While laid up in the hospital trauma center, there’s really not much a person can do. There’s TV, of course, or if you have a book you can read. Or if you have a tablet you can scan the internet; my hospital didn’t have great internet speed, so I doubt if I could’ve watched Netflix, let alone play any kind of game that I like.
I’m not a TV watcher, but I did manage to read all of The Secret Lives of Animals while I was there, which I highly recommend, by the way. Yet, for the most part, I didn’t even have the energy to pick up my Kindle.
So I meditated. A lot. Something that I typically do at home but in a little different way. At home I practice zazen, not consistently, but on a semiregular basis I sit on the cushion for a time, observing my thoughts. And although Dogen wouldn’t necessarily approve, I go through the same process off the cushion at other times of the day whenever I find myself with an opportunity. Actually, I think Dogen would approve. Perhaps he wouldn’t deem it a substitute for traditional zazen, however.
Anyway, with all this time available, my mind was now more interesting. I discovered that my thoughts generally fell into three categories: planning, memories, and fantasies.
By far, the largest number of thoughts involved planning. What did I want for lunch? How would I let the nurse know? When would I call the nurse to help me get to the rest room? I think that these little plans made on a moment-to-moment basis may be the way that I motivate myself. I’ve told the nurse I wanted tomato soup, check that plan off as done, the next step is to see if it arrives. Maybe half of all my thinking involves this kind of processing.
The second group of thoughts, much less than half of all the thoughts I have during free moments, involve memories. My hospital stay triggered memories of visiting my grandfather when he was diagnosed with lung cancer and dying in a hospital. This led to memories of his wife, my grandmother, who was a breast cancer survivor, then to memories of my aunt (by marriage) who died of breast cancer. And so on. Usually, as soon as I notice that I’m remembering something, the memory trickles away. Which is okay. I know it’s there if I need to recall it.
The final group of thoughts, which is a terribly small number, are the “what if”s. Worries. I call them fantasy thoughts. What if this is a genetic trait that has been passed to my children? What if I can’t be cured? What if my cancer is actually a misdiagnosis? These kinds of thoughts get purposely squished, which is probably why they rarely rear up any more. In zazen, one isn’t supposed to squish thinking, just observe it. But it seems to me that creating a new anxiety by fantasizing about potential futures is a bad idea. Why worry about something that may never be true? It’s only a conduit for unwarranted fear, which is a surefire path to bad decision making.
It seems obvious that someone who’s been diagnosed with cancer would think about death. I wont deny that it crossed my mind a lot those first few days. But in Buddhism, one learns that there is no real death. I’m not sure how to explain it to a non-Buddhist, but here goes.
Zen, in particular, teaches that the universe is alive, and my body is only a little tiny part of it. When it expires, all of the memories and experiences locked up in chemical signatures of it’s brain will be lost, this is true. But all of the molecules and atoms are still there. They will be redistributed within the universe and molded into new forms.
This isn’t something that happens only after the body dies, either. Its been happening all my life. I take in water droplets when I breathe in, and the water is taken into my body, exchanged with cells and chemicals, and other water droplets are expelled. When I eat food, some of my cells are expelled with excrement. I lose hair all the time, and fingernail clippings, and skin cells. And I make new replacements from ingesting or inhaling the materials needed to build them. In fact, there is nothing in my body that hasn’t undergone change and replacement.
Nothing.
So, if every part of my body is constantly changing over, none of it is permanent. Then what about it can I actually say is me?
If I lose a foot, is the foot me, or is the rest of the body me? What about an arm? What if, theoretically, my head was cut off from my body and I could still live. Which part is the real me?
Most people would argue that the brain is “you”, but if you’ve ever studied the brain, you know this isn’t true either. The brain is divided into many different components, and those components are divided into components, so if you keep cutting off parts looking for the one that is “you”, you’ll never find it. There’s only parts.
“Self” is a thought process. That’s Zen.
Now it gets even more intriguing. When this body dies, of course it’s thinking process will stop when the brain stops. But do “I” still exist? Well, yes, in a way. Many many people have known me in their lifetimes. The part if “me” that will continue to exist will be the memories and experiences that those people have of me. So, for awhile anyway, “The body of Anni” will continue to live on in their thoughts. Just like my grandparents and parents (all of whom are deceased) live on in my thoughts.
Of course, no one really knows for sure what processes happen to our concept of “self” when the body dies. Do you remember what you were doing before you were born? I think they are much the same.
Chances are that, whatever happens, our meager little brains have no capacity for understanding it. I’m comforted with the knowledge that death is only another of the many changes this body will go through.
The only part of death that still bothers me is the knowledge that my loved ones, my husband and sons in particular, will experience grief and suffering.
But even that will pass, eventually. This is the way the universe works. This body, which was once nothing more than various pieces of food and water that my mother and father converted into a baby, will decompose into molecules that will eventually work through nature’s processes to become food and water that could become another baby.
It’s quite a marvelous process.
originally posted at annettezimmerman.com
