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Saturday, October 19, 2002 |
On Saturday we went to see another Buddhist meditation center. This place is a little closer to us, so I wanted to see it. The priest there gave us a meditation lesson. She also recommended we practice what is called "metta". This is a Buddhist practice which translates to "lovingkindness". Typically when you meditate, you concentrate on your out-breath. In metta practice, you silently chant to yourself: May "I" be free of fear May "I" find mental happiness May "I" find physical happiness May "I" have ease of well-being
Depending upon what sort of metta you're doing, you can replace the "I" with "you" or "all of creation" or something else.
She also gave me a chant to see if I can get through my taxotere infusions without the fear association: namu-dai-bo-sa. This Friday, I'll try that and a guided meditation CD, if I get my order in on time.
Last night I did the metta meditation towards myself, and then found that I couldn't get to sleep. I kept doing the metta, and the more I did it the more fearful I got. I got out of bed and paced the house, and then ended up settling downstairs and playing an online computer game all night.
I read a book early-on in my diagnosis, written by women who didn't like the analogy of "fighting a battle" when you have cancer. They thought it was too violent or aggressive terminology. At the time I agreed with them, but the farther along I go in my disease, the more I encounter battle themes. I feel like I've been tied up, and am having drugs injected into me. Except instead of "making me talk", these drugs kill me.... slowly. The medical profession claims that the drugs are saving my life. It's not the kind of saving your life that, say, a heart operation has, where you felt terrible one day, have an operation and now you feel better. Here, I feel ok one day, have the treatment, and then feel worse. It's really really hard to buy into the "this will save your life" line.
Last night I saw how nice it would be to be religious in the theological sense. To be able to pick up a book that reads "don't worry, God is with you", and to really believe it -- wow, what a release that would be. Now I'm in a sort of panic. Will I find peace with Buddhism in enough time for it to help me? My mind is going back into that old attitude of "I want it, and I want it now". Our society doesn't create the time or patience for activities which require time and patience, like Buddhism, where your discovery is your own, and you're not handed instant answers.
The alone-ness of cancer is a terrible thing.
9:00:25 PM 
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Good things about being bald
1. Shampooing and drying is a cinch
2. You can intimidate the hell out of people
3. Never need to worry about head lice
4. No more $60 beauty shop appointments every 2 months
5. No more agonizing over how to wear your hair
6. One step less to getting ready in the morning
7. You can ride a motorcycle or speed boat without tangles
8. Hot flashes are easier when you can take your hair off
9. No more hair in your boyfriend's face when you're on top
10. Never need to worry about whether your hair is messy Never any split ends, never a bad hair day
11. Most people remember your name
12. Sometimes you get an extra scoop of ice cream at the ice cream stand
13. One less requirement towards becoming a buddhist monk
14. You learn more ways to tie a scarf than you ever thought possible
15. You gain a fondness for hats and earings you never had before
16. At the oncologist's office you're one of the cool people
17. You have those extra 5 minutes a day that you used to spend counting white hairs
18. You can never be lost in a crowd, thanks to your bald beacon.
Bad things about being bald
1. You don't know where the end of your face is when washing
2. When it's cold, your head turns into an icicle and your ears freeze
3. The back of your head on a pillow feels like your head is on a heat sock
4. Mosquitoes like bald heads
5. You're forced to make a "statement" whether you want to or not
6. You learn how superficial and rude some people can be
7. You have to worry about the top of your head getting sunburnt
8. Hats that used to sit nicely on your head now smash your ears down
9. People stare in disbelief when your hat flies off
8:57:18 PM
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I've been meditating several times a day for the past few days. One thing interesting about my experience is that I find that the time I spend meditating feels like I'm reconnecting with an old, dear friend.
It's a strange feeling, because I'm basically a loner at heart. With my husband as my companion I can probably exist forever without ever seeing another human being and be totally satisfied with my life. I always have a ton of activities I'm involved with. In fact, most of the time it feels as though getting together with other people is more of an imposition than a good thing.
So with all of the time I spend by myself you'd think I would be completely familiar with "me". It must be that when I'm doing other things -- playing computer games, writing in my journal, exercising, being sick or depressed, etc. etc. my mind is doing its "wild horse" thing. It's off in a million different directions, never slowing down. I'm guessing this, I don't feel that this is the case; however, when I meditate something different happens.
The meditation, just from what I've experienced in the past few days, has allowed me to see the child within myself. When I see that child, a part of me says "you're ok". This doesn't happen with any conscious effort, because when I'm meditating I'm concentrating on my breathing, and really trying not to think about other things. It happens as a passing thought as I'm trying to concentrate on my breathing.
