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Sickness

 As Buddhists, how do we work with illness and what do we learn from it?
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    Tough Teachings To Ease The Mind Paid Member

    By Upasika Kee Nanayon
    People lying in bed ill are lucky because they have the opportunity to do nothing but contemplate stress and pain. Their minds don’t need to take up anything else, don’t need to go anywhere else. They have the opportunity to contemplate pain at all times—and let go of pain at all times.To contemplate inconstancy, stress, and not-selfness [in Buddhism, the three marks of existence—anicca, dukkha, and anatta—more commonly known as impermanence, suffering, and no-self] as they appear right to you while you’re lying here ill, is very beneficial. Just don’t think that you’re what’s hurting. Simply see the natural phenomena of physical and mental events as they arise and pass away. They’re not you. They’re not really yours. You don’t have any real control over them. More »
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    A Very Easy Death Paid Member

    By Simone de Beauvoir
    Alberto Giacometti, The Artist's Mother Seated I (1965) Lithograph THE PNEUMATIC MATTRESS MASSAGED HER SKIN; there were pads between her knees, and they had a hoop over them to prevent the sheets from touching; another arrangement stopped her heels touching the draw-sheet: but for all that, bedsores were beginning to appear all over her body. With her hips paralyzed by arthritis, her right arm half powerless and left immovably fixed to the intravenous dripper, she could not make the first beginnings of a movement. "Pull me up," she said. More »