How NOT to be ill - The Mindfulness of Bleating... Your thoughts please? Sickness and death.

The_Dharma_Farmer

Hi all, I have been suffering with a really bad bout of flu the last few days, which has resulted in a chest infection and caused complications to a back injury I am currently recovering from. Whilst reflecting on The Four Noble Truths I started tapping away (I haven't really left my bed in two days) and came out with a few reflections, which I humbly offer to the collective Mahasangha out there in digital Samsara. I was just wondering how/if other people are able to bring it into their practice?

Here are a few of my thoughts... I hope you enjoy and may they be of benefit to beings in states of suffering wherever they may be.... :-)

thedharma-farmer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/sick-of-it-all-mindfulness-of-bleating.html

Hope all are well, and if not, hope you recover quickly. If you can't, then I hope you are not suffering too much, and that you are treating yourself with kindness. Speaking of which, I'm off to bed again...

Love n Metta, Jay xx

NomaDBuddha

I don't want to be rude, but can you write the the main ideas here, please ?!

The_Dharma_Farmer

Ok, sure... In life, we should use our varying experiences off poor health (in fact, ALL experiences) to try and deepen our realisation of several key teachings: The Skandas, Emptiness/Sunyata, The Thee Lakshanas etc to break through our own veil of ignorance through which we falteringly try an understand the world and our changes in fortune, such as in this case physical illness...

"In life, we perceive many things on a daily basis. In fact, life itself, our world and our entire universe IS NOTHING MORE than the totality of our combined experiences, screened through our perceptions and preferences, converted to electronic signals and set to a backdrop of and coloured in with various forms, volitions, and other mental arisings. Thoughts, events, smells, conversation, sounds, volitions, sensations of various kind, anything which can be experienced through our sensory organs all interrelate and create our experiences, which we then interpret and spin stories about to ourselves. Even that which can be sensed, turned over and examined by our minds (which in the Buddhist tradition is seen as a sense-organ in it's own right) will trigger of an explosion along intricate neurological pathways in our brains, synapses firing and whipping electrical signals along the electro-chemical Autobahns of the body at incomprehensible speeds."

To finish of, I remarked on how negative experiences can all too easily be appropriated by the ego in an attempt to substantiate our often unhelpful sense of self-importance (however subconsciously)....

"Bleating on and complaining to ourselves and the free world about how ill we are only serves to once more put us in the centre of our own personal psycho-drama, reinforcing our own propensity towards self-absorbsion, selfishness and self-centredness, the opposite of kindness, generosity and love. We are addicted to ourselves, and every time we indulge in a bit of "harmless" moaning or Facebook whinging, we are lending credence and plausibility to the age-old lies which we unwittingly whisper into our own ears; that we are the centre of it all and that everyone cares about us as much as we do. Not possible, and nor should it be so. I feel strongly that the time has come to stop lying to ourselves - after all, if you can't trust yourself, who can you trust? We do have a right, a duty to care for ourselves, granted, but perhaps we could try and allow it to find increasing expression with the conscious aim of being for the benefit of others too? After all, as people living in the early 21st century, we have both rights and duties, the pre-eminent of which is to care for one another, irrespective of whether we stand to gain from these interactions or not. As Sangharakshita once said, the golden ideal to aim for in life is to "Love when there is no need to Love", in an unbiassed, sincere and non self-referrential way. "Spiritual insight does not consist of seeing new sights with the old eyes, but in seeing the old sights with new eyes" - and that goes for one-another too."

I hope this is of use. I will try and summarise more in the future, but if you get a few minutes, please consider reading the whole thing if you get a chance, I put a lot of thought and time into each one, and am looking to start a career as a writer so any constructive feedback or support in any way would be most appreciated :-)

No offense taken, hope this finds you well. In Metta, Jay

NomaDBuddha

The_Dharma_Farmer said:

Ok, sure... In life, we should use our varying experiences off poor health (in fact, ALL experiences) to try and deepen our realisation of several key teachings: The Skandas, Emptiness/Sunyata, The Thee Lakshanas etc to break through our own veil of ignorance through which we falteringly try an understand the world and our changes in fortune, such as in this case physical illness...

Well, one's physical illness isn't quite the 'start' for understanding the true mechanisms and nature of this world. IMO, if one's sick, the only thing he wishes is to get well as soon as possible, not interested in the diagnosis. But, playing the role of the distant observer, and just by seeing how illness affects a ( human ) being, from the beginning until the end , one can deepen his own understanding of those key factors.

The_Dharma_Farmer said:

"Bleating on and complaining to ourselves and the free world about how ill we are only serves to once more put us in the centre of our own personal psycho-drama, reinforcing our own propensity towards self-absorbsion, selfishness and self-centredness, the opposite of kindness, generosity and love.

If this drama didn't happen, there wouldn't be any 'doctor' around to give the treatment, and no way to cure the disease.

The_Dharma_Farmer said:

We are addicted to ourselves, and every time we indulge in a bit of "harmless" moaning or Facebook whinging, we are lending credence and plausibility to the age-old lies which we unwittingly whisper into our own ears; that we are the centre of it all and that everyone cares about us as much as we do. Not possible, and nor should it be so. I feel strongly that the time has come to stop lying to ourselves - after all, if you can't trust yourself, who can you trust? We do have a right, a duty to care for ourselves, granted, but perhaps we could try and allow it to find increasing expression with the conscious aim of being for the benefit of others too? After all, as people living in the early 21st century, we have both rights and duties, the pre-eminent of which is to care for one another, irrespective of whether we stand to gain from these interactions or not. As Sangharakshita once said, the golden ideal to aim for in life is to "Love when there is no need to Love", in an unbiassed, sincere and non self-referrential way. "Spiritual insight does not consist of seeing new sights with the old eyes, but in seeing the old sights with new eyes" - and that goes for one-another too."

The only lie I see is that 'everybody cares about us'. This is the lie that many fail to see, and, as you point out, you get an unnecessary drama.
If you can't trust yourself...you can trust your other self ).

No offense taken, hope this finds you well. In Metta, Jay

P.S.: Sorry for not answering sooner, but I've had a tough time at that moment.

Steve_B

In a previous life I worked for a few years in a very busy big-city ER. An ER shift is a never-ending parade of the sick, the injured, etc, as well as the not-sick and the not-injured. I was very interested in the science of Medicine, but what absolutely FASCINATED me was the perspectives of the patients. Some stoic, many histrionic, some quiet, some shrieking, young, old, neonatal, the full spectrum.

There's a truism in Medicine that a presentation that doesn't lend itself to immediate obvious diagnosis might either be a rare malady presenting in its typical form, or a common malady presenting in atypical form; and of the two the second is vastly more likely. So the trick is to listen. Listen attentively. Eventually something will resonate. But listening is not easy to do in that environment. You'd think it would be, but believe me it isn't. Many staff members had little patience for the endless narratives the patients deliver. And some of the patients had intense need to communicate at great ponderous length. It's all too easy to forget that the interlocutor is not the COPD in the monitor room or the dislocated shoulder in the ortho room, but the human.

Henry Ford is credited with saying something to the effect of "I wanted a pair of hands to work in my factory. Unfortunately I got the whole person." Most of the medical staff I knew did not want the whole person. They certainly did not want to hear the whole story.