
Dr. James Maskalyk. Photo via Facebook.
By way of The Globe and Mail comes a profile of Dr. James Maskalyk, an emergency room physician at St. Michael’s Hospital in downtown Toronto who’s well known for his Facebook Live advice — and is more watched than ever now thanks to his presentations on Covid-19.
As The Globe and Mail reports, he is a “meditation devotee” and advocate:
Dr. Maskalyk describes meditation as a powerful weapon against the despair COVID-19 has wrought. “When you’re faced with this invisible, intractable, unstoppable thing, people’s fear goes way up,” he said. “But when you’re actually sitting there [meditating], it’s suddenly not so bad.”
He sees this moment as a kind of bardo, the Tibetan Buddhist idea of an in-between state sandwiched between life and rebirth. It’s a transition place, where the mistakes of the past can be edited from the future. “This is the biggest time for insight,” he said. “Business as usual led to this thing in the first place. After this, there can only be health for all.”
Read the full profile here.