TMI alert! If you suffer from a post-infection syndrome, or suspect that you do and have nerve and/or gut problems, or are a health care professional, you might want to read this post. Otherwise, I encourage you to give it a miss.
Pain and the desire to be rid of pain arise. What do we do with them?
I recently fell into a trap. I had just read in a Zen koan, “When the mind seeks nothing, this is called the Way.” Yet I get recurrent periods of pain that do not respond to any of a variety of relatively safe pain medications. My mind was at that moment quite insistently seeking relief from the pain. So my thought chain then continued, “Why can’t I get rid of this wanting to get rid of the pain? I must be a bad Zen student.”
Continue reading “Wanting (to be Rid of Pain)”If Zen doesn’t make us feel better, or make us into better people, is it a total waste of time?
Two years ago I had a sudden bout with a virus. As yet, I still haven’t gotten entirely over it. The acute phase slowly morphed into a long-term, sometimes debilitating, slog through fatigue and general crappiness. I don’t like it. And it has helped open me up to the wide universe. Continue reading “Sick and Useless Zen”
Part 4 of a reflection on birth, death, and the Linji Lu
Fear of the responsibilities that come with birth are only one side of the coin. At other times, I dread the prospect of loss and death. Things are slipping away. Health. Loved ones. Hopes. Abilities. Now my little log-rolling human figure is running backwards at a full tilt, trying to avoid loss, trying to pull things back towards myself.
Last January, I had planned to stay at sesshin for three weeks! But a mysterious illness forced me to return home after two days. Continue reading “Loss”
I wish that, as a child, someone had told me that it’s OK to feel love and resentment at the same time.
I was a child caregiver, my mother having developed rheumatoid arthritis when she was in her twenties. I can barely remember her driving our old red-and-white station wagon. My older siblings can remember her riding a bicycle. Continue reading “Love and Resentment”
Julie A. Nelson 