I called the doctor, who surprised me by taking my condition seriously and telling me to stop doing vigorous exercise till we sort this out. I had been training for a half marathon. After hearing this advice, I skipped the race.
I have been an athlete my whole life. As a child, I would sprint barefoot through the grass just for the joy. (I can still feel the soft, wet blades of grass between my toes!) In middle school, I played soccer for a team that won the State championships. As a high school student, I lettered in swimming and track. In college, I won national championships in rowing, then trained for the national team and won elite nationals and the Canadian Henley. A few years later, I ran the Boston Marathon in under 3 hours. Training has been a great joy and has generated pride in my healthy body.
Perhaps you have heard the Buddhist teaching of "anatman" -- no self. This was Buddha's response to the Hindu teaching of Atman, or true self, which some Hindu practitioners sought through meditation. According to Buddha, there is no separate, fixed, unchanging self. This does not mean there are no senses of self, but that they are changing, ephemeral, without fixed substance, and made of non-self elements. My sense of self as a competitive athlete depended on my being able to train hard and race. There was never anything permanent or intrinsic about it.
When I realized I had to give up competing (at least for now), I watched the athlete in me cry out, "Don't abandon me!" A part of me was reluctant to accept my present condition and wanted to protect this sense of myself.
In Boundless Way Zen, we chant "The Five Remembrances" every time we gather together. The first four are that I am: of the nature to grow old, get sick, die, and lose everyone and everything I love. The last is that my deeds are my companions, and I am their beneficiary. These remembrances are found in a sermon of the Buddha called the Upajjhatthana Sutta, an early Pali text.
The first three remembrances, that we are all of the nature to grow old, to get sick, and to die, were what Buddha learned when he left his sheltered palace life for the first time. Buddha was motivated by recognition of these facts to overcome the accompanying suffering, so he left his palace to practice.
For Buddha, to overcome suffering did not ultimately mean what we might imagine. It did not mean that these truths no longer affect us. It means that we can turn toward these truths and accept them. So Buddha taught that we should remind ourselves every day of impermanence as a skillful means to allow us to accept our changing nature. Otherwise, we are prone to move into protectiveness and denial, which cause far greater suffering. After all, that which we run from controls us.
Acceptance
To "overcome" suffering is not to defeat circumstances but to acknowledge them. There is something about acceptance that transforms the heart. Shundo Aoyama writes that "True happiness means no matter what happens, it’s all right. If you become ill, just be ill. When it’s time to die, just die.... To face any situation and accept it with open arms molds the attitude enabling you to see that a wonderful way of living is possible. This is indeed something of consequence. As soon as this attitude is achieved, you have reached paradise, anytime, anywhere, and in any circumstances. Once this idea is accepted, spring must be everywhere" (adapted from Zen Seeds).
For me, this attitude of acceptance is not a change in how I think. In fact, my initial reaction to the news that I should stop training was not pure acceptance. It was the opposite! But I could bear witness even to my resistance and accept it as just thoughts and feelings, as just a sense of self crying out. It was like a light show, or like a dog barking in the neighbor's yard.
Time will tell, but I may not be able to compete anymore. And I am getting older anyway. I was already starting to slow down. But acceptance makes a new way of living possible.
When we bear witness to the "full catastrophe," when we open our hearts to things as they are (including our reactions), the world offers itself to us as a sacred presence. Like Zorba the Greek, we can dance on the beach with tears on our cheeks.
For the last week, rather than training as an athlete, I have taken gentle walks in the woods as the spring arrives. My deeds are my companions. I have appreciated slowing down. There are big, red buds on the trees that are just opening, and shoots topped by violet flowers sprout from the mud. Rather than running past them, I pause. I hear the birds chattering away with one another. Fields are greening, and water rushes past me down the hillside after the rain.
*Further testing has revealed that I am heart-healthy, but the lesson remains.
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