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Hidden Spring
by
Sandy Boucher
 In
October 1995 1 went to a hospital in Oakland,
where I live, for the medical test known as a
sigmoidoscopy. Although I had been experiencing
symptoms, I did not for a moment anticipate that
there could be a serious problem. I expected to
be told that I had some minor, easily corrected
condition. But the test, instead, opened the
door into the world of hospitals, surgery, and
chemotherapy. The sigmoidoscopy showed a large
tumor in my colon; a later colonoscopy confirmed
it to be malignant. In a week I was having major
surgery, and a month later began a course of
chemotherapy that was supposed to last
forty-eight weeks. My work, my intimate
relationship, my home, my relations with
friends, my body -- every element of my life
seemed sucked up into a dizzying vortex.
The one still point in this turning world
was the Buddhist practice I had been cultivating
for fifteen years. The formal meditation
practice -- all those hours of sitting still
while emotions raged in me and my body clamored
for relief -- served me well. I had learned to
be there for it all: to attend to my sensations,
recognizing in that moment, as painful or
imperfect or frustrating as it was, that this
was the actual texture and content of my life;
and then, because I noticed that nothing ever
stayed the same, to experience its changing, and
to know these thoughts, emotions, and sensations
as the incessant flow of phenomena. This
practice had steadied me through major crises in
my life, providing a reliable base point to
which to return, no matter what else was going
on. During those years I had also been
cultivating an attitude of spaciousness,
acceptance, and compassion for others as well as
myself. This training and its attendant cast of
mind served me in the most trying times of my
encounter with cancer, and also sometimes
deserted me. My years of work with a unique and
powerful teacher gave me some tools to meet the
requirements of the illness and its treatment,
when I could, and the compassion to be patient
with myself and begin again, when I couldn't. I
have tried to reveal how I applied the practice
and benefited from the Buddhist perspective in
many of the most difficult situations, hoping
that my experience may be of use to the next
person who opens that door.
My entry into the rich, sustaining
tradition of Buddhism occurred in 1980 when I
began to sit on a pillow and meditate. For the
first three years, I thought I would just learn
how to do the meditation, and have nothing to do
with the furnishings of the religion out of
which it came. Even so, because I am a curious
person and like to orient myself in new
activities, I began to study the texts of
Buddhism, listen to what teachers said, and
learn about the Asian roots of Buddhism; as I
understood more, I began turning to Buddhist
principles to shed light on my own experience.
In a difficult situation, I would recall my
reading or the insights I had gained in
meditation, and ask myself what would be the
action that would best promote the welfare of
all concerned.
Over the fifteen years' time since I first
sat down on a pillow and tried to pay attention,
I have been doing meditation more or less
faithfully both by myself and in groups, and
with my principal teacher Ruth Denison in her
center in the Mojave Desert of California. Ruth
is one of the first generation of Western women
who brought Buddhist practice to us in the
United States; she had studied and meditated in
Burma with a noted Theravada Buddhist teacher,
who asked her to return here to teach. I myself
went to Asia, where I lived for a short time as
a Buddhist nun in Sri Lanka, and stayed in
monasteries in Thailand and Burma. As part of my
life as a writer and teacher I regularly study
the texts of Buddhism, and continue meditating.
Most of all I have tried to apply the
Buddhist principles in my daily life. That
morning in the G.I. (Gastro-Intestinal)
Laboratory at Summit Hospital gave me an
opportunity to do so. I remember the doctor, a
tall African-American man, talking to me after
the test was completed. "When the growth is that
big, we're ninety percent certain it's cancer.
I'm calling your doctor right now. We want you
in the hospital for major surgery in a week."
I am not a very spiritually adept person.
Mostly I plod along, failing often, succeeding
sometimes in my efforts at concentration and
right action. But my years of practice and study
had given me an understanding of life's task.
When I received the news of cancer, I
understood, Oh, yes, what is required of me now
is that I be fully present to each new
experience as it comes and that I engage with it
as completely as I can. I don't mean that I said
this to myself. Nothing so conscious as that. I
mean that my whole being turned, and looked, and
moved toward the experience.
Driving home from the hospital where the
test had been performed, I remembered how,
months before, my partner Crystal had urged me
to get the sigmoidoscopy. For the period of her
life just before I met her, in an extended
detour from her career in music, Crystal had
worked caring for the elderly. She remembered
vividly one of her clients, an old woman dying
of colon cancer because she had ignored the
symptom of blood in her stool until it was too
late. Now it was I who told Crystal that I had
seen blood in my stool. "Please," she begged,
"go get a sigmoidoscopy." But I was too busy
writing, teaching my classes, and preparing to
go to China to attend the United Nations Fourth
World Conference on Women; I was spending time
with the Wandering Menstruals, my support group
of women over fifty, and my many other friends.
I exercised regularly at a gym, and Crystal and
I went out each weekend to hike or bike. I was
living a busy, energetic existence, and I felt
fine.
To Crystal's suggestions, I had snapped
that I was not a seventy-year-old matron like
her former client, and there was no time for a
diagnostic test until I came back from China at
the end of August. Now, driving home from Summit
Hospital, I remembered her anxious face as she
had listened to me. She mumbled that she hoped I
was not making a mistake, and after that did not
mention the sigmoidoscopy again.
What she feared had come to pass.
As I drove, I was just beginning to take
in what had happened. In a crisis, we have many
choices of how to react. We can reject the
experience hysterically; we can rage against the
injustice of it; we can go into deep denial and
pretend it's not happening; we can move into the
future, imagining a horrific outcome; we can
retreat into obsessive worry, or sink into
depression; and there are other possibilities.
But after all those years of sitting still,
cultivating awareness of the present moment, and
perhaps also because I am by nature a rather
positive person, I had none of those options. It
seemed there was nothing to do but to be here
fully for what would happen.
But this did not protect me from the usual
thoughts and feelings, particularly in the
initial shock. I remembered, later, a friend
telling of hearing her own cancer diagnosis. "I
thought I was on the mezzanine," she said," and
suddenly I was in the basement." It was like
that.
Returning from the test, with the doctor's
words echoing in my head, I walked up the back
steps to my house. "Well, I'm fifty-nine years
old," I thought. "I've published four books,
I've experienced marriage and many intensely
engaging love affairs, I've done honest
political work, and I've traveled. I've lived my
life as fully as I could. If this is the end,
that will be all right."
Then I walked in the door, through the
kitchen and into the living room, where Crystal
was lying on the couch. She had been up most of
the night working on a music project; I had seen
her sleeping there when I left an hour or two
earlier. Now she sat up and looked at me, her
face creasing with concern. "What is it?" she
asked. I walked across to the couch, knelt on
the rug and burst into tears. Crystal put her
arms around me as I choked out the news. And
then she too was crying, as both of us felt the
sadness of the coming ordeal, and the terror
that my life might end.
Buddhist practice does not prevent
anything, it does not shield us from anything.
It softens and opens us to meet everything that
comes to us.
 This
article is excerpted from
Hidden Spring : A Buddhist Woman Confronts
Cancer by Sandy Boucher, ©2000.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher,
Wisdom Publications,
http://www.wisdompubs.org
Info/Order this book.
About The
Author
Sandy
Boucher is the author of six books, including
Opening the Lotus: A Woman's Guide to Buddhism and
Hidden Spring: A Buddhist Woman Confronts Cancer. She has
traveled extensively in Asia, living for a short time as a nun in Sri
Lanka. Since her 1995-1996 bout with the illness, Sandy Boucher has
worked with others confronted with cancer. Visit her website at
http://www.sandyboucher.com
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