So we have been exploring change,
Our theory of change,
The change that happens with aging and how we relate to it,
And today the change that happens when meeting illness.
How do we see illness?
What do you tell yourself about it?
The first noble truth is that there is suffering.
The Buddha wasn't making a negative statement.
He was describing the conditions of life that are shared by all human beings.
He presented them as natural experiences that all of us,
Including the Buddha,
Can expect to encounter at one time or other during a lifetime.
He listed them.
They are birth,
Aging,
Illness,
Death,
Sorrow,
Pain,
Grief,
Getting what we don't want,
Not getting what we want,
And losing what we cherish.
So illness is the third on the list,
Meaning that it's a natural part of the human life cycle.
Yet how many of us think of illness as natural?
What all these items have in common is that none of them are pleasant experiences.
They all have elements of mental and or physical pain.
One understanding of the Buddha's intent is that he began his teachings with these unpleasant and often painful experiences because we spend so much of our time and effort denying their presence or trying to make them go away.
It's this relentless effort to escape what we cannot escape and to change what we cannot change that leads us to be dissatisfied with our lives.
In the fourth century,
A Taoist sage named Cheng Tzu referred to this world,
This life that we're living right now,
As in the realm of the 10,
000 joys and the 10,
000 sorrows.
The Buddha began his teaching by focusing on the 10,
000 sorrows because our inability to accept them as part of life only makes things harder for us.
It is a challenge to make peace with aging,
Sickness,
Death,
Pain,
Grief.
And this is partly because we've evolved to seek pleasure experiences and to avoid unpleasant ones.
It's our evolutionary inheritance.
If we were living in the wild and we didn't run fast enough,
We may have ended up as some animal's dinner.
When we react to life's unpleasant experiences by launching into a battle against them,
Denying aging,
Denying that illness will happen,
Turning away in aversion from the need to grieve our losses,
We create stress.
We create suffering.
We also create stress when we expect only to have pleasant experiences,
Even though no one in life experiences only pleasant.
No one.
So it's an important understanding.
It's important to note that pain in the body and illness are inescapable and they're an inescapable part of human life for all of us.
Everyone at some point in life will experience pain in the body and illness.
And the good news is that we can end the suffering in the mind,
Even while there is suffering in the body.
That's what this Buddhist path is pointing to.
I heard this story about a teacher in this tradition who,
After many years of practicing in Asia,
Came back and a friend of his invited him to a hospital where there was a woman who had been in an iron lung for 20 years.
And he thought,
You know,
Because of his depth of practice that he might be able to be helpful to this woman in some way.
So he went to the hospital and when he got there he just tried to imagine what it would be like to live in an iron lung for 20 years.
It's just unfathomable.
And he asked her,
Like,
How have you been able to stand this?
And she said that every once in a while,
In the summer,
During the course of the day,
A nurse would come into her room and sometimes the nurse would open the window.
And sometimes the breeze would come into the room and sometimes the breeze would touch her cheek and tell her all she needed to know.
To be deeply touched by the breeze and that is truly enough.
So whether a moment is pleasurable or painful,
If there's enough mindfulness,
We can receive and learn from the knee pain,
From the diagnosis,
From the loneliness,
From those difficult people.
The idea is we don't have to get rid of the pain in this world to be free.
We don't have to get rid of the pleasure in this world to be free.
We're learning to be protected by the presence of mindfulness,
Where we deeply accept and we don't take personally whatever is arising in the moment.
The Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh has some wonderful reflections on illness.
He taught that we don't have to be at war with our bodies.
Instead of resisting illness,
He emphasizes mindfulness.
Rather than running away from suffering,
Thich Nhat Hanh taught us to hold it like a crying baby.
Can you imagine?
Hold it like a crying baby.
We automatically push away illness.
Thich Nhat Hanh's perspective on illness is teaching us to befriend,
Befriend our suffering and care for our body with tenderness.
Mindfulness allows us to be with the pain rather than to collapse under it.
So here is a short story inspired by the Theravada Buddhist teachings that illustrates how we can meet illness with mindfulness,
Compassion and wisdom.
The story is called The Sick Monk and the Lamp of Mindfulness.
In a quiet forest monastery in ancient India,
There lived an elderly monk named Venerable Sobhita.
He had been practicing for many decades,
His robes faded,
His body thin,
His presence still and gentle like a tree long rooted in the earth.
One year during the monsoon retreat,
Sobhita fell seriously ill with fever that left him weak and trembling.
His fellow monks tended to him as best they could,
But the illness lingered.
His body ached constantly and some nights he could not sleep at all.
A young novice seeing his suffering asked him,
Venerable,
How do you bear this pain without fear or anger?
Sobhita smiled faintly and motioned for the novice to sit beside him.
Years ago,
He said softly,
I believed that health was a condition for peace,
But the Dharma has shown me otherwise.
The novice looked puzzled.
Sobhita closed his eyes and continued,
Every breath,
Every sensation,
Even pain arises and passes.
I do not say that the pain is pleasant.
It is not,
But I know it.
I feel it.
I say to it,
You are part of this body and this body is impermanent.
He paused to take a slow careful breath.
When I feel the heat of fever,
I bring my attention to it,
Just as I would observe the warmth of the sun on my robe.
Not with hatred,
Not with fear,
Just knowing,
Just being.
The novice listened in silence.
Sometimes,
The old monk added,
I speak to my body as one would to an old friend.
You served me well.
Now you are tired.
Let us be gentle with each other.
That night,
As the rain fell softly on the monastery roof,
The novice sat by his teacher's side and watched his chest rise and fall with the breath.
The pain was still there,
But so was the peace.
This is what is possible for us.
Thank you for your attention.
