How to Be Sick (15 page)
Authors: Toni Bernhard,Sylvia Boorstein
By offering us a systematic method for examining thoughts that are a source of suffering, Byron Katie’s inquiry takes us to the Buddha’s second noble truth: the origin of suffering is desire. Behind every stressful thought is the desire for things to be other than they are. I wanted friends to visit. I wanted to go to Spirit Rock to see Katie. I didn’t want to be sick. These “four questions and a turnaround” give us a tool for making peace with our life as it is.
13
Healing the Mind by Living in the Present Moment
When we settle into the present moment, we can see beauties and wonders right before our eyes—a newborn baby, the sun rising in the sky.
—THICH NHAT HANH
WHEN PEOPLE first realize that they have a chronic condition that’s going to severely restrict their activities, they’ll try just about anything to get their old lives back: prescription drugs, homeopathic medicine, esoteric mind-therapy techniques, nutritional supplements, even oxygen chambers. When the Parisian Flu settled into a chronic illness, I scoured the Internet looking for possible treatments. (I have a big carton that I refer to as “the box of rejected supplements.”)
My online wanderings revealed that many people, regardless of their religious affiliation, found that starting a meditation practice was the single most helpful treatment they’d tried. So, Buddhist or not, many people turn
to
meditation when they become chronically ill. This devoted Buddhist, however, turned away from it.
to
meditation when they become chronically ill. This devoted Buddhist, however, turned away from it.
When I got sick, I had a ten-year established sitting meditation practice. I meditated twice a day for 45 minutes each time, following the traditional instruction to be “mindful of in- and out-breathing”—sometimes called “following the breath.” When my mind wandered from the breath (perhaps to thoughts about all I had to accomplish the next day), I’d gently bring my attention back to following the breath again. This is one of the basic instructions given by mindfulness meditation teachers. The purpose of the instruction is to keep returning our attention to our experience of the present moment.
I was so disciplined, and stubborn, regarding this practice that it had become a part of our family lore to recall—and to tease me about—how on our daughter’s wedding day in 1996, I still managed to get in my two formal sittings. What made this remarkable was that, although Mara and Brad lived in Washington, D.C., the wedding was in Davis where Mara grew up. She and Brad arrived in Davis two days before the festivities. I have never been a party giver. (Tony’s and my wedding had twelve people in attendance.) But here I was, non-party giver, putting on a wedding for over 150 people. Needless to say, I was overwhelmed by my responsibilities on the wedding day. But the family knew: whatever else happens on this day, Mom is going to meditate, not once, but twice.
At the Sprit Rock retreat in July 2001, when I awoke on the third day and realized that some form of the Parisian Flu had returned, I raised it at my next teacher interview. I reported that I found it difficult to meditate because I was physically ill. I was told that being sick was the very best time to meditate because it would prepare me for when I was approaching death. I should just follow my breath and note the bodily sensations as they arose. I returned to my room and lay on the bed, trying over and over to meditate, but the sickly bodily sensations were just too unpleasant for me to stay with. I couldn’t do it on the retreat and, upon returning home, to the surprise of my family, I discarded that ten-year mindfulness meditation practice that we all thought was set in stone. I felt like a failure whenever I would read online how helpful meditation was to people who were chronically ill. But when I would try, the discomfort of the heart-pounding, crushing fatigue was overwhelming.
It took me seven years to take up mindfulness practice again. I did it by rediscovering the books of Thich Nhat Hanh, whose teachings focus on mindfulness of the present moment, whether in formal meditation or not. Before I say more about Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings, I want to offer two practices that illustrate how “mindfulness of the present moment” can alleviate suffering.
The first practice is a two-part exercise I call “drop it.”
