Apects of Self (1981)

Self confidence is where it's at. This morning looking like one of these days. Nothing would go right and everything goes wrong. Suddenly out of nowhere, it occurs to me 'I can do something about this'. So I got on top of it (whatever that was - it's gone).

Dog's Teaching

Click image to enlarge

HOW BUDDHISM HAS HELPED ME RECOVER FROM BRAIN INJURY

We all have our struggles. During my teens, I was diagnosed & treated for epilepsy. I took the pills for some years and then, when I stopped taking them, I did not have another seizure for thirty years. It was during this time that I went to University, worked as a Civil Engineer and went travelling through Asia and into India- where I got a taste of Buddhism. I liked what I could see and wanted to know more. I got myself to London and signed up for an Introductory Course. Intrigued, I got more interested and eventually formally converted to Buddhism. My experience of that path, its ideas and meeting with other practitioners caused me to want to see something similar happening at home. I played a part in setting up a Buddhist Centre here in Sydney.

I spent a few subsequent years at the Melbourne Buddhist Centre. It was during that time that the epilepsy returned. Fortunately for me, living in the same community as myself, was a Neurologist who himself was a Buddhist. He was of great help.

I returned to live in Katoomba (a most pleasant town). But during a visit back to Melbourne, I had a bad fall and suffered a serious brain injury. Although I had been meditating for thirty years, this showed me that meditation is no guarantee against misfortune. When I asked my friend the Neurologist about the cause of epilepsy, he said that they know what happens but the cause is not known. He did qualify this with mention of the causal conditions. But I won’t go on about that apart from saying that, whether you are a meditator or not, we all need to take care.

What I would like to speak about here is how my practice as a Buddhist- in particular Mindfulness & Loving Kindness- has assisted my recovery.

Let me take you back to where I was in 2007. I was in Royal Melbourne Hospital coming out of a coma. As I emerged I could recollect that even the Buddha died. My memory after the injury is patchy, but this sustained me at the time. I was coming away from a near-death experience. Not surprisingly there are aspects of that experience that are best not being remembered. I spent weeks in Westmead Hospital and when I was discharged, I was advised of my need to re-establish my confidence.

Positivity & being Mindful helped me greatly. Therapists complimented me on my attitude. It is what years of practice had given me. In the circumstance that I found myself in, I knew that I needed clarity, purpose and self-kindness. I had been a Buddhist for thirty years and in this crucial condition it was the Path of practice to which I turned. The Buddha’s path of ethics, meditation and wisdom has always resonated with me. The medicos helped me greatly but being aware was something that only I could do myself.

I had to adjust to what had happened. Things had changed. I no longer could do things that I had been doing in the past. Attempting to do too much is not a good thing for me. I had been hit with the truth of impermanence.

When I was in hospital, the physiotherapist told me that, in her profession, mindfulness is increasingly valued. When I said that I had been trying to practice this, she said, “I am not religious but maybe you are being tested”. I don’t believe that there is some cosmic figure out there making sure that I am behaving. But the reality of impermanence and my own recent experience brings up the question of what happens to our consciousness when our body passes away. As a Buddhist of the 21st century, I incline to the notion of continuity. We see this in the seasons. When I look up into the clear night sky, I have a sense of looking into infinity. Phenomena happen within the relative reality of time & space.

The Tibetans see death as a Bardo or an “intermediate space”. The death bardo is the space between lives. The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes this continuity between lives and also posits this as an opportunity of liberating oneself from the “endless cycle of rebirth in samsara”. The goal of Buddhists is to transcend this relative reality by achieving Enlightenment.

Not being Enlightened, the question of what will happen after death is unanswerable to me. The Buddhist path has as its goal Enlightenment which we take on faith. I have taken refuge in the Buddha, his teachings and the community of fellow Buddhists. Who knows but the Enlightened ones like Shakyamuni (that Indian prince) who had reached that goal of transcendental wisdom. The goal is perhaps at a mythic level, but I do know the benefits of being aware and positive.

Recently I had a discussion with a Christian lady who had a vision of the Virgin Mary. She accused me of becoming aggressive and that the Buddha had made no indication of his post mortem existence. I said that his last words were to encourage his followers to “strive on with mindfulness”.

As a Buddhist recovering from a Brain Injury which most likely occurred after a seizure, I have been thinking of seizures as something of what the Tibetans call bardos. Bardo translates as “intermediate states of consciousness”. I asked a Danish Buddhist teacher whether seizures are considered as bardos. “It depends on whether you lose consciousness” he replied. That has been my experience of seizures.

The self is not fixed and mental states are conditioned, one by another and thus the need for us to cultivate positively skilful mental states. But my losing consciousness means that I don’t really know. Perhaps my seizures are caused by some emotional stress of which I am as yet unaware. There is something for my meditation. My test, if you like, is to develop & maintain real positive emotion.

Many presently unanswerable questions are there for me to resolve, like emotional needs and how to respond to them. I do feel that I have much progress to make but I have an ongoing practice of self awareness.

Undoubtedly we all have struggles in our own way. Motivation is essential. We need to believe that progress towards a goal is possible. And we need friends to constantly assure us of this. I have had the good fortune to come across Buddhism and to have met a good teacher.