Category: Hope

Contemplating Disease – Part 8a – Religious Ideation – September 17, 2018

Faith can be a wonderful thing and it can also be dangerous.  I’ll write more about the power of faith with regard to managing illness and disease.  For now I would briefly like to stop here and speak of harmful religious ideation, a term that frequently used among chaplains when working with patients and families who would believe something that was harmful to their lives and contrary to the advice of their medical providers. Being…

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Contemplating Disease – Part 7 – Shijo Kingo and Managing Illness – September

In Chih-I’s time, and in fact for most of the time humans have been around until more recent times, the idea of living with long term illness didn’t exist much.  You either recovered or you died in most cases.  With the advances of modern medicine people are living longer, dying at later ages, and living with illnesses that would previously meant death.  This is a wonderful benefit of modern medical science.  We have much to…

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Contemplating Disease – Medicine King Bodhisattva – Part 6a – September 12, 2018

Deciding how I shall write about the bulk of Chih-I’s section in the Mo-Ho Chih-Kuan has been complicated.  There is much in his work that is important especially given his role in collecting, systematizing, and disseminating the full body of Chinese medicine available during his time.  He is often referred to as the father of Buddhist medicine and in fact Nichiren referred to him as the emanation of Medicine King Bodhisattva. Medicine King Bodhisattva appears…

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Contemplating Disease – Part 5b – Comforting the Ill – September 2, 2018

It’s not just family and friends who don’t know how to interact with the patient.  I’ve witnessed many doctors who, while good at the practice and delivery of medicine are woefully inadequate in finding the balance between honesty and compassion.  I’ll say this from my witnessing many doctor patient interactions, most doctors don’t know how to deliver bad news.  Part of this comes from the sense of failure on the part of a doctor if…

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