My first hospice care Cancer patient

In my young days in my 20s, I met with my old friend Tracy over a cup of coffee and enquired about her recent charity work.  

" So which charity are you involved in now ? "

" The hospice care for the terminal illness, i have been
visiting these patients in the ward before they pass away. "
my friend Tracy told me.  

" Now i am doing the visit rounds with a Cancer patient. She is a mother of two and had contracted Breast Cancer four years ago. She struggled a long time with the Cancer but
is doing a losing battle now. Sigh~~~her two kids are
still so young. If she had done the Breast operation four
years ago, she might not have the cancer cells returning  
to kill her. Her other roommate agreed to the breast removal
operation and is clear of Cancer till now. Four years ago,
there is no Chemo therapy yet.  
If she has not been vain about keeping her breast, she may not have the cells spreading throughout her whole body now. "

" Does she has any faith ? "

" Not before, but now she has taken refuge in a Buddhist nun to prepare herself for her death journey. She is very sad
though about having to leave her two kids behind  "

" Can i visit her too ? I will like to pray for her ? Maybe
if she is agreeable, i can write to my master to see  
whether she has a chance to live ? "  
I felt deeply for this brave mother though i had never
met her.

" Sure, come along and talk to her, this lady patient
is very scared about her death and she worried about
her two children so. "

A week later, we visited the patient in her ward in the hospital. The lady patient looked so gentle and radiant
on her bed. She didn't look like a person who had been
so ill for the past few years.

I introduced myself and started chatting with her.

" You look very fine " I told her  

" Thank you, " she smiled gently, ' But i feel bad for my husband, i always throw my temper at him. Especially
after a painful chemo session.  But he is forever very patient with me and take all my tantrums calmly. Now my hair
has come back and he will comb my hair for me " she
smiled sweetly.

Then she started to tell me how she fought hard with her
Breast Cancer, going to even Mainland China to search
for famous acupuncturist , herbalist to concoct all the
traditional medicine to stop her Cancer from spreading.
It prolonged her life for a few more years before the
cells spread from her breast to her lung, to her ovary
and to her legs.

" Sometimes the pains kill me so, " she said with tears
in her eyes. " But when i think of my two young kids,
i am not prepared to go......"  

"I only regretted that when i was heathy , i didn't bring
my children out more often to places. I always tell them
not to do this , not to do that, now i only wish i have
the energy to bring them out to the playground, to the
park, to travel to more places. "

I sat there listening to her every word, looking at this young
mother who poured out her woes to a total stranger.
I could sense her regret and her unwillingness to leave  
this world and to leave her beloved family. Yet she had
no choice. She knew her time was coming and she had
to leave any minute now.

" Are you prepared mentally for your death journey ? "
I asked her. " You must accept that you have to walk
on yourself when the times come, nobody can help you.
Only yourselves. Please remember to chant Amitabha
Buddha or Guan Yin Pusa continuously when you felt
lonesome . Do not give up hope that they will come for
you. "

The lady patient looked at me. I sensed her question and
asked her blankpointedly, " I knew what you are thinking,
you are thinking that i am not you, how will i know
your worries, your fear and walked the death for you. "

Her eyes opened in wide surprise. She didn't expect me
to guess her feelings.

" Frankly speaking, i can't feel your fear. I can't
replace you. I can only tell you what you should do when it is the time for you to leave this world. Nobody can walk the death journey with another person. We are born alone and we will also die alone. It is only important where you should go after you died. "

Now it was her turn to listen to me attentively, hanging to  
every word that could help her in her deathbed.

" Please keep Amitabha Buddha in mind. Follow the bright lights that come to guide you. You have to let go of your family. They can't possibly go with you now. When
you are afraid, keep chanting the names of Amitabha
and Guan Yin. Have faith in them and you would not be afraid anymore. "

I visited the lady patient a few more rounds after that.
Usually, i would chant our Root Guru's mantra in her
ward while she laid in her bed listening to me.
I would then dedicated the merits to her.
After that i would listen while she shared with me her lifestory, her love for her family and her fear of dying.

I also went to visit her house to see her two children
and wrote a letter to Seattle Lei Zang Si asking our
Root Guru to save her if possible. I send out the letter
as Very Urgent. A week later, we received two talisman
but no good news about her illness. The husband followed
the instruction to burn the talisman for her wife to drink.
These helped to lessen her last days of pain so that she
would not suffer that much in her deathbed.

