Fighting the hidden enemy- My big mesenteric CLL nodes force my hand

The disconnect between how well I might look and feel and the growing burden of cancer in my gut challenges my intuitions of how the world and leukemia works. Fighting the hidden enemies is my new imperative, one I can not ignore or wish away.

My doctors Forman and Kipps disagree on most everything, EXCEPT that I need therapy. Soon.

I will be spending the next 2 to 3 months deciding what to do next.

Doing nothing is not an option. Or at least not a very wise option, though it is certainly the most appealing in the short term.

I will not let this decision consume me, but will try as best I can to detach myself from the process and argue as I would for a friend or patient.

I will try to be calm in the face of imperfect choices and incomplete data.

I will try to look beyond the immediate horizons to the best possible future.

I will decide and move on.

I will, in the words of Jon Kabat-Zinn: Meditate, Act and Be Aware

Meditation

I am getting ready. Soon the ground will shift again. Or the rains will start. Or not.

Soon I should be returning to work, seeing if I have what it takes to be a writer, and opening my hood while the doctors probe my marrow and gut to see if I need a third oil change and new set of filters.

Like Noah and the flood, will I need to be wiped clean again with another transplant and given a chance to start again?

Rabbi Alan Lew, may his memory be a blessing, just died last month. The title of one of his books tells it all: Be still and get going.

I am reading The Art of War by  Sun Tzu again. Maybe the answer is there. Then Proust is on my list. Not sure why. I am attending lectures on Jewish mysticism and meditation. I am searching for a way to probe the unknowns. 

This weekend is the Writer's Conference in San Diego where it will be show time with several agents and publishers. And you thought I was brave having a transplant. This is scary.

You can't say that I am not pushing forward. 

And sitting still.

" Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream" The Beatles

It is not dying, it is not dying,

Lay down all thought surrender to the void,

It is shining, it is shining.

That you may see the meaning of within,

It is speaking, it is speaking,

That love is all and love is ev’ryone,

It is knowing, it is knowing.

The Beatles

I just returned from sitting Zazen all day at the Mount Baldy Zen Center. Driving through the rain and clouds, dodging the rocks tumbling from the hairpin turns on the mountain road, I truly left behind the illusion of my civilized life, to enter the mind stopping realm of Zen. The real world of what Leonard Cohen has called the marines of consciousness.

Within moments of arriving, I was silently sitting in the Zendo, legs crossed, for most of the next 4 hours, punctuated with some silent walking in circles.

3  identical bowls, dish towel and cloth napkins, and 1 cup were the instruments of our semi-formal ritualized silent lunch. When finished the filling meal of home made bread, salad, soup and tea all was cleansed with the boiling water poured from the old kettle passed up and down the table, and neatly stored for the next meal. When I stayed for a week a dozen years ago, I used the same 3 bowls for the week. And they never saw a kitchen sink. All cleaned up at the end of each meal. Minimalist, perfect, simple: Zen. Then silent sitting and walking Zazen for another 3 hours. Formal tea, casual vegan pizza (the rest of the gang enjoyed a beer) and at last a chance to talk and catch up. Then I was on my way down the mountain.

The chattering brain of mine hates the silence. My knees and inner thighs scream to move. But you can't move. You can't even scratch the powerful itch that began 2 seconds after the bell rings to begin the meditation. You sit still like a rock until the clapper sounds and you can wiggle for a minute or two until the stillness begins again.

It is not relaxing. It has no purpose. None. It will not heal me. Does not increase immune surveillance or aid in the engraftment.  

Maybe it gives me a broader perspective. I am not sure. To paraphrase Tom Robbins you don't meditate with any goal in mind. 

So why bother? 

May I please answer with an old Zen joke? You will find it published under my name (Dr. Koffman, the comic) in Joke Stew and other anthologies.

I went to a Buddhist retreat and it was a big success. I learnt nothing.