Art Therapy: Debris- What Cancer Leaves Behind
Crisis strikes all of us in life. None of us will pass through life without knowing death or grief.
Buddha once told a sutta (parable) of a woman who brought her dead son to him...begging him to cure her dead child.
The child was two days dead.
Others thought the woman was mad with grief...but the Buddha simply said
"To cure your son, I shall require only a mustard seed. It cannot be a common mustard seed, however. It must be from a home in the village where no one has known death."
For the first time in two days the woman laid her son at the Buddha's feet...and ran to the village...going from door to door frantically searching for a household which had not seen death.
At each door she encountered
"...my father passed only two weeks ago..."
"...I lost my brother to the war..."
"...both the twins died of the cold a day apart..."
"...she slipped from the path and fell to the boulders below..."
"...was executed..."
A cold rain had began to fall...and muddied the woman knelt in the path...all the while murmuring
"My son is dead."
And at each door she had begged for the mustard seed she realized that they too had experienced grief, death and loss.
When she returned to the Buddha she found him sweeping wood-shavings from the floor.
"Oh Gatama...how selfish was my grief" she cried. I went from family to family and house to house. There were no homes without loss."
And with that she began preparations to bury her son.
Enlightened.
And the Buddha continued to sweep the floor.
When faced with crisis/death or grief...it is helpful to remember...although we believe our circumstances to be singular and unique they are part of life. The human condition.
No one escapes them.
Some earlier...some later...but all will face crisis in their lives.
One of the most futile questions is why...
Of course there is a physiological reason. But usually that is not the why we seek.
We seek:
Why us?
Why now?
Why him or her?
Breathe. These questions are unanswerable and only prolong suffering and pain...
Worse than that...they prevent healing.
If our leg is broken and we are told to stop bearing weight for particular amount of time for it to heal properly...do we continue to walk on it?
Of course not.
And yet when our very core is torn apart...we often sit and replay the events leading up to the trauma...the internal tape...over and over in a continuous loop. We neglect ourselves, our health, continuing to focus on the horrible event.
An alternative.
Breathe.
Meditate.
Embrace our loss or crisis. Feel the pain. The loss.
Cry. Rage. Cry some more. Cry until you have no more tears.
Then remind yourself that these feelings are shared by many...that all experience loss...
And use your "mental stop-sign".
Breathe
Re-focus. Perhaps focus outward to others in need.
Re-focus on taking care of yourself.
Re-focus on life and the moment.
And give yourself permission to heal.
Do not regret or engage in guilt. Do not ask why. There is no answer that would satisfy you. Acknowledge that.
Embrace the good...sift away the bad...
This is the Path to Healing.
