Vajrasattva in My Life

I had the great good fortune to attend Fall Festival in France. It was so good I don’t think even French has a word for it – it was beyond magnifique, suprême, extraordinaire …
The empowerment felt deeply powerful (again words fall short), the teachings so very profound. We learned to purify not just negativities, obstructions and downfalls, but also ordinary appearances and conceptions! For the memory-impaired like me, those last two get grouped under obstructions.
But one of the key points that keeps returning is, “I need to purify.” That means me, myself, the person known as “Mimi,” (the name itself reminding me who we’re talking about).

In the last teaching at Fall Fest, we were given specific examples of how we can integrate purification into our daily life, one of the hallmarks of Kadampa Buddhism’s practicality.

You probably know that the options for dealing with negative karma are either to clear them out with purification practice, or to face their results, suffering in one of its multitude of forms. If you don’t get angry when there’s some adversity, mild or major, those ripened potentials will be purified. However,  habitually we get disturbed, irritated, annoyed, rageful … which just repeats the process. 

Sunday at the Temple I had a mild but dramatic experience of an eruption of my negative karma.
* To imagine what happened, pretend that you’re a female human, who of course comes with a female plumbing system (which my mom always cited as proof that God was a man).
Fill up a gallon jug at least halfway with water, although to really get the effect it should be a more impure substance. Thankfully I’m not talking about the other end of the plumbing system.
Head to a bathroom with the jug and start to get into position to release the liquid in your system, represented by the jug.
Before you’ve completely lowered your lower garment, start pouring the jug into your garment and around the toilet. A few moments later, more of the water will go where you intend, but a lot of it will have soaked those clothes. Continue pouring until the jug is empty.
My mind was calm, undoubtedly boosted by the weekend’s teachings, but also disappointed that I couldn’t attend Offering to the Spiritual Guide at the Temple, on Je Tsongkhapa Day, as planned, instead heading home to take a shower (which I think can be transformed into a purification practice if you use the four powers).

For perspective, it’s not that I haven’t experienced some mild, ongoing urinary incontinence, as apparently isn’t unusual for a woman my age (now 52, going on 82), probably exacerbated by cancer/chemo. But this was definitely “over the top.”

Update: As planned, I re-started chemo on Friday (delayed by the trip to France that my oncologist kindly supported). I’m back to the same drug I was on when my doctor stopped treatment in mid-June so that my body, especially my brain, could recover a bit from all the surgery, radiation and chemo I’ve had over 6+ years – on and off treatment but mostly on. That drug, “Gemzar,” mainly had fatigue as a side effect and was effective at reducing my tumors, so I am hopeful that will continue.

Yesterday I got the results of my cancer marker, which has leaped to the triple digits – not as bad as the quadruple digits at diagnosis, but far above the middle double digits I’ve had for years. Prayers appreciated.

* Pee S. Don’t try this at home.

The Other Way to Purify

I think of this as coming from film noir when the cop says to the suspect, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way," but apparently that phrase is used all over the place ... including in this blog post, because that's the way I'm thinking about purification. The easier, pleasant way is to do Vajrasattva or 35 Confession Buddhas, or to dedicate any virtuous action with sincere regret to purifying our negative karma.
The harder way is to keep a happy mind while experiencing your negative karma ripening. If you get angry or annoyed or unhappy in some other way, you only create more bad karma.
So for the recent Vajrasattva Retreat at KMC WA, I did it the harder way. I had a lot of side effects of my chemo, including a mouth infection a (not the mouth sores I experienced in the past on this regimen) and an ear infection. I was expecting the same side effects I'd had previously on these drugs, but that isn't what happened. Surprise! It was also very samsaric that the treatments for the side effects spawned more side effects!
My day is already shorter than usual, because of the fatigue, and it seemed like I was spending 2/3 of it trying to take care of these effects. For example, taking this pill 5x/day, letting it dissolve in my mouth over 1/2 hour; that one 4x/day; this other one every 12 hours with food; plus this ointment 2x/day; gargling salt water, then gargling with this medicine and then not putting anything in my mouth for an hour or so ...). It took more than a week for things to start turning around.

As Geshe-la says in Meaningful to Behold (on page 238 of the current, 2007 edition):
"...once we realize that we always reap the fruit of our own actions, receiving good for good and evil for evil - we shall be able to remain inwardly peaceful and calm even in the most adverse circumstances. We can view the harm we receive with a sense of relief, seeing our pain as the repayment of a long-standing debt. This is certainly preferable to becoming angry and upset, which only incurs the future debt of more pain and anguish."
I find this analogy heartening because it feels so good to pay off a debt, and it helps me try to stay peaceful when I'm sick.