Archive for August 2007
I sat for a couple of hours with my grandfather recently. It has been a long time since I was able to spend so much time alone with him. When I was young I would spend entire days with him as he drove here and there working and looking for the bargains that he cared so much about. I would spend an afternoon with him in the yard, digging this or that, him with a shovel and me with his World War II Army issue entrenching tool. You know the little one that soldiers get to dig fox-wholes with. It was mine and I loved it. I loved that it folded, I loved that it was small, but most of all I loved that it had been his and now it was mine. I need to find that shovel.
I was sitting with him now because he is in the hospital. The blue faux leather chair creaked as I tried to get comfortable while he slept there beside me. He’s ill and his mind isn’t doing him justice right now. He knows me, knows the family including my small children, and I am thankful for that. But he can go from speaking to me about the kids and their school to trying to pick a peach from a tree which isn’t there or telling my grandmother she missed the turn-off to number 12.
I wish I knew what number 12 meant to him.
The bed is his passenger seat in the car and where my grandmother was sitting is the driver’s seat. If you insist that there is no car, that we are in the hospital, and he needs to get better he is incensed and tries to get out of bed and to the driver’s seat. That doesn’t help much at all.
I love him so much, and it is very hard to see someone so strong and virile reduced to this feeble state. He needs you to feed him, to wipe his mouth and to help him find a comfortable way to lie on the bed. He is irritable and cranky, and I would be too.
I stood there with him a few nights ago after my grandmother had gone downstairs to the car. I tried to calm him down as the nurses places mitts on his hands. If he’s left alone right now he tries to pull the IV out of his arm, the oxygen and pulse reader off of his finger and to get out of the bed. None of those are good things.
When the nurses came in to get the mitts on he was infuriated with me, told me terrible things and told me to leave and that I need not return. The nurses told me to forget about what he said and that it wasn’t him; I already knew that.
My grandfather is a kind and loving person. The kind of guy that tears up when the little ones are sick and the kind of man who hugs people the first time he meets them. Yes, he is human, and like all of us he too is capable of anger and words said that he later regrets.
While he was reaching for some cantaloupes which he could clearly see in front of his face I wondered what this was like to him. He is seeing people and places from his past. Speaking about Marion Kansas where he lived for 8 months in 1950 when my father was born. Asking us all how much longer until we get to Missouri or back to the house. These things are real to him, even though the television is on and we are all standing around his bed in the ICU.
It made me think of the ‘thought-moments’ that the Buddha spoke about. The knowledge that every thought that enters our mind causes a change in us and a lasting difference in who we are and how we view the world.
I wondered about the thoughts, the memories, that were bubbling up in to my grandfather’s consciousness before me. He was talking about his car for a bit, so worried that a man had it and he needed it back. He told me to make sure I had his car and I knew where it was, that it was safe and secure.
What is the world like to him right now? What is his reality as he has these hallucinations?
My grandfather is a treasure to me. He is full of wisdom and knowledge and kindness. He is a huge part of my life, the lives of my entire family, and the lives of my children. You know, I don’t think he missed a baseball or basketball game my brother played in and he only missed a few of my son’s, when he was ill a few years back. His family is the most important thing to him, we are his treasure.
As our nation ages I wish our culture viewed the aging as the national treasure they are, not as a burden. It is true that this is hard to watch, this is hard to handle. Costly in time and money I know, but can you think of a better purchase? Spending our money on the comfort of our elderly is something we should do with love and kindness, with respect and warmth, not regret and bitterness as so many seem to do.
We might all end up one day in that hospital bed, wondering about the peach tree growing in the room with our family. If I do, I hope my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren gather around me and ask me about my childhood like we are asking about his.
I don’t have much in the coffer, but I have a treasure nonetheless.
I went last night to the Oklahoma City Reiki Energy Circle Meetup. Very nice group of people there. The woman who runs the Meetup has been practicing for 4 or 5 years, I forget how long, and is very knowledgeable. There is one person there that kinda blows me away. His name is Jim and his knowledge of the healing arts is formidable, for sure. Healing Touch and Qigong seem to be his area of expertise and he knows how to communicate with the person he is treating to help them as best he can.
I was skeptical when I first began to talk to people about Reiki. But being in the martial arts has probably predisposed me to accepting the idea of chi. Call is chi, ki, prana, or whatever; different cultures refer to the life energy in different ways, but it’s all the same.
A good friend of mine, Gardner Singleton, is a acupuncturist and Chinese herbal doctor. Learning from him has taught me to open myself up and experience what other cultures can teach me on the healing front. Herbs are used world wide by the indigenous cultures. From China to Australia to the Native American culture they are seen as the natural way to cure what ails us. It just so happens that these same cultures are not only open to the idea of chi, but all of them openly practice the energy work and training in various methods.
OK, back to Reiki then. Last night during the session I was flush with heat. The feeling of pin pricks was so strong on my hands that I had to shake them out more than a few times. It was amazing. Then, at the end, to see the woman we worked on and how she reacted to the healing; that was wonderful.
One of the women there, who is also an energy worker and yogini, asked me if I was using intention while working with the patient. I told her that I have been practicing tonglen while doing my Reiki. Tonglen is a Tibetan Buddhist practice of taking and sending. You are actively taking the pain and suffering from someone and sending them compassion. When you inhale you remove from them the suffering and when you exhale you send them pure compassion.
I can’t think of a better thing to offer someone; the wish that they are relieved of their suffering and that you are giving them compassion.
I was in church Sunday morning with my family and something dawned on me: I am Angulimala.
Well, I don’t really think I am a reincarnation of Angulimala, but I have committed gross sins like Angulimala. In the Buddhist universe I have perhaps even committed the same sins as Angulimala. In that respect I have been every walk of life as well.
Monk, saint, yogi, thug, braggart, prince and pirate are all open as to occupations I might have had among the myriad past lives I could have lived. I could have been every religion and lived in every corner of the earth. For me, that is something to take solace in. Because I could have lived any of those lives, and hopefully learned along the way, it has prepared me for this current life and the difficulties that I face.
If I consider Angulimala for a moment, my emotions run the scale. I am shocked and outraged that he could have slain all of those unsuspecting people along the path. I am dismayed that he did so with zeal and a hunger for the final killing. I am horrified that he willingly took man, woman and child to add their fingers to the garland after he had killed them. But then, at the very end of that stage in his life he meets Lord Buddha on the same path, repents and then becomes a monk and starts a new journey.
So, in a very real way; I am Angulimala. I have begun a new journey in my life and I have met the Buddha along my path.
The Dharma is strange and amazing. It is foreign to my Western Judeo-Christian mind, yet it feels so right to me, so familiar. While reading and learning the ideas and theories behind Buddhism, and especially Tibetan Buddhism I have realized that we are the same people, we are all striving for happiness and its causes, we all seek the end to suffering and it cause and we all seek merit.
So I am Angulimala, and so are you.