It is always Body Practice:
Lessons from Practicing with Chronic Illness

Susan Ji-on Postal
 

Without question, chronic illness has been, and continues to be, a powerful teacher in my journey. However, before I try to articulate some of the ways in which I have been taught by “Lupus Roshi” over the past many years, I would like to underline the fact that our practice is always body practice, in sickness and in health. Zazen is not about some mental gymnastics which, if successful, offers us peace-of-mind. If we lean on sensation, enter our own breath, experience whole body presence, we can taste more than the busy thinker. Sometimes, while instructing newcomers, I have called this “cerebral bypass”, in jest, but also seriously. For sure, we cannot think ourselves awake!

When we are struck with injury, illness, or any other troubles, it might seem natural to use our sitting to escape the difficulty. Sitting long and hard we actually might find a way to enter some kind of blissful state, some state of calmness, which feels like a great relief from worry. I would raise a big caution flag here. This is a kind of bifurcation or compartmentalization which can be dangerous, and certainly not helpful in the long run. Opening up to sensations, including unwellness, fatigue or pain, allows a release of the battle with our anxiety about it. Remember that Dukkha, usually translated as suffering, really means “lack of ease” and has its linguistic roots in words for an axle and wheel which are not well aligned. We can see our suffering as a kind of wobbly ride, bumping along with discomfort and dissatisfaction. Sickness, old age and death, the sorrows of this human life, are inevitable. The Buddha taught that our suffering about
these difficulties have a cause (clinging and aversion) and freedom from that suffering is possible through practice. The Four Noble Truths make it clear that our practice does not make our troubles go away, rather our relationship to them shifts. As attachment to “me, mine” releases, there is the possibility of being at ease with what we don’t like.

As an illustration of the above discussion of Dukkha, I would like to describe my experience of three particular lessons born from practicing with a chronic condition which I will never find likeable. I have named these: House on Fire, Completely Held, and Fundamentally O.K.

First there was, quite naturally, the wake-up call of a serious illness when I was a young mother in my early 30's. Signs of some auto-immune disorder had surfaced a few years earlier. Firmer diagnosis of Systemic Lupus didn’t happen until the early 70's. Knowing that I had a potentially life-threatening incurable illness didn’t bring me to practice. I had already devoured teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, taken refuge in the Three Treasures, and entered serious Tibetan
Buddhist preliminary practices. But motivation changed. Relation to time changed. Sense of urgency was strong. Began to sit like a house-on-fire. Began to see that nobody has much time because the task is so tremendous, this task of waking up. That very image of the house on fire appears as one of the main teaching parables in the Lotus Sutra. Impermanence was in my face. Aspiration and determination seemed ignited. Well, 40 years later, I am still here! Turns out the type of Systemic Lupus I have (knock on wood) doesn’t seem to be organ damaging, just discouraging, with its aches and pains and drains of energy. For sure, I had a taste of that whip touching my own hide;* impermanence was not just an idea or concept at all; it was not something that only affected others.

About a dozen years later, caught in one of the periodic “flares” of this mysterious auto-immune malady, overwhelming waves of sorrow and despair seemed to be drowning me. By this time I was a serious and devoted Zen student, struggling to manage a full-time job in a home for the aged, no longer married, and trying to be an attentive parent for two lively young teens. Sitting at the end of the day was my custom in those days. House was quiet, dog walked, kids in bed.
That night I was trying hard to “use” my practice in order to feel better. Didn’t work. Then sharp introspective questions arose: “What do you want? What do you really want at this moment?”

And the answer came through strong and clear: “I want my Mommy!” “I want her to hold me” (In reality my aging mother was a dementia patient in California, and had not been at all available for many years.) And then, in the next instant, I was held, completely held - cradled, comforted, loved. And then came the perception that this boundless loving energy did not just appear, but had always been here. I was the one who was not always receptive and present. I was the one shut behind the doors of despair and self-pity. This illness triggered a deep cry of the heart. Willingness to admit my hunger for unconditional love, a mother’s love for a sick child, somehow allowed the boundless hands-and-eyes of compassion to come right through. I remember sitting there for a while, and noticing that I still wasn’t feeling very well. Being bathed in compassionate energy didn’t make the sensation of un-wellness go away, but the emotional pain had lifted. I was sick and I was totally embraced. Both were true. Directly experiencing both the cry and the response, I began to see that when we invoke the Bodhisattvas we are actually invoking the functioning of our own Bodhisattva nature. In the experience
described above, I somehow knew it was my own hands holding me, but those hands were not separate from the boundless hands-and-eyes everywhere.

This teaching has deepened. The experience of completeness and wholeness existing at the same time as illness has become a strong and steady thread of practice during the last 20 years. Down to the bare-bones now. Of course, the emotional backlash of loss arises. Self-pity follows like a little dog, always ready to jump into my lap. But at this juncture I have no choice but to practice with what arises. I don’t have to like feeling sick to realize that I am fundamentally OK
in this moment. This body, this “container” has some damage, yes. What is contained by the impermanent body has no problem at all. Ah! This is what I like to call bothness (the two truths at the same time.) How to allow this fact to manifest? These days I meet a decline in functioning which is not my preference. How to be present in the middle of this process? By entering sensation rather than running from it, body practice continues to be the doorway.

*Note - there is a famous metaphor of the four horses, the four kinds of students, in Buddha’s teaching. The first horse starts running at the sight of the whip, like the student who starts practicing intently when he/she hears of death in distant lands. The second horse runs at the sound of the whip, like those who begin to practice on hearing about death in their own town or village. The third horse gets started when the whip lightly touches their skin, like those who practice when they hear of death in their own family. The fourth horse doesn’t get started until the whip cuts deeply, like those who don’t begin to practice until they receive a grave diagnosis.