Yelping people, or not

[image: laundry on a line, posted on the blog Heart of Light.  Maybe this appealed to me because I was thinking this morning how bed linens dried in the sun are the loveliest thing, and so cool to run among them when you were a child.  It is also the least-harm way to dry laundry.]

Last night I read on in Pema Chodron's forthcoming book, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change, which is a nice change from books on how to stand life, get through stuff, de-stress.  She has a way of going slowly and carefully through Buddhist ideas that has me highlighting many sentences, even though the e-galley I am reading will expire, and my notes with it.  There is a pace and rhythm to her writing that slows me down.

Last night I read about taking a vow to do no harm.

Well, sure.  Everyone knows that.  Doctors are taught, "First, do no harm."  Here is a nice explication of that from Wikipedia -

. . . given an existing problem, it may be better not to do something, or even to do nothing, than to risk causing more harm than good.

(I understand that it's a struggle these days for doctors to suggest doing nothing; apparently, we Americans always want to be fixed right away.  Never mind that back surgery probably isn't the answer, you want to at least feel like you're doing something, anything.  I know of a woman who was determined that her brother, who was quickly dying of cancer, have surgery to fix a not-so-bad cataract.)

When Pema talks about the vow of non-harming, she uses the word refrain.  She talks about a meaning deeper than the obvious meanings of the five precepts, the basic Buddhist ethical code.  She talks about refraining from the habitual (thoughtless) acts that let us escape reality.  Just in passing, she mentions that one way we exit uncomfortable feelings is chatter.  Sometimes it seems everyone has an aunt like that.

This was very fresh with me this morning, I noticed.  I found myself thinking about my impulses during and after church.  There was the impulse to invite S to meet for coffee; thinking about it, I know social encounters are often hard for her.  She can always call or write me.  Did I really want to yelp her?

Pause to explain.  It is very easy to leap forward to help someone who is less able-bodied than you.  I've seen people do positively embarrassing things to Tom, who was visibly changed by having polio as a child, the year before the Salk vaccine. One woman tried to take his plate during a church potluck when he'd just begun to eat.  We've grown to call that Yelping You whenever I do it, as in the blurred "maiyelpyou?" of some waiters.

All morning I refrained from yelping people.  The result of this seemed to be that I didn't say much, listened more; didn't initiate things, like time to leave, but looked around to notice that other people were having a good time. 

Now, sitting back comes naturally to some people, I know, maybe to all of us in certain situations.  It can do harm, too.  Not getting around to calling a sick friend.  Not buying a graduation gift because you don't know what to buy.  Not saying anything about an injustice because . . . oh maybe, because . . . it just slips your mind.  I'm willing to bet we can all remember doing that. It can become tragic.  A number of people felt like not speaking up in a very unpleasant situation, which let Jerry Sandusky abuse a long line of children all his life. 

(Now, there's the anger in my stomach, when Pema says will pass in 90 seconds if I don't work the story in my mind.  That's another issue. . . .p.s. It worked.  Except editing this brought it back.)

 

The Whole World is Medicine

Our house in spring, star magnolia in bloom

I'll start with the story.  I was in the Internet Cafe (TV room) at Manor Care, where Tom's father is now resident, fixing myself a cup of coffee.  The little refrigerator was empty, but there were packets of that creamer mysteriously made from corn syrup.  Well, it was still sort of cream, and would soften the gastric hit of the coffee.  As I tore open the package, looking at it for collage possibilities, I thought of Yunmen's koan, which I learned as, "The whole world is medicine. What is the illness?"  (There is a different version by John Tarrant here.)

Students of Zen just finished that thought, I imagine.  It is a famous statement that is considered a koan.  The one everybody knows is "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"  (I know the answer to that one. :)  [by the way, smileys are addictive, especially useful in texting, which is economical]) 

later -
This morning's NY Times has an article on the discovery of the microbe that gave us streptomyacin, how a lowly lab assistant was finally given credit.  I loved this quote, though, from his journals: the microbes were found in "leaf compost, straw compost and stable manure" on a farm near their lab. I said, "The whole world is medicine."  Tom told me then that his BP medicine is based on snake venom, which kills you by reducing your BP to zero.

But that's not the deepest point of the koan, which goes like this:
Unmen said, "The whole world is medicine.  What is the illness?"
My response is, the illness is not perceiving the world. The illness is living in and grasping at your delusions.

And here's my example.  Tom and I are respectivily 63 and 69 years old, but sort of older, really; he has  post-polio syndrome, and I am, you all know, a sort of musculo-skeletal wreck, and on meds for kidney transplant, BP, arrythmia.....the usual.  Body wearing out, sooner than some people's.

His parents are 90 and 93.  His father is in nursing care, went there two months ago septic with untreated infections and long ago mentally disabled by stroke.  His mother is now living with brother Dave and his wife, but constantly trying to go back to her house.  She is bent with arthritis and can barely walk with a cane, but wants to drive.  Tom and his siblings and grandson are trying to straighten out a really horrible mess of their estate, much of which has disappeared into the hands of scam artists while they clung to their idea of staying in their own "home," the house they bought fifty years ago and have not maintained.

What is the illness?  Clinging to the delusion of never growing "old."  Clinging to the delusion that she can be independent all her life, it's only a matter of refusing to see reality.  In there was her own susceptibility to flattery, which she would never admit to, which has led her to meet strangers who call her on the phone and ask her to meet them in a parking lot and give them money.  And by the way, your home is not that house you live in; it's the world.  And your body, and you don't get to keep that.

As for us - we don't want to ever put my daughter in this position.  We spent this morning talking with a Realtor about what we can expect to realize on this house.  We are not going to move into a condo either; it's straight to retirement home for us, because realistically, we love our house, but we want to relax and enjoy whatever time we have left.  Realistically, that might be a year or ten years or a day. 

The Realtor wore flip-flops.  You have to love that.