One week before my marriage, i told the couple that i was
getting married next week. They smiled happily at me,
the husband standing besides his beloved fragile wife.

" Don't visit me during your Auspcious Days. " the lady
patient told me. " It is no good for you. "
(the Chinese believed that we should avoid any funerals and the hospital to ward off bad luck , especially before
such an auspicious event. )

" I would definitely visit you after my honeymoon, " i told her. Privately,  I told her husband that i would help out in her funeral by chanting.

After my honeymoon 2 weeks later , my friend Tracy came to inform me.

" We didn't want to tell you. She passed away last week,
the week that you were busy with your marriage preparation.
Her husband handled her funeral alone. He didn't want
to disturb you. The poor father, he was extremely busy with
being a fruit seller and having to take care of two young
kids by himself now "

" How did she go ? "

" She slipped into a coma and was struggling with her
hands in the air for a few nights before she finally left.  
She was really reluctant to leave this world.  

" Sigh ~~~~ i hope she had followed my advice and
she is in a good place now. "

I registered the lady in a Spirits Deliverance ceremony.
The strength of this young mother who fought a hard
war with Cancer would always remain in my memory.

The lady's biggest regret of her life , not enjoying and doing stuff that will enrich herself while she was still healthy and was able to.

This is a step that i hope i would not ever repeat in my own short life span.

Swallow,

Thank you for sharing your story.  Now I pray too that I have the strength and wisdom from this point in my life forward to practice and contemplate on the teachings of Buddha Shakyamuni, G.M. Lu, and other great spiritual beings.

You have a very lovely heart -- I'm with you in thought and spirit.

Om Mani Padme Hum

John

Swallow,

When I was a little boy, my parents owned and ran a "Chinese-Vietnamese" restaurant.  Because of my parents work ethics, all of my sibblings would contribute working there.

Back then, fortune cookies wasn't freely distributed like now days -- however, I do recalled reading a fortune inside a cookie that now I truly comprehend its meaning.

  "To save a life is better than building 7 pagodas"

No matter how innocent I was when I was a young boy, I did understood the meaning of it "literally".  Now that, I am older, the meaning is beyond words, and its message penetrate the core of my being.

-- Looking back, because all of us kids in my family had to worked hard, it actually is a blessing in disguised.  Because of it, most of my sibblings are now savings hundreds of lives on a daily basis.

-- My tears doesn't come from the outside, but are tears of "thankfulness" coming from within.  Sheding tears yet not sheading tears.

-- I now know that the six of us kids sacrificed so much in the early life to save others now.  Coming until realization, I now pray every evening that the sibblings continue to have good health and their hands be protected from injury so that they can save human beings in this physical world.

       -- I PRAISE TO THE MEDICINE BUDDA --

           My dear Medicine Buddha, please shine
           your radiant presence on this Dharma
           assembly, dedicate to our True Buddha
           School Grand Master Lu, to all disciples,
           and to all beings in this samsara world;
           which resembles the moon's reflection
           in water.  You who come to rescue of
           the suffering and remove all suffering.

"Deh-yah-tah, om, beh-kah-dze-yah, beh-kah-dze-yah, maha beh-kah-dze-yah, la dza sah mo kyah-doh-ah, so-ha."

May everyone have a wonderful week!   :)

John

When I was a little boy, my parents owned and ran a "Chinese-Vietnamese" restaurant.  Because of my parents work ethics, all of my sibblings would contribute working there.

John [/quote]


 

Dear John,

You reminded me of a Vietnamese couple who fleed their
country during the war-time with the help of Guan Yin.

They were devoted buddhists and prayed to Guan Yin
everyday. When the war started in Vietnam, they
dreamt of Guan-Yin telling them to leave immediately
tomorrow night , giving them the direction to the
pier where they could board a boat from there.

On the dark night that the couple and their children packed up their stuff to leave, they were terrified of being chased after by the soldiers and ran frantically along the tiny path towards the sea.

Then they saw in front of them, Guan Yin appearing in
a bright light illuminating the right path for them to go.

They board the boat without any mishap and arrived in
America successfully. Years later, they related their
true story when they visited a TBS temple.

you don't happen to be the couple's children, do you ?
Just wondering.   ::)

****
I wish i could have known that dying mother earlier
to teach her how to chant the Medicine Buddha mantra.

" Why me ? " that was the question she would put to
any visitor and to me also. When she said this to me,
there was a look of anger on her face.

