Saying "Enough"

Hi all, it's another Mimi update from her Boswell. Some of you have been inquiring by email about Mimi's status - many apologies for the delay in responding and in updating this blog. It's been a busy week around here with family visiting from Florida and a friend visiting from New York. Next week will bring more family from New Jersey. How wonderful that loved ones are making the pilgrimage from near and far!

Many of our Seattle friends, along with thousands of Kadampas from around the world, are making another kind of pilgrimage: they're on a spiritual holiday at Manjushri Centre in England, attending the International Summer Festival that occurs every year at about this time. Local friends who aren't at Summer Festival this year are putting in extra hours to help out with cleaning and other chores, or just to be present while Mimi rests so that Richard can take a break. A friend who has experience with caring for a loved one on hospice calls these "respite visits." It's been so helpful for Richard to have this assistance - thank you, amazing friends! Your gift of cherishing is so precious.

As of the last report about ten days ago, Mimi's energy was good and she had been receiving up to five visitors a day. More recently, her energy levels have waned a bit and, outside of the respite visits, we've reduced her schedule to about two visitors per day. The remainder of the time she's been spending in bed to rest up and charge her batteries for the next visit. She's been spending more time sleeping and her appetite has decreased. Then Kadam Heather came up yesterday from Portland to spend the night here, and it was such an energizing visit for Mimi! Today Heather presided over Offering to Spiritual Guide right by Mimi's bedside so that Mimi could rest when she needed to during the two-hour puja. We coordinated with some friends at Manjushri Centre and timed the puja so that we were all making prayers at the same time. It was magical! Email me at rebecca-dot-lafond-at-gmail.com if you'd like to see pictures.

Mimi's physical state is going through ups and downs, but her mind, as usual, stays peaceful and positive. As you might remember from her previous blogs, Mimi considers her experience with cancer as an opportunity to receive daily teachings on samsara's true nature. She views suffering and difficulty as gifts that help us to become deeply familiar with our real situation. Mimi has written that her approach to adversity is "not just to welcome it, but to thank it for being there, showing honestly the face of samsara, rather than the mask, which fools me into thinking there's some real pleasure here. I don't want to hang out in this impure world. I don't want temporary pleasures to hook me into believing they're what's going to make my life happy." If you want to read more of her thoughts about how deceptive samsara can be, and about renunciation, samsara's antidote, see this blog post (especially the last paragraph). It will blow your mind.

Send emails, post comments - it's wonderful to hear from you!

To Contentment and Beyond

Hello Friends of Mimi,

Boswell here.  All of your love and wishes are coming through and are deeply appreciated.  Mimi is still looking over her email occasionally so she has seen your kind messages.  In Mimi's own words from a post last April: "I deeply appreciate your prayers for me. You can see that they work. Makes it so easy to have faith."  As always, please feel free to add a comment to this blog post, send a reply message to Mimi, or email me at rebecca-dot-lafond-at-gmail.com.

Just wanted to give you an update on Mimi's current state of health.  As a background, here's a wrap-up of the last 7 years of Mimi's cancer adventure in one sentence: she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and underwent treatment; has had chemo on and off to address recurring abdominal tumors; had a metastasis to the brain a few years ago and was treated with surgery, radiation and chemo; and was most recently advised by her doctor that curative care is no longer an option.  And so she is now on hospice and preparing for a peaceful death.  The tumors in Mimi's abdomen are growing noticeably, and a recent brain scan indicates that she has cancerous lesions on the meninges of the brain, also known as leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, carcinomatous meningitis, and a host of other long-syllabled medical terms.  The brain cancer causes inflammation, so Mimi is once again taking a steroid called dexamethasone to keep the swelling down.  She's written about taking this medication in previous blog posts - it's the one that makes her really talkative, energetic and HUNGRY!  We can maybe consider these side effects to be a blessing as she has been receiving many visitors from near and far, and she has sufficient energy to engage in conversation.  She's also eating really well which is helping her to keep up her strength.  Many friends are bringing food to share during their visits - in fact, we're expecting Sally with dinner any minute now.  It's a gift for Mimi (and for us all) for her to be able to share these moments with friends and family.  The last few days have brought a poetry reading (Lynn Ann), an industrious cleaning of the master bedroom (Linda L), a tidying up of the garden (Linda S), and many kind and friendly ears to listen to Mimi's thoughts about the end of her life (Heather, Brian, Laurie, Eve, Kit, Noreen).  As the weekend approaches, her social calendar continues to be full and family arrives on Monday morning.

