Over the course of treatment beginning with the journalling he leads his patients in a program that has proven to be more effective than surgery. In fact it was because he was performing surgeries and still people continued to have back problems that led him to reevaluate his approach. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has back problems and especially before considering surgery. The work of this surgeon is merely one example of how interconnected our physical body is to our spiritual/emotional/mental self.
What goes on in one of the Ten Aspects manifests in all the others equally and connectedly. When we think about how debilitating back pain can be, and if you’ve had any type of back pain either short term or long term you will know that it seriously limits all of your other activities, your mental state, your everything. And it has a cascading effect due to decreased mobility the very thing that can help to aleviate the pain as well as keep the rest of the body in shape.
Working in the hospital enabled me to see how detrimental inactivity can be. A day in bed for a senior can mean a loss in mobility and muscular conditioning that can take weeks if not months to recover from. There is an increased effort now in hospitals to keep patients out of their beds while they are admitted to treatment whenever possible. It just gets worse the less we do. And conversely it gets worse if we try to do too much.
The middle way is certainly the Golden Way. This is where the Eightfold Path interplays with the Ten Suchnesses. There really isn’t anything in Buddhism that can be taken completely out of context with other aspects of Buddhism.
When you reach that point of diminishing capacity more than likely it can cause frustration. Here I’ll draw from my own life. As I’ve aged I am no longer able to get up and go like I did when I was younger. There are many things that have changed, mobility, energy, strength, vision, and so on. At times when I forget these things I over-do it and then suddenly I’m caught short. Not only am I caught short I get frustrated that I can’t do what I wanted to do or do it the way I used to.
When I travel now I have gotten in the habit of not thinking I can walk everywhere with suitcase in tow. I always budget for taxis and have no problem now spending the extra money to take a cab so that I can arrive at my destination not completely exhausted or even worse, falling down. This last trip to Japan Myokei and I took cabs practically everywhere especially if we had our suitcases. The energy and effort of navigating stations with luggage added to the distances needed to walk with said luggage is too depleting and so we decided we weren’t going to be depleted, at least not hauling luggage.
At Mount Minobu the hills are steep and everywhere you walk you will at some point on the journey need to walk up those steep inclines. Going down to the village means walking back up to the lodging temple. Walking up to Kuon-ji means thankfully the return trip is downhill. Last year my breathing condition was so bad I could not go anywhere, it was both disappointing and frustrating. I wasn’t able to get up to Kuon-ji for morning service and I wasn’t able to get down to the village to say hello to various shop keeper I know or to have ice cream.
This year, with new medication, I was able to do all the walking I wanted. Admittedly I would need to stop frequently along the way to catch my breath and rest my legs and knees but through carefully monitoring my body I was able to walk with wisdom and skill. True not as fast as ten years ago yet not as immobile as the previous year. All in all I’ll take it gladly.
Stress also affects our nature as it can cause us to lash out inappropriately. This was certainly the case on the trip to Belgium and then to France immediately afterwards which Myokei and I made together in 2017. By the end of the trip Myokei and I both were so tired and so stressed that we ended up not speaking to each other the last two days. Fortunately all is mended now.
I can recall a time when my partner, Wayne, and I were driving across country in 1976. We had shipped our car from Hawaii to San Francisco. The journey to Rhode Island held many unexpected events for us. One was nearly freezing to death twice. The car, being an older one and prior to Hawaii requiring heaters in all cars had no heater. Our plan was to stop at a junk yard in Utah and get one from another car. Well let me tell you driving through the desert in October it gets mighty cold at night. We had to keep stopping every few miles to find a place to warm up, we still had no winter clothes.
Then after we got the heater and continued on our way through Colorado we got caught in an unexpected early blizzard. The car began to stall out and finally on a dark and snowy covered section in the middle of nowhere the car died and wouldn’t go any further. We were fortunate that the first vehicle that passed us used in CB radio, yep that’s the means of communication before cell phones, to radio to any person behind him that there were stranded motorists on the side of the road. The very next truck that came along had begun to slow down so he could pick us up and give us a lift. He then took us to a ski resort and the local gas station there.
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