It must be that there's so much noise in my head when I'm doing other things, that the part of me that thinks about myself sees the inadequate (pre-diagnosis) or sick and dying (post-diagnosis) person. In other words, what drives my head normally is the cancer, and maybe some conglomeration of memories of all of the bad experiences in my life.
Maybe when I meditate, I strip away all of the part of my thoughts that sit around and fixate (subconsciously) on the bad stuff, and when I do that, what's left is a newborn, innocent child.
It's an interesting concept. To see the newborn child in myself. Maybe the power in meditation is to take the newborn child in onesself, and then allow into that child all of the good, positive things in life, and leave out all of the bad, unimportant things.
8:52:47 PM
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On Saturday we went to an all-day seminar on introduction to meditation. It was interesting, and different than I expected. This particular center is called the Shambhala Mediatation Center, and they teach a style of meditation where you focus on your breathing. The simplicity of the technique and concepts is beautiful.
The basic technique has 3 parts: physical (your sitting form), breathing, and thoughts.
You sit with your back straight and arms on your thighs, with your head tilting down slightly, and eyes open, looking with "soft" eyes about 6 feet in front of you. "soft" eyes means don't focus on anything in particular.
Breathe in and out naturally, and as you do so, pay attention to your breath. Don't try to manipulate it, just watch it.
If your thoughts wander, don't pass judgement on yourself, just put a label in your mind on those thoughts. Label them "thoughts", and then let them go, and move your mind back onto your breathing.
This is the meditation technique that is taught in this Center. It has a name, which escapes me now.
Why is meditation important? The simple answer is that meditation gives your mind something it doesn't otherwise get. It give it a chance to be completely "here", meaning totally aware of the "here and now", and be relaxed. Typically our minds are off in a million different directions all day long. They never really stop churning, cranking, generating thoughts.
We watched a tape made by the teacher of this particular center. His name is Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. In this tape, he compares your mind to a herd of wild horses. It's off in a million different directions, all day long. Meditation is like taming a wild horse.
Once your have the horse trained (control over being able to let your thoughts go and bring your mind to a quiet level), you can then control your mind to be at peace with the world.
It's the wildness of how our minds work, for instance, that causes us to do strange things like fixate on something rude someone said to us, and be angry or humiliated for days, not able to let it go, even though we know it's just, say, the person's ignorance or the person's own personal problems that caused them to say it in the first place.
Meditation doesn't change your fundamental personality. It doesn't mask bad experiences, or suffering you've had in your life. It doesn't give you this amazing, radical tranformation into Nirvana. All it does is bring your mind to "ground zero", so that you can decide what's really important to think about, and what in your life is noise.
The first step towards having meditation affect our lives is to learn to do it. It takes a while to learn to sit straight for the 15-45 minutes that's typical, and it takes a while to train the mind to focus on the breathing. Basically, he said you need to practice every day, as much as possible, even if you're grabbing 5 or 10 minutes here and there. Practicing in a lot of smaller sessions is better than doing one long session only once in a while.
All of the other stuff that we read about in the books about Buddhism and how meditation changes lives is what comes after you learn some control over your thoughts, and are able to quiet your mind, and bring it into the here-and-now.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche said in the tape, that your first goal should be to just keep your mind in the same room as you, and not have it go flying off to Hawaii on your next vacation or sitting at work thinking about work problems.
Buddhism isn't a religion as we think of the semitic religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam). The semitic religions have a diety who gives the people a set of "laws" to live by. What happens in the after-life is reward or punshment based upon the judgment of the diety on how the person has lived their lives. Buddhism seems to treat each person as an individual. It's up to us to decide which way our lives will go, and how to solve our own dilemmas. There's no "right" answer. The key is to be able to bring our minds to "ground zero", and then re-train our minds to drop things that are unimportant, and allow things in which are important.
I'm very impressed with the simplicity and lack of coersion in this philosophy.
I'm hoping that this can help me not only be a better person, but also help me get through future medical treatments. I've learned from the chemotherapy I've been going through that the panic and anxiety in my mind worsens my symptoms. I'm not so positive that medical science will be all that effective with nausea and pain when I'm deathly ill with a recurrence. I want to make sure I have all the tools in my toolchest to be prepared for that possibility, and I'm sure learning how to meditate will be of tremendous importance for helping me with future illnesses as well as having a peaceful death.
8:43:15 PM
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© Copyright 2002 Millie 2001.
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