"Aging, illness, and death are treasures for those who understand them. They’re Noble Truths, Noble Treasures. If they were people, I’d bow down to their feet every day." —Ajaan Lee In my early thirties, I met a teacher who was to have a profound influence on my study of aging and death awareness, primarily because of one central experience. I have never identified this [...]
A Few Words Before They Drag Me Away
In and out of hospital since childhood, Diana Atkinson on a life cut to pieces. "What major surgery produces is a certain quality of loss, a loss with its own nuances, its own character." Larry McMurtry, in his 1999 memoir “Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond” You must be naked. You must remove all jewelry, all traces of scent, makeup, [...]
Illness: The Way Beyond Suffering
In August 1995, I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and given just weeks to live. Over the next year I was close to death many times. I had months of chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, and many other invasive and painful procedures. In February 1996 I underwent a bone marrow transplant. My diagnosis was completely unexpected. I had visited my doctor because of some [...]
Readers’ Exchange: Illness
My understanding of what it means to live a spiritual life has evolved over years of practice and possibly to a greater extent, from my decade-long experience with breast cancer. When I was first drawn to the dharma I was seeking the joy and peacefulness missing in my life. Now, moments of love, joy and acceptance are more plentiful—yet I don't regard them as the goal. For [...]
Saving Tibet’s Children
Dr. Nancy Harris has dedicated herself to fighting the malnutrition and preventable disease threatening Tibet’s children. As Sienna Craig reports, she seeks solutions not in outside aid but in Tibet’s own resources and traditions. It is midnight on the Tibetan plateau. The moon, long since risen, hovers over a landscape stilled by winter. An inky sky, shot through with stars, [...]
A Time to Find Meaning
“Even when disease cannot be cured, there is often a way to use this difficult experience to know more intimately the value and purpose of your life.” It is only quite recently that illness has been defined as a function of the body. At the beginnings of medicine, the shamans or medicine men defined illness not in terms of pathology but in terms of the soul. In this older [...]