" I haven't done anything wrong in my life. I only take
care of my family and my kids, why should i be
suffering in such a way ? "

I looked at her quietly, wondering how many times had
she asked herself this question and asked everybody
for the answer to her pains.

At that moment, i only wish i could play " God " for just
a while and told her that everything would be fine tomorrow and she could continue living like a normal human beings.

Happy ending. But i knew and she knew that it was impossible. I was looking at Death in my face and i could
not stop it from happening.

I wish i had known her years earlier, then maybe i could
help her to cure her Cancer by teaching her the methods
of chanting, repenting and cultivating to clear her karma.

But now looking at her, what could i tell her except that
she had to accept her death ? That what she was suffering
from now was due to what she had done in her past lifes ?
How could i rub salt into her wounds ? Would these words
help to soothe her worry and anger ?

Finally, a thought came into my mind and i said to her,
" If you ask Why, nobody can answer you that ".

When she heard that, her anger started to fade away but slowly it was replaced by a look of sorrow.

" My little boy and girl are such obedient children, they always want me to bring them out to play but i was afraid
that they would fell and injured themselves. So i hardly
bring them out. Now i regretted so, i should have brought
them out more often last time. "

She closed her eyes and her sadness overwhelmed her and
made her very tired again. I sat quietly besides her and
chanted one round of my rosary before i left her ward
quietly.

When i walked out of the hospital under the Sun, i
wondered to myself, " Why do people ponder on
the meanings of living only upon dying ? "

<<This reminds me of something  
the Buddha said:
"Let us rise up and be thankful, for  
if we didn't learn a lot today, at
least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn  
a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we  
got sick, at least we didn't die; so,  
let us all be thankful."

Buddha >>

Buddhafly,

You shared a very meaningful quote -- from the Buddha.  Thank you kindly.  With a compassionate group of exemplar dharma brothers and sisters herein, I personally feel that if we all were to be stuck together in an environment like a TBS environment, I have no doubt all of us will become enlightened in this lifetime.  

I have never encounter a group of scholars such as this site before... so knowledgable, so humble, yet very compassionate.  We may have our differences but I feel that we have risen beyond right-wrong, good-bad, hate-ignorant of attachments... etc.   ;)  slowly but surely I hope we will reach the other shore and never forsake one another.

Ironically, my yin & yang is messed up tonight, still awake in the late or early hour.  Usually, I handle myself quite well in the world of the mundane.  But today, I encountered one right after another "base" people in the world -- and one after another, I stooped lower than them all on purpose for whatever reasons or my consciousness said so, and never once fought back.  The ordinary people in the world that I encountered today are so low and ignorant that is beyond words.  I have a strong feeling that the Buddhas/Bodhisattvas is testing me.  

...Literally, they spit at my face, and I said to them thank you.  ( I don't know -- hee hee hee; even Manjusri Bodhisattva had to transformed himself into Yamantaka to deal with the evil force; I'm re-thinking my strategy whether the time need be to transform myself into one of them to fight them [ using poisons to fight poisons ].  This is must rethink and perhaps need to do more research from G.M. Lu's teaching.  Any brotherly or sisterly advice is greatly appreciated.

Oh man, my dear dharma brothers and sisters, life is unbearably tough.  

Peace to my dharma family,

Om Guru Lian-sheng Siddhi Hum

John

<<you don't happen to be the couple's children, do you ?
Just wondering.  

Swallow>>

Dear Swallow,

Fortunately for our family, no -- my family didn't have to experienced any of that.  We were blessed because my father used to worked for NBC Broadcasting for over 20 years before the fall of Vietnam.

My family left Vietnam 2 years before the fall of Saigon (formerly capital of the South Vietnam).

My dad was a very artistic man, so he decided to applied his skills in the art of cooking.  It was simple as that.

About the refugees who fled from Vietnam way back then, many died at sea.  Many others young girls and young women were kidnapped by the sea pirates; all got raped, some became slaves for the pirates, many missing or killed.  It is a very sad event for many families.  The heartaches of the parents, the husbands who were left behind, and the heartache of those little young childrens without a mother.

Life is suffering... as you stated in one of your post.  Joy and bliss occurrence is much less than all afflictions.  If only I have the chance to, I would without doubt trade my place with those young girls and women lost at sea.

And then I would come back in my next life and handle those pirates creatively -- a special Buddha way.

John  ;)

Dear John

  i guess your six siblings are all in the medical field ? Including you,  you  are a doctor too ?



