In a hospital practice, we all see sufferings
all the time. When we were young in medical college, we w quite often got
disturbed seeing the sufferings of the people. During our career, we have learnt
a lot of spiritual prescriptions from our patients. Not only do they help us
heal our patients but have also changed our perception about health and
sickness.
I recall Swami Bodhanand, a disciple of
Swami Chinmayananda, was once admitted with us. When I asked him to give me a
spiritual message, he told me only two words “Detached Attachment”. He said,
“As a doctor you should behave like a lotus leaf. It is wet as long as a drop
of water is there, but once the drop is out, the leaf is as dry as if the water
was never there.” The message was that “we should be attached to our patients
as long as they are with us. The day they die, we should be completely detached
from them or else we will not be able to treat other patients”.
I saw another spiritual guru through our Chief
Anesthetist. The fee he paid to me was a spiritual message “Suno Samjho Jano
Karo- Hear Understand Wisdom and Doing”. He said that hearing is different from
listening, listening is different from wisdom and wisdom is different from
doing. Unless you hear, understand what you have heard and implement, learning has
no value.
One of my Buddhist patients gave me a
spiritual learning, which has helped me a lot in my routine clinical practice.
He taught me the basic Buddhist message that there is suffering all over; there
is a reason for every suffering and it is possible to maintain sufferings.
This message fits into the main message of Hinduism and also the main
teaching from Garud Purana.
In Hinduism, we know that the very fact that
we are born in this life means that in our last life, we could not get liberation
as Hinduism believe that after liberation you are not reborn. Not getting
liberated in the last birth means that some sufferings were left in our life.
The basic purpose of this birth, therefore, is to face sufferings. When the
basic purpose of our birth is to face sufferings, then why suffer from these
sufferings. Every time we suffer, we should thank God that he has reduced one
more. The period in between two sufferings is called a Happy period (Sukh). In
fact, this period is nothing but a period of rest given to us by God to prepare
our body for the next suffering. This as a concept of counseling helps my
patients to manage most of their mental disturbances.
Sometimes not telling a patient that he is
suffering from terminal cancer works. One of my patient’s father, aged 83 years,
was found to have extensive cancer of the prostate. Medically, we all gave him
three months’ to live. My patient had no guts to tell his father or the family
members that he (the father) had extensive cancer. He took me into confidence
and played a game with the family. We gathered all the family members and told
them that with the surgery this cancer had been cured. A party was organized in
the evening to celebrate the cure. The magic happened; he lived for the next 9
years almost a symptom free life. I have tried this on many of my patients
thereafter and it works. The probable explanation was loss of fear of death, a
confidence in his doctor and faith in his own self.
The way to live to 100 years is to go on
working in life. My great grandfather-in-law was 75 years old when I got
married. That year, he gathered all family members across the world and said
that his purpose of life was over; he would like a collective family photograph
and like to quit the world. Nothing happened for a year. On 20th July next
year, he again acted in a similar manner. The whole family from across the
world gathered but he remained alive for another year. This went on for three
years. Suddenly, we played a spiritual trick on him and told everyone to
convince him that he is going to live for 100 years as he has many more work of
the family to be done. Every year, we used to give him law students from within
the family to be taught (he was a lawyer himself), or give him the
responsibility of finding a boy for some eligible girl in the family. We made
him teach and search for a prospective bride or groom for years together and he
actually died at the age of 100 years.
This is the beauty of a positive attitude in
life.
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