Out of Sight

I was just about to say the only tools a person needs to manage life gracefully are a hammer, hairdryer and hanger (the ha ha ha of survival), when I was rudely interrupted by a dire medical emergency. My own. After I explained over the phone there was something wrong with my left eye, an extremely kind older doctor had agreed to see me, and five minutes after I got to him, he was shoving me into a taxi to hasten me to the farthest side of town for immediate surgery. "By tomorrow your sight will be permanently damaged," he said. "Good luck."

Alone in a taxi heading somewhere strange where strangers are supposed to save you from going blind provides more terror than anything Al Qaeda or other blood thirsty Islamists can concoct. A detached retina is about the worst nightmare you can have midday. Three blocks on, I was such a wreck, I needed to call for help. With only one shot and my own eye doctor 3,000 miles away, I summoned my new best friend, Sangye Menla, the Medicine Buddha. "Be here now," I said.

After another block or two, his lapis blue feintly appeared. "Samaya dza!" I mumbled so the cab driver wouldn't think the clinic his passenger was heading to was the loony bin. "Samaya dza: Remember your vow to help." 

I don't know how many times I mumbled the mantra "help me" and struggled to see blue light. It was a long cab ride. I just know I had reason to worry. Our relationship, like so many, did not start well. I'd known Sangye Menla for years but didn't give him time. My Dharma teacher, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, has taught extensively about this great healer, and because he has so effectively revived the practice of calling on him, Rinpoche is often thought to be his current worldly emanation. But since Rinpoche freely gives Menla access to anyone, no matter what their level of understanding, I didn't think of him as critical. Okay, as important.  

Never think.

Last fall while severely suffering from an inflamed thyroid but in a symptom lull, I flew to see Rinpoche. "I've been reading about vase breathing," I said, feeling so so smart. "I read it can unwind the knots in your subtle body. Maybe knots have been the cause of my thyroid rage. It makes sense. Can you teach me to do that special breathing so I can get better?"

Rinpoche gave me the withering look that goes to a smartass. He sank his maroon clad body further into his brocade chair, took a deep breath of exasperation and said dismissively: "Just do Medicine Buddha practice. That will be good enough."  

"It really does work," field surgeon Dr. John insisted. "After my back surgery, I summoned him every day for a year and I swear this made me feel like I was glowing. You should listen to Rinpoche." 

Since he hammered that point, I hung up my stupid smarts, dried my wet pride and dug out the Medicine Buddha practice text. But you know how easy it is to be distracted and not do things you should. So I did it once and moved on.
  
About a week later, the tide of my thyroid shifted. As predicted, the hormone tsunami of the hyperthyroid became the ebb and no flow of the moribund hypothyroid. As predicted, I was in danger of gaining back the 15 pounds the hyperthyroid took from me: a dream come true in the middle of that nightmare. 

Return of the 15 and more! I grabbed that practice manual. I dug up my implements. Fervently I prayed: "Samaya dza!" Like crazy I visualized the lapis blue Buddha sending lapis blue light into my thyroid. Like mad I visualized him on my throat like a traffic bobby directing the healing blue light everywhere into and around that thyroid. Nonstop I chanted the Medicine Buddha mantra: Tayata, om bekendze, bekendze, mahabekdenze, raja, samugate, soha. ("This is the situation: healer, healer, great healer, king of medicine who has transcended all suffering. So be it.")

I was, to put it mildly, motivated. I had never lost 15 pounds in my life: I had bought new clothes. People said despite being so sick, I looked so good. Everyday for more than a week I faithfully put in a call to Sangye Menla, twice a day sometimes. "... bekendze, bekendze, mahabekendze ..." I  burned up Buddhist network minutes by the megabyte. 

And, Sangye Menla fired up my thyroid. The endocrinologist still cannot figure out how it came back to normal in only three weeks instead of the usual three months. Back to normal with only 2 returned pounds. Didn't have to buy different clothes. As my friend was about to say: "You have all the luck."

Now there I was in terror in a taxi obsessively beseeching Sangye Menla, desperately searching with a dying eye for signs of his lapis lazuli blue. And chanting, silently chanting without cease to my new best hopefully friend because having something I could do was making  me feel calm. My eye was out of control, but, thank Buddha, I was not. "... bekendze ...bekendze ..." 

The waiting room wait was forever. Chant chant. Pray away.

He sat in my eye the way they say an angel dances on the head of a pin. I could see his seated cerulean form, the bowl in his left hand, the medicine in his right. His eyes were flaming red and penetrating.

 "I know I'm hurting you," the surgeon said, "but you're being very stoic and I appreciate that."

Stoic?!?! Who he was talking to? I would've looked around if I could have moved my head in that vice. "No," I mumbled shakily. "I am not stoic. I am just doing all the meditation practice I know because I am scared out of my mind." The distraction was working. My body was in the chair. My eye was in danger and desperation, detaching and dilated to the max. My mind was calmly cruising along carrying me away in the vast blissful blue (ocean and sky) of the Medicine Buddha. I could see Rinpoche's trademark toothy smile. Fear morphed into hope.

You cannot just close your eyes to make the whole thing go away when people in white lab coats are sticking needles in your face and clasps on your eyelids and freezing your eyeball. But you can make it go away by giving all you've got to getting the lapis lazuli Medicine Buddha front and center, right in the middle of the operation. And you can keep moving your lips and your mind in chant ... samugate, soha...  ("gone beyond (transcended), so be it!) You can pray like all getout.

And your prayers can make as much difference as the frozen nitrogen and helium bubble strangers put in your eye. The friend I phoned to come get me, the one I really wanted, an Asian medicine man with a full schedule, was miraculously free at what was now dinner hour and drove all the way across the city to take me home. That's when shock set in, but not pain. There was never pain, never any need for the Vikodin prescription a nurse handed me as I walked out. (A surreptious blessing: I could probably have financed my next year selling that on the street, but I tore it up.) I prayed to Sangye Menla, gave tea to Mahakala, remover of obstacles, and got into bed. 

"That's going to challenge your meditation skill," were the Doctor's last words after he told me I had to lay on my right side for six days. But in truth, I had a blissfully relaxing interlude visiting with my new best friend, Sangye Menla. I just knew he was going to help me and make things right because the morning after, I had to return to that surgical clinic where the unfamiliar doctor who ripped the patch off my eye couldn't stop admiring what he saw. "Wow," he volunteered at last, "that healed really fast. I think you'll get most of your sight back." 

When I do, I will be able to tell you about the ha ha ha of survival. But I will have to add a fourth element, the he ho: the help/ hope of the Medicine Buddha. Although nobody can tell you this on Yelp or Angie's List, and even though you won't find him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter, he truly does one helluva job. After all, what you are really calling out to are the magical healing energies of your own mind and body.


P.S. Although no doctor would confirm this, I know--believing as any good Buddhist does in cause and effect--that way too many hours staring at this computer screen destroyed my eye. Staring at the monitor dries your eyes out because you don't blink so much and the drier they get the more trouble you can have. So please take care.



 






 







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