My dad was a very artistic man, so he decided to applied his skills in the art of cooking.  It was simple as that.


 John,  I did marvel at the number of Vietnamese Restaurant in USA that we came across when i was travelling along the West Coast of America with my husband.
We could always find one or two along the way.
In someplaces, we could only find find Vietnamese Restaurant to fill our cravings for noodles and soup.
Wheras the Cantonese Restaurants can only be found
in the Chinatown area.

It just showed how well the Vietnamese had survived in USA
and how fast they have prospered in a new land.

I take my cap off to the USA Government who lived up to the Motto of their beloved President Abraham Lincoln
of opening up their Mother Land for all to stay, irregardless
of race and religions.

Not many countries can stand the influx of great numbers
of refugees into their motherland and encouraged them
to live there as one of them. Including Singapore.
I remembered our government could only accept a
certain number and had to turn away the rest that
came to our shore. It was sad to see the news at
that time. :(

So i think the magnanimity of USA government is why they
are being called the " Big Brother " of the world.

Right now, in Singapore, Vietnamese Food is the trendy food.
Besides the renowed clear Beef Noodle, we can have a first hand try of the famous prawn wrapped around sugarcane sticks , strong Vietnamese Coffee that come with a dripper on top of the cup and a few sweet desserts etc....




About the refugees who fled from Vietnam way back then, many died at sea.  Many others young girls and young women were kidnapped by the sea pirates; all got raped, some became slaves for the pirates, many missing or killed.  


 

oh my, that is so sad to know.  :(

Vietnamese girls are very sweet and slender , especially when they wore their traditional costume, it brought out
their slenderness and beauty totally.

I am very sad to know this.  :(   Why did women have to
always suffer in this way during wartime ?

I had ever visited a Vietnamese Refugee Camp in Singapore.
I followed a Theravanda Monk and his followers to pray for their ancesters in the camp. When i reached there, i saw
the refugees waiting for us. Most of the guys were quite small build but they had this alertness around them and they
seemed to be very agile with their limbs. They looked bored
but also aimless at the same time. The ladies were very shy
and tend to hide from us.

After chanting in front of the simple ancestral altar, we went to the table whereby the refugees had prepared a small
feast for us. The spread was not much but the vermicilli noodles looked so delicious. They had put in a lot of efforts
to cook for the visitors. Seeing that there were over 100 of
the refugees in the camp, we merely took a little to show
our thanks to their hospitality.

The refugees were very patient waiting for us to finish their
prepared meal. When they were sure we had our fill,
only then did they finish the rest themselves.

I was very touched by their genuine hospitality to us.
Althought they didn't have much to offer, they showed
our small prayer group their warmth and thanks by
inviting us to eat to our heart's content.

From the visit, i realised how traditional the Vietnamese people are. Even during festive season , it was during
the Chinese New Year that our small chanting group
was invited to the camp , they thought of their ancestors
and deceased family first .

The Chinese New Year is the day for the refugees to remember their deceased families who didn't make it
to shore like them.



And then I would come back in my next life and handle those pirates creatively -- a special Buddha way.




     

John, that is interesting  ;D   I am curious, how would you do it in a special Buddha way ?  


Ah, John, i see that Yamantaka is here.  ;)
I should be well protected then   ;D

I was taking care of a few students from Vietnam last year.
One of them told me that the Manjursi Bodhisattva is also
well known in Vietnam but under another name there.
He read the name to me but i could not remember it .
I think it was in the Vietnamese language.

<<Ah, John, i see that Yamantaka is here.  
I should be well protected then>>

Swallow,

Regarding Yamantaka -- I sensed his energy present once, very swift and very powerful.  I was stunned for days -- and realized weeks after that he is all love.  The love of sentinent beings seeking the path of righteousness.

** I salute to Yamantaka **


<<I was taking care of a few students from Vietnam last year.  One of them told me that the Manjursi Bodhisattva is also well known in Vietnam but under another name there.>>


I was even more shocked at first when I found out through reading that Manjusri Bodhisattva is one of Yamantaka.  I was totally thrilled.   :D  I said to myself, wow, that is so cool.

The other major reason why I respect Manjusri Bodhisattva is the fact that even through all worldly and scienticfic knowledge, it too need to be discarded.  Actually I was sad at first to hear that, but then after days of reflection on it, I find it to be a very profound idea.  

Now, I think I read somewhere that he resides with The Medicine Buddha Land -- or working closing with Medicine Buddha.

John



John