Start by consciously taking your mind
out
of the present moment and into the past by remembering something you blame yourself for, you regret, or that simply makes you sad. For me, the sad memory might be of the profession I gave up or of the missed birthday parties for my two granddaughters. Also, there are treatments I regret having tried, and recalling them gives rise to stressful thoughts such as “Am I sicker today because of that potentially toxic antiviral I took for a year with no positive results?” For a caregiver, the memory might be of a trip that had to be cancelled because your loved one was too sick to go.
out
of the present moment and into the past by remembering something you blame yourself for, you regret, or that simply makes you sad. For me, the sad memory might be of the profession I gave up or of the missed birthday parties for my two granddaughters. Also, there are treatments I regret having tried, and recalling them gives rise to stressful thoughts such as “Am I sicker today because of that potentially toxic antiviral I took for a year with no positive results?” For a caregiver, the memory might be of a trip that had to be cancelled because your loved one was too sick to go.
Now, keep this sad or stressful memory strong in your mind and then . . .
just drop it
.
just drop it
.
Maybe you can drop it for only a microsecond, but just drop it and direct your attention to some current sensory input. It could be something you see or hear or smell. It could be the feel of your feet on the ground or the sensation of the breath coming in and going out of your body. Can you feel the relief?
If not, try the exercise again. With practice, you’ll find that at the command “drop it,” the memory is gone and so is the suffering that accompanied it. With your mind in the present moment, maybe you hear a bird chirping or feel the sensation of a breeze on your body or see a beautiful print on the wall or smell something cooking in the kitchen. As Thich Nhat Hanh says in the epigram at the head of this chapter, “When we settle into the present moment, we can see beauties and wonders right before our eyes.” If you’re not having success with this exercise, try it while keeping your eyes closed as you focus on the memory. Then, as you drop it, open your eyes and pay attention to whatever sensory input is there in the present moment.
Now let’s move to part two of the exercise. Consciously take your mind out of the present moment by thinking of something in the
future
that you’re worried about or that’s a source of stress or agitation for you. It could be something personal or it could be thoughts about the future of the world. I have a recurring thought that is a tremendous source of stress—it is the fear that Tony will get ill or have an accident and will need me at his side in the hospital to deal with doctors and to care for him, which I won’t be able to do.
future
that you’re worried about or that’s a source of stress or agitation for you. It could be something personal or it could be thoughts about the future of the world. I have a recurring thought that is a tremendous source of stress—it is the fear that Tony will get ill or have an accident and will need me at his side in the hospital to deal with doctors and to care for him, which I won’t be able to do.
I conjure up this fear more often than I’d like to admit. But here’s what I do. First, I acknowledge that the fear is there by labeling it: “Ah yes, my old friend, the hospital scare.” Then I just drop this conjured thought and direct my attention to a sight, a sound, a smell, or a tactile sensation. Every time I drop this train of thought about the future, I relax into the present moment and the fear and the suffering that accompany the thought lift as if I’ve shed a heavy weight. I know the thought will be back. But I know what to do when it comes back. (I love Mark Twain’s comment on stressful thoughts about the future: “I’ve lived a long life and seen a lot of hard times . . . most of which never happened.”)
In a nutshell, that’s the exercise:
Take your mind back in time to a stressful memory, and drop it.
Take your mind forward in time to a stressful thought, and drop it.
You’re left in the present moment. Even if that moment is accompanied by bodily pain or discomfort, it will be easier to relax into the discomfort, riding it like a wave, because you won’t be making it worse by adding to it the mental suffering that comes with thoughts about the past and the future, such as: “I shouldn’t have overdone it yesterday”; “I’m afraid this pain will never go away.” I know my mind will wander into that past and future suffering territory again and again, but I also know that I can bring it back to the present moment with a simple “drop it.”
I used this practice recently when stressful thoughts about both the past and the future overwhelmed me in a situation which was, in retrospect, quite mundane: It has to do with the time I broke my ankle just after Tony left for a month-long retreat. The ankle healed, but I was left with an uncomfortable swelling and tingling on the ball of my foot and in my toes. My family doctor referred me to a podiatrist. I thought, “This is a treat—a doctor’s visit that has nothing to do with my illness!” Tony had a conflicting obligation so, because the podiatrist’s office was only a half-mile from the house, I drove myself to the 2:30 appointment.
