heart-lung machine and the helicopter is already on another case.
Not only was my aorta successfully patched but also the surgeon repaired a coarctation of the aorta, a congenital defect. In fact, he informed me that it is a wonder that I had grown to be an adult with such a serious degree of narrowing. "Death" had been walking with me all those years "just out of reach."
After surviving this wreck so dramatically, eventually found that I had also lost all fear of death. Adding to this the fact that I have clear memories from past lives that I have lived, I have complete confidence that not only could I live through anything but also, if I should die, I will live again.
Several months ago, when a high PSA score got me sent to Urology for evaluation and a lump was found and a biopsy was scheduled, my mortality once again came into focus. At my age and with a background of these kinds of experiences and unconstrained by not having a wife or even a girlfriend, how could I not conclude that there is no better way to spend the rest of my life than devoted to the Dharma as a Buddhist monk.
Now with the results of the biopsy showing cancer and a treatment plan set out for me, not only is my decision to pursue Tibetan Buddhist monasticism confirmed but I also can see "Death" hanging out with me just out of reach. I don't fear dying, but I do want to be of benefit to all sentient beings.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Vajrasattva Practice
For the second time I have participated in Vajrasattva Practice with my vajra brothers and sisters at Katsel Dharma Center. Although I have not yet had the empowerment, but soon hope to receive it when Khenpo Tsultrim is here next month, this practice has been a powerful experience both times.
The most I can do to describe it is that it has the best aspects of a "good confession" as I knew them when I was Russian Orthodox. There is a powerful sense of cleansing and a great weight being lifted. However there is no feeling of guilt involved, but rather the anticipation of a new beginning.
The cleansing, renewing and uplifting in this practice seems to come from the "four powers" or strengths which are essential to its fruitfulness: the power of support or reliance, the power of regret, the power of the antidote or remedy, and the power of resolution or confidence. That on which we depend for support, that on which we rely, for the effectiveness of this practice is our own "buddha-nature." However, as one who has not yet attained Enlightenment, I can also rely, in the meantime, on Vajrasattva and my guru to be the ground by which I am supported as I walk this path. Hence, in the visualization I take within myself Varjasattva.
Nonetheless, it is within myself that I find the power of regret. Here it is beneficial to contemplate, even beforehand, the suffering and harm from any negative karma. It is also most useful to develop and generate bodhicitta, because not only does negative karma harm me but it also harms others in their progress toward Enlightenment. Therefore, with this regret I form the positive desire to be cleansed of all nonvirtues and take whatever action may be required. Thus we have the various elements which constitute the "antidote or remedy." Hence, we have, among other things, the offering mudras, meditation, and mantra recitation.
The fourth power, "the power of resolution or confidence" now means that we receive the purification which we seek. In the text of the practice we are told that we have been "completely purified." Herein we must exercise our faith in the effectiveness of this practice. Furthermore, having been thus purified we commit ourselves to change ourselves and abstain from these same nonvirtues.
I realize that my experience is most elementary and my understanding is that of a beginner. Nevertheless, I look forward to the Vajrasattva Empowerment and the change that it will bring.
The most I can do to describe it is that it has the best aspects of a "good confession" as I knew them when I was Russian Orthodox. There is a powerful sense of cleansing and a great weight being lifted. However there is no feeling of guilt involved, but rather the anticipation of a new beginning.
The cleansing, renewing and uplifting in this practice seems to come from the "four powers" or strengths which are essential to its fruitfulness: the power of support or reliance, the power of regret, the power of the antidote or remedy, and the power of resolution or confidence. That on which we depend for support, that on which we rely, for the effectiveness of this practice is our own "buddha-nature." However, as one who has not yet attained Enlightenment, I can also rely, in the meantime, on Vajrasattva and my guru to be the ground by which I am supported as I walk this path. Hence, in the visualization I take within myself Varjasattva.
Nonetheless, it is within myself that I find the power of regret. Here it is beneficial to contemplate, even beforehand, the suffering and harm from any negative karma. It is also most useful to develop and generate bodhicitta, because not only does negative karma harm me but it also harms others in their progress toward Enlightenment. Therefore, with this regret I form the positive desire to be cleansed of all nonvirtues and take whatever action may be required. Thus we have the various elements which constitute the "antidote or remedy." Hence, we have, among other things, the offering mudras, meditation, and mantra recitation.
The fourth power, "the power of resolution or confidence" now means that we receive the purification which we seek. In the text of the practice we are told that we have been "completely purified." Herein we must exercise our faith in the effectiveness of this practice. Furthermore, having been thus purified we commit ourselves to change ourselves and abstain from these same nonvirtues.
I realize that my experience is most elementary and my understanding is that of a beginner. Nevertheless, I look forward to the Vajrasattva Empowerment and the change that it will bring.
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