It is reasonable that a person may question how a practice of a religion that fundamentally does not believe in an external solution to the sufferings of life, how that religion could provide a source for support for living with illness. In other words if we don’t pray to someone or something to assist us in our suffering then what is it we can accomplish through our Buddhist practice. Since our experience of traditional medicine even going back to Chih-I and beyond it is one of seeking assistance from a source outside of one’s self and possibly ingesting or using a substance from outside one’s body into or onto one’s body. I go to the doctor who is outside of me, and I take a prescription from outside of me and ingest it into my body thus the outside object then affects a curative on the inside of my body.
Buddhism at its fundamental level teaches the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and the Twelve Link Chain of Causation and all of those focus on regulating self, body, mind and action. The perspective in Buddhism is from one’s self to the outside and medicine is from the outside to the inside. Of course that is a rather simplistic illustration but it is not too inaccurate to the dynamics of self-care, healing, and living through illness. The greatest potential for a breakdown in this harmonious approach is when one favors or excludes on of these elements.
Buddhism is from the inside out and medicine is from the outside in. There is balance and harmony to be achieved to correct the imbalance or disharmony that is occurring in our body, mind, spirit, experience and so forth. Medicine is incapable, at least at this point of curing all disease whether mental or physical. The reason this is true is because of its infancy in understanding the nature of body, mind, and spirit including death and birth. Also in a way medicine hinders itself because it looks at only body or only the brain and rarely at the unity of the two and even less frequently does it even factor in spiritual self.
Buddhism has attempted to consider and teach the principal that there is not separate self from environment or environment from self, no separate mind from body or body from mind, no separate cause from effect or effect from cause. Medicine primarily operates in the cause and effect realm and only recently have begun operating from body and mind and self and environment. The most unexplored area of medicine is the nature of belief and Buddhism has been aware of and instructed in this for thousands of years.
This is why it is important to ensure that one is firmly residing in the practice and teachings of Buddhism as one undergoes medical care and treatment and lives through illness. If we abandon our Buddhist practice and faith then we have cut ourselves off from the healing from self that medicine is incapable of prescribing.
When I worked as a Chaplain in the hospital doing chaplain visits I frequently experience generally two types of response from doctors. One was that the doctors didn’t consider the role or function of chaplain as very significant, and only as an afterthought would request a chaplain. Nurses were less prone to this probably because they were closer to the ‘front line’ and witnessed the benefit to the patient from chaplain support. Some doctors, and this number is increasing, respected, requested, and supported chaplain visits as important to the healing of the patient. Some doctors were not aware of the level of training a chaplain undergoes to become a certified chaplain. While I don’t want to diminish the training a doctor goes through I will say that a chaplain is perhaps the second most trained and skilled provider in a hospital.
Besides the training one goes through in order to be ordained as a minister or priest, there is the additional training of Graduate Level university courses leading to a Masters degree in some theological or divinity degree. Then after that there is the roughly four additional years of Chaplain training including over 3000 hours of clinical experience. Finally before certification one must undergo a review board examination as well as examination of writing amounting to roughly an inch thick of paper (mine was a little over one inch, single sided, 10pt type, one inch margins, lol how well I remember those guidelines). This is more training than a nurse undergoes. I say all of this knowing that there is no way I could qualify to be a nurse or doctor and I would fail miserably at memorizing all the things they need to recall. Yet we each have our speciality and we each train with our hearts and minds and bodies to accomplish our passion and goal.
What one believes is what one experiences. Also often times people do not know what they believe. Further complicating this is the hidden beliefs a person has accumulated from various experiences and the effect of those hidden beliefs on our health.
When I first began working with boys dying of AIDS, the diagnosis meant a death sentence. The same used to be the case with Cancer. Now HIV/AIDS is treatable and there has been some examples cure and reversal. The same has been the case for Cancer. But the advances in medicine are not often identical to the beliefs of individuals or society. HIV/AIDS still caries a stigma of death and contagion in many parts of society and the world, yet this notion is contrary to the science. Many times when a person is diagnosed with Cancer the immediate mental gymnastics does a pole vault right to death. Yet there are so many types of Cancer and so many cures.
The hidden messages from society are when someone learns a friend has cancer the most common reaction, and I am taking this from what I have witnessed and personally experienced is “Oh my gosh you’re going to die” even if those are not the words spoken it is the undertone of the expressions. They may not be the words but it is clearly obvious in the way people act. And sometimes it is even “you’re going to die tomorrow” which is absurd except for some rare and aggressive types of cancer.
This makes it extremely challenging for even the most positive minded person to maintain a positive mindset. This can be one of the reasons why people don’t share their trajectory through illness. It get tiring to maintain a positive mindset when everyone else exhibits fear of you dying and dying soon. It also get tiring hanging the emotions of others when your own emotions are requiring so much work to stay focused on your own mental and physical health.
Then there is the opposite extreme where people stop asking or seeming to not care because they don’t want to upset the person who is ill. They sometimes feel like if they asked it would be like picking a scab on a wound. Or they may not connect because they are unsure what they can do or should do.
My best advice, though not the easiest is talk about what you’re feel. Understand though that the feelings of the person with the illness trump all other feeling of others. Also rather than leaving it out there as “let me know if there is anything I can do” actually offer to do something. Perhaps you might say, would you object to me bringing some caserole that I am baking on Friday? I can drop of a couple of servings and it will be not trouble to do so?” In other words make a concrete offering. Rather than putting the burden on the sick person try being proactive in suggesting something. “Can I bring you some flowers for decoration, I’ll be out shopping on Tuesday and it would be not problem?” If refused accept the refusal not as an affront or a refusal of any support just understand the right now there is not need. It isn’t that the person hates you or doesn’t appreciate your offering.
“Would you like for me to pick any groceries while I am shopping next Wednesday?” Perhaps the answer will be no this week but yes the next time. If you can do something and are willing to do it, then offer it and understand that perhaps this time might not be best but next time might be perfect. If however your offering of support is conditional to them praising you or being in debt to you then it really is best to refrain from helping until you can do so freely.
It is sort of like Dhana. True Dhana is offering and support given without any expectation of reward or benefit.
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