How to Be Sick (7 page)

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Authors: Toni Bernhard,Sylvia Boorstein

BOOK: How to Be Sick
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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 soul 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 developed, the particular energy configurations we have cultivated.
 
 
 
Think of 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 just a temporary assemblage of steel, plastic, and human intelligence in a particular combination we conveniently designate “bicycle.” There is no inherent “bike-ness.” 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.
 
Seeing 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 saw that mood, that thought, that expert as 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.
 
This teaching can be disturbing to people, but I hope that, like me, you find it liberating. 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 a 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 instance, in
The Only Dance There Is
, spiritual teacher Ram Dass discusses the difference in the Western and Eastern approaches to this question, comparing Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” with the more anatta-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 U.S., he asked Neem Karoli Baba what teaching he should take home with him. The sage told him to just 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 worry about things.
 
Who am I?
 
In the epigram 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 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 is all just 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 re-emerges as a solid, separate entity (as it always eventually does!), those few seconds without it were 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 symptoms of the illness. 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 Joy and Love
 
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 who’ve never studied any 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 the number of concepts that 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 suffering in our lives and the practices that can lead to the end of that suffering through awakening, liberation, freedom.
 
For me, the sweetest list is the four
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 the enlightened or awakened mind. Indeed, in Pali,
vihara
also means “dwelling place.”
 
The four brahma viharas are:
Metta—
loving-kindness; wishing well to others and to ourselves
 
Karuna—
compassion; reaching out to those who are suffering, including ourselves
 
Mudita—
sympathetic joy; joy in the joy of others
 
Upekkha—
equanimity; a mind that is at peace in all 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 does when he recites the Buddhist precepts, its code of ethical conduct. He begins the recitation with: “I undertake the practice of . . .” I like this because words like “don’t” or “always” can set us up for failure. I won’t always be able 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.
 
Let’s start our exploration of these sublime states by considering sympathetic joy and take up the other three after that. Cultivating
joy in the joy of others
has been central to coming to terms with the life I can no longer lead. Without this
,
I’d be steeped in envy. Because our activities are so limited, it’s hard for the chronically ill to avoid feeling envy for all those people just living their lives as they always have. Some of us must stay at home, unable to join family and friends when they go to a movie or take a bike ride or attend weddings and other special events or go on vacation or even dash out to the store for a quart of milk. Even those who are not house-bound have to pace themselves carefully and so, for example, cannot always spontaneously visit or go out for a meal with family and friends. These limitations can apply to caregivers too, because they must often forego cherished activities either because their loved one needs care or because the activities aren’t enjoyable to go to by oneself. Tony finds it hard to enjoy weddings and the like without having me there to share the experience with him and to talk about afterward.
 
So envy arises easily in the life of the chronically ill and their caregivers. It can be so overpowering that it feels like it is eating us alive—and it has sometimes been like that for me. Envy is a poison, crowding out any chance at feeling peaceful and serene in the mind. In addition, the emotional stress brought on by envy exacerbates our physical symptoms. And indeed, this is not surprising since Buddhism defines an emotion as a thought plus a physical reaction to that thought.
 
Thankfully, mudita is a powerful antidote to the poison of envy. After becoming ill, it took me a long time to be able to easily cultivate this sublime state. At first, practicing mudita was a sheer act of will. I would 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 remember mudita practice and try to feel joy for them, 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 mudita
.
I stuck with the practice though and slowly, slowly, slowly fake mudita started to become genuine mudita
.

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