Wisdom in Illness

Illness is a manifestation of impermanence, and also a reminder about life. From the fear of losing our health or facing death head-on, we learn life’s lessons and cultivate a heart of gratitude. In this way, we can be sick and whole, sick without anguish.

■ Editorial Office 

Illness Is Like a Pop Quiz in Life. How Will You Answer It?

When we are healthy and our bodies move freely, we rarely stop to think about how we’ll respond when illness strikes. Some people throw down their weapons and flee without a fight, while others meet it head-on and learn to live alongside it. The attitude we hold shapes not only whether we can be sick and still feel well, but also whether our caregivers can feel at ease.

Mental Health Matters More

After being diagnosed with cancer, American literary critic Susan Sontag wrote “Illness as Metaphor”. Having tasted the experience herself, she observed that illness is often wrapped in metaphors of incurability, fear, death, deprivation, weakness, repression, and karmic retribution—metaphors that reveal how negatively most people regard sickness. Such metaphors can leave patients feeling helpless, thereby adding further suffering to their condition.

“Health doesn’t necessarily mean an absence of illness in the body—it means having wisdom in one’s thinking. That is, to ‘live joyfully and be sick and healthy.’” Aging, sickness, and death are natural phenomena of life. Master Sheng Yen was sick often throughout his life, yet his approach was to face illness, accept it, deal with it, and let it go. He often said of himself, “Though sick, I do not suffer.” He even wrote about his own experience with cancer, hospitalization, surgery, and treatment in “A Wonderful Life in My Late Years (美好的晚年)” Here, he showed readers how he faced illness and planned his end-of-life affairs, remaining at ease even while sick in his later years, still meeting people and handling affairs, and never feeling trapped by his physical condition.

This shows that true “health” lies more in a healthy mind than a strong body—the ability to transform physical and mental imbalance into an opportunity for self-cultivation. This is why a patient’s attitude matters so much. With a healthy mindset and outlook, many difficulties resolve themselves.

Chen Huici (陳慧慈), an advisor to the Buddhist Lotus Hospice Care Foundation (蓮花基金會), lost hearing in her left ear from childhood and faced unfair treatment as a student, yet she never thought of herself as disabled. She joined a choir and entered speech competitions. “Helen Keller was my role model. My hearing certainly affected my learning and relationships. However, as long as I stayed optimistic and performed well, people naturally overlooked what I lacked.” She accepted this irreversible physical condition calmly, without adding suffering upon suffering by dwelling on it.

Even knowing that aging, sickness, and death are unavoidable, once something goes wrong with the body, we still hope to recover quickly and completely, even hoping to become healthier and stronger than before. This hope for recovery can leave us fixated on the surface appearance of medical numbers.

Venerable Chi Chern (繼程法師), Abbot of Puzhao Buddhist Vihara in Malaysia, was once hospitalized for blood sugar problems. At first, he was extremely careful about controlling his diet and cautious about everything. However, he found that this way, he could barely do anything at all. He later adjusted his mindset--- no longer bound by the numbers, doing what needed to be done. Of the ups and downs of his condition, he said: “Rather than opposing it, meet it with an attitude of integration.” As he has grown older, his sleep quality has also declined: “When I can’t sleep, I get up and do things, read, write and go back to bed when I feel drowsy. If I don’t feel sleepy, that’s fine too; it means my body has rested enough.” He no longer gets caught up in anxiety over insomnia.

The Test of Practice: What Can’t You Let Go Of?

Most people are used to viewing illness as bad luck; that is, something to be endured helplessly. But for Buddhist practitioners, illness may be the best opportunity to examine one’s own faith in the Dharma and to build an outlook on healing, to observe how one faces sickness, handles pain, and practices coexisting with discomfort.

Professor Aming Tu (杜正民), author of “Healing through Hearing the Dharma: 10 Lessons on Life and Death as Taught by the Buddha (法的療癒)”, spoke candidly about pain. He admitted frankly that during his hospital stay, the hardest thing to bear was the pain itself. Pain that felt so severe that it made him wish to die led him back to the Buddhist scriptures in search of answers, seeking to understand how the Buddha taught his disciples to face sickness and death. Rather than seeing himself as a patient, he observed his own illness, closely experiencing the Buddha’s teachings within it. In the process, he also saw his own inability to let go of his family, and began practicing releasing that attachment.

Venerable Guo Jing (果靖法師), who was ordained under Master Sheng Yen and passed away not long ago, once recalled in an interview that the first time she was wheeled into an operating room over a decade earlier, a nurse suddenly handed her a consent form asking her to accept the risk that the surgery might fail and result in death. Being young at the time, she had thought she was at peace with life and death. Suddenly, however, death felt very close. She admitted that she panicked in that moment. Yet this experience also convinced her: if one is clear about the direction of one’s practice and understands the meaning of life, one can achieve what Master Sheng Yen described: “Entrust your body to the doctor, entrust your mind to the Buddhas and bodhisattvas, and you will be at peace.”

