The Once & Future Buddha
I ’M LIVING WITH CANCER. All cancers are dangerous; glioblastoma, the grade four, terminal cancer inside of my brain, is monstrous.
“Why me?” is a stupid question, or more gently, an unproductive one. There are known contributing factors for some forms of cancer, but even then, a causal relationship can’t be definitively proven. And anyway, it seems like blaming the patient for their illness. We get sick and we die because of impermanence. There is no arguing with that foundational Buddhist teaching. I’ve largely (but not completely) avoided the “why,” but figuring out how to live with the “when” is very hard.
“When?” is a question most people avoid. Or answer by assuring themselves and others that their time is a long way off. As though not knowing the time of death guarantees that it is nowhere near to now. This question comes into sharper focus when the conditions leading to death are known, felt, and directly shaping one’s daily patterns of living.
The way we live in time is a condition for living well. I often
