Cancer, a suicide attempt and the inward expedition!

It’s been a little over two years that I began my spiritual journey and have been meaning to pen it down. I finally found that downtime to be able to do so as I ain’t travelling nor am I burdened with major household duties during this holiday season. The question begs; but why post it here on linkendin? Well, the answer simply is that the learnings I’ve had, which I’ll summarize at the end, if you stick along for that long that is, have a profound impact on life as a whole; not limited to just physical, mental and social but to living and livelihood as well.

Some background information about me:

I’ve always considered myself as a seeker. Born into a south Indian, Tamil speaking, 3rd generation Roman Catholic family, my first experience with spirituality was when I was 11 and during catechism class I was presented with this verse: “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and yet suffer the loss of his own soul”. I spent the next couple of years learning about the great mystics. At 13 I faced the untimely demise of my dad quickly followed by my favorite uncle. This was my first real brush with impermanence. My curiosity only grew deeper to seek answers to the unexplainable and I spent next few years in devotion, reading the scriptures (the Bible) and then later while at university, I spent much of my free time at the library reading translations of the Quran and the Vedas. It wasn’t until 30, after years of seeking and not finding acceptable explanations, that I realized that no one is going to come help us humans unless we help each other and upon the call of a rationalistic friend of mine made the decision to embrace atheism. Life was good!

The Trigger(s):

It wasn’t until the pandemic and all the frenzy of busy pre-pandemic life had come to full and sudden stop, that I, like so many of you, realized there’s more to life than this. How fragile life is and how complicated we’ve made it! At this juncture I was reacquainted, with an old friend of mine, death; I lost a mentor, 2 university mates and a close family friend to the virus. This caused a wide range of bottled-up emotions to resurface, and with a rage. I still had no answers; I had just stopped asking the questions and had sought other coping mechanisms and distractions to avoid the pain. The denial attitude had become so ingrained that I had stopped getting emotionally attached to any one person, place or thing.

2 years into the pandemic, I was hit with 2 major blows; a close friend of mine was diagnosed with advanced cancer and a close family member whom I love and care for had attempted suicide. These came as lightning rods, leaving me shaking inside.

My response:

I decided to take on and confront death and separation once and for all and took help from a psychologist, who helped me with tools and skills to slow down and reflect on my words, thoughts and actions. I started maintaining a journal of situations, good and bad, my emotions and how I dealt with it.?

Light:

This is when I was intrigued by a particular bigthink article - “The strange case of the dead-but-not-dead Tibetan monks”. It opened up to a whole new possibility - a unique way of not just confronting or approaching death, but just about anything.?When looking into the phenomenon more, I came across this article, where I came to learn about the scientific studies being undertaken to understand the phenomenon and subsequently about research on Tibetan meditation and its effects on the individual. However, it wasn’t until I came across this article in Time: Burning Monk, that I started taking meditation seriously.

“I don’t know exactly when he died because you couldn’t tell from his features or voice or anything. He never yelled out in pain. His face seemed to remain fairly calm until it was so blackened by the flames that you couldn’t make it out anymore.”

What was this power in the mind that these monks were so good at harnessing? What am I missing here? I’ve tried meditation in the past; it was so mundane. Seemed a fad back then.

This is when, during the December break in ’21, one of the critical project that I was supposed to be working on went on hold. My team and I suddenly had a whole 3 weeks time on our hands and we hadn’t planned any trips and tickets were immensely expensive. I decided to give meditation another go. And now, how do I go about doing this? Well, the first thought that came to mind, when thinking about meditation was the image of the Buddha. I was quick to google for meditation manuals taught by the Buddha and was surprised to find entire translated Pali scriptures available for delivery the next day. This is something I’ve never come across in my university library some 25 years back.

I was cautious though as I did not want to fall into another delusion, distraction or a mere coping mechanism. So, I kept to seeing my psychologist, every few weeks, to keep me on check.

The journey so far, the learnings and where I stand today – to be continued.

Continued here.

#Spirituality #Meditation #Buddha #Mind