Indeed, serious illness forces us to confront life and death directly. If we can use it to experience impermanence and no-self, and to strengthen our faith, we will naturally pass through illness’s test and be forged into a wise being.

Xie Shui-yong (謝水庸) retired early from civil service and has devoted over thirty years to volunteer work. Four years ago, numbness in his feet led to a diagnosis of kidney problems. During treatment, his body suffered severe discomfort, along with auditory hallucinations and insomnia that disrupted his daily rhythm. He, too, felt helpless and lost at times. He later turned his thinking around through meditation and prostrating to the Buddha, and learned to skillfully observe causes and conditions, cause and effect. The changes in body and mind, and the sense of being beyond his control, gave him a profound experience of impermanence and no-self.

What Illness Reminds Us

Illness is also a valuable reminder, teaching us humility and empathy. The late Catholic priest Father George Martinson, S.J. (丁松筠) wrote in his essay “Our Lady Beside the Operating Table (手術台旁的聖母媽媽)” that thirty years ago he stepped down as director of “Kuangchi Program Service” to pursue further studies in the United States. At this time, he, an avid athlete, often felt his heart grow deeply uncomfortable after exercise, needing time to settle before returning to normal. He described this as a gift from God, “a reminder of my weakness.”

After later undergoing surgery, he remained healthy, until 2017, when he again felt tightness in his chest after exercise. This time, in the operating room, lying on the operating table waiting, Father George Martinson, S.J. said he vividly “saw” the Virgin Mary appear, comforting him gently: “Don’t worry, nothing will happen to you. I want you to remember this feeling of powerlessness over your own life. Once you recover, take special care of those who feel powerless, and serve them.” Throughout his life, Father George Martinson, S.J. remained among the people, caring for those who needed care.

“From now on, whenever I find even a moment of peace, may I remember that countless beings across the six realms are still suffering…” The Ming dynasty Master Lianchi (蓮池大師) was once badly scalded while bathing, and improper treatment prolonged his injury for over two months, leaving him unable to walk. During that time, he suddenly realized how precious it is simply to walk, eat, and sleep. The slow-healing wound not only stirred in him a deep sense of humility, but also reminded him to constantly hold in mind every being who is suffering.

When a person who is ill can remain calm and hold a healthy attitude toward their condition, it also puts those caring for them at ease, and may even transform the one being cared for into a caregiver themselves.

Becoming Guardians for One Another

In his later years, after undergoing surgery, Master Sheng Yen recounted that as he entered the operating room, he saw every medical worker in green scrubs as a life-saving bodhisattva. He prayed that everyone in the world entering an operating room would be free of fear and dread, and would recover quickly. He further prayed that no one in the world would ever need to enter an operating room at all. During his hospital stay, Master Sheng Yen even guided the medical staff caring for him to become Buddhist disciples. The medical staff cared for his physical health; he, in turn, cared for their minds.

“Illness has strengthened my faith and nurtured my compassion, allowing me to empathize more deeply with others who suffer, and to share what I’ve learned from my own experience.” After a failed hearing surgery, Chen Huici (陳慧慈) was later diagnosed with rectal cancer and then breast cancer. Now, with her old leg injury recurring, she remains optimistic: “I have always believed that where there is the Dharma, there is a way.” She continues to live with gratitude, extending a helping hand to those in need, this is her great vow.

Walking the path does not mean seeking to be free of illness. As Master Miaoye (妙葉大師) wrote in “The Direct Guide on the Jewelled King Samādhi of the Mindfulness of the Buddha (寶王三昧念佛直指)”: “Know the causes and conditions of illness, know that the nature of illness is empty, and illness cannot trouble you.” To be human is to inevitably fall ill. If we can practice using the Dharma as medicine and illness as our teacher, keeping the mind settled, then the body too will find ease, we can be sick without suffering, at peace with ourselves and bringing peace to others.


Related articles: 

Finding Health and Peace in Illness

Wisdom in Illness

Buddha Teaches Us How to Care for the Sick: Five Practices for Tending to the Sick

Unconstrained by illness, the mind remains at ease

Receiving Karmic Results, Fulfilling Vows, and Vowing Anew

Illness: Guiding the Direction of Your Life


Resource: Issue 481 of Humanity Magazine, Dharma Drum Publishing Corporation
Photo: Venerable Chang Duo (常鐸法師)
Translation: Anne Yeow 姚麗萍
Editing: Keith Brown, Patricia Yang