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> 'Not our best day. . .thank you'
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> How I met Alma
"...my understanding of the basic principle of this tradition is that the world of phenomena is a constantly changing network of interdependent relationships. Change is the nature of our world. Joy, happiness, old age, illness and death are reflections of these changes..."
'Not our best day. . .thank you'
UCSF Helen Diller Family Fund Cancer Center
'Reflections on Music & Healthcare'
© Jim Murdoch 2008 all rights reserved
I found this hand written note inside the piano, while playing at the cancer center one afternoon,
"Today was not our best day,
sick loved ones -
worry & sadness.
I forgot for a while
while you made such
beautiful music for us all. . .
Thank you"
In the spring of 1995 I attended a healthcare conference in San Francisco and as I was leaving I picked up "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying," by Sogyal Rinpoche from a "free box" of books.
I'd seen a documentary about Tibet and a videotape of Joseph Campbell's lecture on Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism, so my curiosity was sparked. The purpose of the book is help westerners and particularly those who work with people who are seriously ill or dying create a meaningful atmosphere at the end of a person's life by adapting the philosophy and spiritual practices used for centuries in Tibetan Buddhism. I had also seen a documentary about the Zen Hospice here in San Francisco. One scene showed the hospice workers sitting in chairs in a circle learning a guided imagery exercise from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. They were learning a visualization of compassion in order to help relieve the suffering of their hospice patients. This practice of compassion is called 'tonglen' and is discussed at great length in the "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying."
The practitioner imagines a person's suffering, breathes it in and visualizes the suffering becoming purified and transformed. On the exhalation of the breath, relief is sent. This practice for developing compassion seemed especially applicable for working with people at the cancer center. I also liked the simplicity of the visualizations. The principles could be adapted to any situation regardless of a person's religious or spiritual beliefs. So I began doing this practice at home in the morning for some of the patients I met.
My understanding of the basic principle of this tradition is that the world of phenomena is a constantly changing network of interdependent relationships. Change is the nature of our world. Joy, happiness, old age, illness and death are reflections of these changes. The tonglen practice helps us learn to share both the positive and the negative, not to avoid suffering but to breath it in, transform it and send out relief. Rather than live in denial of this fact, we try to develop compassion because of our relationships and interdependence with others.
