(Contemplating Disease will be the working title I will use for posts relating to my next book dealing with Disease, our Buddhist practice, and the Lotus Sutra.)
For the majority of my life I have in one way or another engaged in the caring for people suffering from various diseases and illnesses. First, as many of you know by now, taking care of boys dying from AIDS. In fact most of the years were involved in caring for HIV/AIDS patients. Then a few years ago I formally trained for and received my Board Certified Chaplain, BCC, credentials.
As I have been reading through the Paul L. Swanson translation of T’ien-T’ai Chih-I’s Mo-Ho Chih-Kuan: Clear Serenity, Quiet Insight I have been muling over, sitting with, ruminating, meditation on the section “Contemplating the Objects of Disease”. Every living being endures in some form or another at some time or times in their lives disease and suffering. Since so much of my life’s work has been in this realm I strongly feel compelled to offer my insights from studying this section. Perhaps it will be of benefit to many people, or as often is the case in writing it will mainly benefit myself.
In the Lotus Sutra, Chapter XV, “The Appearance of Bodhisattvas From Underground”, we have the story of the emergence of unprecedented Bodhisattvas who emerge from beneath the earth in response to the Buddhas questioning who would spread the Dharma of the Lotus Sutra in the later age of degeneration after his death. Among the congregation assembled in the air above Mount Sacred Eagle gazing at the two Buddhas seated side by side there were only two groups of people who bothered to respond to his request.
One group was comprised of beings not from this world and the Buddha said they were not qualified due to the harsh practices and difficulties required to spread the Dharma in the Saha World, our world. Being from some other realm they would not be able to relate to humans and the conditions of our realm and the practice required.
The other group of people were self disqualified because they were not willing to spread the Dharma in the Saha world but would do so some place else because it would be to hard to do the work of teaching and spreading the Dharma in this earthly realm.
The Buddha, it could be said, said well, never mind I’ve got a group of people in reserve who have been training with me for countless aeons. At this moment those individuals rose up from beneath the ground. The were lead by four great Bodhisattas.
As the Four Leader Bodhisattvas approached the Buddha they said “World-Honored One, are you peaceful? Are you in good health?” 1 This is a variation on a standard greeting exchanged between Buddhas. It is also variously translated “May you have little disease and little suffering”2
I have pointed out in various other of my writings how remarkable even the act of making an enquiry into the well being of the Buddha is in the Lotus Sutra. Throughout the Lotus Sutra the interactions between the Buddha and various people in the congregation were all requests made to the Buddha to predict that persons future enlightenment. It was only these Bodhisattvas who represent us that asked how the Buddha was doing.
I’ve frequently thought of most of the Lotus Sutra as a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans. When I was a child growing in New Orleans, and as everyone who has been there during Mardi Gras knows, the chants at all the parades are “Throw me something mister.” Throw me some cheap beads, throw me some candy, throw me a doubloon, throw me a prediction of my enlightenment, throw me a tale of my future good deeds. Well I can always manage to be a bit irreverent.
One thing we learn from this is that even Buddhas have disease, they are not immune to the four sufferings of birth, sickness, decay, and death. Every being, every human being will have disease. Now were are not speaking only of diagnosable diseases or only those things that may bring us to the doctor office or hospital.
One of my supervisors in my training as a chaplain frequently would say disease is diss ease. Not be at ease and there is quite some wisdom loaded in this turn of the phrase and that’s one of the things I hope to share with you from a Buddhist perspective and specifically from a Lotus Sutra based view from Chih-I.
- Lotus Sutra 2nd edition, translated by Murano, page 231
- Quiet Insight, Swanson, page 1322
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