Anyway, to continue the "state of the union" regarding Mimi's current health situation, she's on a transdermal patch to control pain, two medications for nausea, and a variety of other meds to deal with the side effects of the main medications.  As we all know from our interactions with Mimi, she's an amazing example of practicing contentment in the face of adversity.  In a post from January of this year she wrote, "Thankfully I know my body is *not* "me," so I am still happy … and hope you are too."  It's an inspiration to witness how her positive habits of mind continue to sustain her happiness, even as she encounters these challenges.  May we all have such courage and strength!

The brain cancer, the many years of chemotherapy drugs, and the current medications are causing unavoidable cognitive decline.  About this phenomenon, she said in a post from June 2015 that, "my mind is good, my brain not so much."  She seems to lose a little bit of energy each day and yet she's a gracious hostess, always looking after the comfort of her guests.  I'll end this post with her expression of gratitude from a couple of years ago:
"Thank you, Buddha.
Thank you, Sangha.
Thank you to everyone who's been making prayers and offering good thoughts."

Another Benefit of Acceptance

We know that patient acceptance has many benefits, which we can read about in two of my favorite books, How to Solve Our Human Problems and Meaningful to Behold, among others. As Geshe-la says in How to Solve:

As long as we are in conflict with life's difficulties, thinking that things should be different from the way they are and blaming circumstances or other people for our unhappiness, we will never have the clarity or spaciousness of mind to see what is really binding us.

Not only does patience bring peace and joy and allow us a wider perspective that leads to wisdom. In my experience it also opens up space for the situation to shift. I'm remembering that I only found the neurosurgeon whose quick scheduling allowed me to go to Brazil Festival 2010 after I let go of the expectation I would make it; I did not, however, let go of the wish.
Yesterday a friend told a story about a similar huge shift. She's had a years-long complicated family challenge that kept spiraling downward. When she deeply accepted the situation, things started getting better for her whole family, even in medical and legal terms.
Another example was the one I described this week in the post Latest Health Update: I Am Good. It was only after I accepted seeing her colleague that I got an appointment with Dr V.

My rough mind has an image: a small truck on narrow street, like many R & I saw in Spain, heading downhill. There is literally no space to turn around until you get to a widening.
I also think of it as giving my Dharma Protector more space to work with, and certainly you can explain it in terms of karma, which after all is an explanation for everything. It's also an emptiness teaching, showing a direct relationship between your state of mind and what you experience.

In the past I would have spent more time contemplating this, to try to have a better analysis, but now I'm just throwing it out there. Would love to hear what you think.

A Good Look at Samsara

When I had a recent health scare (story to come), I realized another way I want to deal with adversity: not just to welcome it, but to thank it for being there, showing honestly the face of samsara, rather than the mask, which fools me into thinking there's some real pleasure here. I don't want to hang out in this impure world. I don't want temporary pleasures to hook me into believing they're what's going to make my life happy.
It's fine to enjoy a tasty meal or a fabulous song, but the danger to is that we naturally get addicted to them, thinking more is even better, and pursue them to the exclusion of meditation, which does take a bit more effort, like walking uphill, rather than following the easy downward trail. 
Buddha taught the middle way, not the ascetic way. We learn ways of transforming what would otherwise be indulgences into something  meaningful.
For example, yesterday after I got the good report about my medical condition, R and I were enjoying some delicious spinach mo-mos (Tibetan dumplings), sitting at our dining table in the sun, and we had to remind each other not to be deceived.
Of course, we know we can offer that enjoyment to Guru Buddha at our heart, and that's become a regular practice, because it's so enjoyable. Isn't it great that joy is considered a power? It helps us sustain our spiritual life. I love hearing about ways to make it fun, like pretending you're just an actor, and the whole world is a set.
Send me your favorite way to make your practice fun, and I'll post the collection here.