Looking for the Easy Out

After more than 8 weeks, I am still tangling with a body that's fails me and watching my mind lash out in frustration, even anger. I got to Medicare with only a structural problem brought on by a car accident in which I was a passive victim. So sickness is a place I've never visited before and now that I'm here, I'm behaving like a tourist whose vacation is suddenly upended by the catastrophe of war or earthquake. I want out. I have fiercely fixated on getting myself to the first plane leaving this ground. This is to say, for instance, when the medical powers that be told me I have a thyroid problem, I brewed up seaweed soup and slurped in its iodine, certain this would solve that. I doubled down by throwing away the expensive sea salt in favor of slathering good old Morton's iodized on everything. I don't want a thyroid problem.

Praying to Vajrasattva for purification, Medicine Buddha for healing and White Tara for protection from this suffering doesn't seem to be doing anything, at least so far as I can tell. Maybe I would be sicker without the prayers? I don't know. I just know every day I have to sit around and do nothing, I grow more impatient to get back to my active life. My idea of impermanence grows closer and closer to the current culture's: change faster than you can say the word. In an age of supersonic travel, instant communications and a new product every nanosecond, why are these ailments still dogging me? Where is change I can believe in?

A huge part of my suffering is the mystery of why I am. Is it me or was it Mongolia? Strange symptoms come and go and come back sometimes. Among the most recent tests were those for bacteria-induced brucellosis and parasite (tick) induced babieosis. If I indeed have one of them, it would explain almost everything, so I find myself praying this is the case. It would be a relief to know it was not me but Mongolia, that I have an external predator victimizing me. For one thing it indicates I didn't bring it on, didn't do something wrong. But more to the point, there is a relatively easy cure for bacteria and parasites: antibiotics, lots of them. Then I can go back to my life as usual. It would also be a huge relief to know it was not me breaking down, not age and not overdoing life. The idea that it could be me has been way to scary to contemplate because there is no easy fix.

I am praying to the Bodhisattvas and Buddhas for a bailout. Not for my sake personally, although that would be nice. Rather, for the whole Mahayana, all the people who depend on me, all the sangha charity work that needs to be accomplished. If the Buddha makes me well, I tell him, I can help so many people. I can really be of benefit. Yes! Make me well and I'll get right back out there working for others. I really am quite sincere about this, but I also know what I am doing is of course a lot like others bargaining with death. I want the fates to give me what I want, my precious life back. And when do I want it? NOW!

Of course I don't tell the Buddhas I have become so absorbed by this frustrating frailty, the other day for the first time I actually said NO to a friend. I would not go out to buy and send something frivolous he wanted because I was tired of always doing things for others especially right now when I most needed to do everything to help me. Somebody had to help me and there was only me.

According to the emails coming in, people from Mongolia to Maine are praying for me, rooting for me to get well soon. Their caring has been the only comfort. It takes me back to the blessings of my Dharma practice. I know of Rinpoche's and monks who's medical crisis quickly passed on the winds of other people's prayer. Maybe the same will eventually be said about mine.

More testing... testing...

P.S. five days later: Among the commons symptoms the endocrinologist asked me if I had with this mysterious thyroid inflammation were depression and irritability. "Really?" he said, "You don't?" and that's when I realized 25 years of Dharma practice had kicked in, like a time release capsule.

~Sandy Garson"Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
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