By 3:00, I was on the examining room chair, my mind spinning with a list of grievances about the past thirty minutes and in irritation about the future. First, the person who scheduled the appointment over the phone had given me faulty directions to the office so I drove in circles for ten minutes, worrying that I’d be late. Second, once I found the place, I had to sit in the waiting room for more than twenty minutes. Third, the person who showed me to the examining room said the doctor was currently seeing a patient and had one other person ahead of me. Fourth, the special podiatry examining room chair appeared to be designed for my discomfort!
Angry about the past thirty minutes, irritated about the future (
Just how long would it be until the doctor came in?
), I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and silently said, “Drop it.” In the space created by those two words, the thought arose that I knew nothing about the room in which I sat. The idea came to me to open my eyes and look carefully at the room. What color were the walls? Did the room have the same kind of false ceiling that I came to know so well as I lay on the couch in my law school office? What tools of the podiatrist’s trade might be lying around for me to visually inspect from the chair? Was there a picture on the wall? Was there a window in the room?
Just how long would it be until the doctor came in?
), I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and silently said, “Drop it.” In the space created by those two words, the thought arose that I knew nothing about the room in which I sat. The idea came to me to open my eyes and look carefully at the room. What color were the walls? Did the room have the same kind of false ceiling that I came to know so well as I lay on the couch in my law school office? What tools of the podiatrist’s trade might be lying around for me to visually inspect from the chair? Was there a picture on the wall? Was there a window in the room?
I opened my eyes and began to mindfully explore this space. As I was doing this, my anger and irritation vanished. In fact, the exploration was so thoroughly absorbing that when the doctor came in to see me, it felt too soon because I hadn’t yet finished examining the details of the collage on the wall!
This practice is a variation of an instruction we’re given when learning formal meditation practice. When our mind wanders away from mindfulness of in- and out-breathing, away from the awareness of the physical sensation of the breath going in and out of the body, we are told to gently bring our attention back to awareness of the sensation of the breath. Those mental wanderings take us to thoughts about the past or about the future, thoughts that are often a source of suffering. But the actual sensation of the breath is in the present moment. While sitting in meditation, Joseph Goldstein sometimes silently but firmly says “not now” to intrusive thoughts, and then he returns to following his breath. This is similar to the drop-it practice I use outside of formal meditation.
From my daughter Mara, I learned a remarkable practice that is similar to drop-it. It comes from Byron Katie. Mara was listening to a podcast of Oprah Winfrey interviewing Katie in 2008 on the radio show “Oprah and Friends.” Katie was sharing a story about her daughter who, years ago, had problems with alcohol and drugs. Her daughter would go out at night in her car and, in the early hours of the morning, Katie would sit and wait for her daughter to return. The later it got, the more stressful Katie’s thoughts became. She would imagine her daughter had been raped. She would imagine that her daughter had had a car accident and was dead or was lying injured on the road in agony with no one to help her. Then one early morning, as the thoughts began to arise again, Katie realized that the only thing that was true for sure was this: “Woman in chair, waiting for her beloved daughter.”
Mara heard this story and knew it contained a gem, because she started to free her own mind of stressful thoughts and ground herself in the moment by using whatever version of Katie’s words applied. In fact, Mara happened to be sharing this story with me because the day before had been a particularly stressful one for her, physically and emotionally (an emergency trip to the dentist for eight-year-old Malia was but one of the highlights). Mara said that as she was lying in bed that night, trying to read, stressful thoughts about the day kept spinning around in her mind. It’s as if she were re-living the day over and over. (We’ve all done this, haven’t we?) Then she said to herself: “Woman lying in bed, reading a book.” Suddenly, she was, well, just a woman lying in bed, reading a book! She’d brought herself out of the past and into the present moment, just as Katie had brought herself out of thoughts about the future—all the terrible scenarios she was mocking up for her daughter—and into the present moment with “Woman in chair, waiting for her beloved daughter.”
The day after Mara shared this with me, I found myself caught up in a repeating round of stressful thoughts about the previous day. I was blaming myself for not having been more disciplined about the amount of time I’d spent socializing with a friend who had come over. Of course, it’s not a bad idea to examine the effects of over-socializing on our symptoms, but blaming ourselves and feeling guilty about something that’s already happened is not constructive.
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