Prayer for a Person With Cancer

Beloved child of the One,

Let us quiet the mind that rushes to judgment, the mind that labels this moment 'sickness' and that moment 'health.' 

The Great Way does not choose. 

Release the longing for a past that is gone or a future that is not yet, and let go of the aversion to what is now. 

In this space of non-preference, the eternal peace of your true nature is revealed.

Do not seek treasures on earth, in the form of a body free from this condition, for all forms are ever-changing. 

Instead, turn your gaze inward to the kingdom of heaven that is already within you. 

This is the treasure no worldly condition can touch. 

Let your heart rest there, in the deep silence and stillness of your own being.

See that this body and this illness are not separate from the whole of life. 

They arise from the One, like waves upon the ocean. 

Do not cling to the wave of 'self' while pushing away the wave of 'sickness,' for both are expressions of the same water. 

Rest in the oneness of all things, and the mind's confusion will cease.

Let this prayer not be a string of words seeking to change what is, but a silent returning to the root. 

The Way is beyond language. 

Simply be still. 

In this eternal instant, you are whole, complete, and lacking nothing.

Rest in this truth. 

Be this peace. 

Reflection - The Sickness Under the Sickness

Friends, beloved children of the One,

We have before us a prayer. It is a "Prayer for a Person With Cancer."

Let's be still with that for a moment. Cancer.

The word itself stops the heart. The mind instantly, reflexively, leaps into action. It floods with fear, with memory, with "what ifs" and "shoulds." The mind identifies an enemy. It draws a battle line. It says, "This is bad. This must be fought. This must be defeated." This is the human response. It is the conditioned response. We see two circles: one is "me," and the other is "this terrible thing." And we want, more than anything, to destroy the second circle so the first can be safe.

And then, we read this prayer. And it is shocking.

It doesn't ask for a cure. It doesn't ask for a miracle. It doesn't ask for the sickness to be taken away. It seems to deny us the very thing we crave most: a preference for health.

It begins: "Let us quiet the mind that rushes to judgment, the mind that labels this moment 'sickness' and that moment 'health.' The Great Way does not choose."

This is a difficult saying. Who can hear it?

It is the very essence of my teaching, the teaching of the Zennist. It is the merging of the Sermon on the Mount and the Hsin Hsin Ming. "The Great Way is not difficult," the Zen patriarch Seng-ts'an said, "for those who have no preferences." He called it "the disease of the mind."

And that, beloveds, is the true sickness this prayer is addressing. It is not the cancer. The cancer is simply what it is. The sickness—the one that causes all our torment, all our anguish, all our terror—is the mind of preference. The mind that clings and pushes away. The mind that says, "I will only accept this," and "I cannot bear that."

We are all suffering from this disease every moment of the day.

You check your phone. You hope for a "good" message; you fear a "bad" one. That is preference. You look at the weather. You are happy it is sunny; you are angry it is raining. That is preference. You read the news. You are elated when "your side" wins; you are filled with rage when "their side" does. That is preference.

We live our entire lives teetering on this razor's edge of like and dislike, grasping and repelling. And it is exhausting. We are like children in the great banquet of life, pounding our fists on the table, demanding a different menu. (A little smile here). We are never at peace because we are constantly at war with what is.

And then, a profound diagnosis like cancer arrives. It is the ultimate "what is." It is the ultimate, non-negotiable reality. And this prayer, in its radical wisdom, says: "Release the longing for a past that is gone or a future that is not yet, and let go of the aversion to what is now."

It points us away from the fragile treasures of earth. "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy..." I said those words on the Mount, and what is the body if not the ultimate treasure on earth? It is the one thing moth and rust will destroy. It is the one thing thieves—in this case, time and biology—will break in and steal.

If your entire treasure, your entire identity, your entire hope for peace is invested in the body, then you are building your house on sand. The rain will come. The floods will descend. And great will be its fall.

So where is the rock?

The prayer tells us. I tell you. "Turn your gaze inward to the kingdom of heaven that is already within you. This is the treasure no worldly condition can touch."

This is the Inner Kingdom. This is the rock.

This is not a new idea. The wisest seers of the world have pointed to this one, unshakable truth. In the deep forests of India, the rishis of the Upanishads sat in meditation, and they discovered the Atman—the inner Self, the divine spark, the kingdom within. They realized that this Atman was not separate from Brahman—the One, the source of all things, the water of the ocean. They declared, 'Tat Tvam Asi'—"You Are That." You are not the body. You are not the mind. You are not the cancer. Those are Maya, the world of appearance, the ever-changing forms. You are the eternal, untouchable, formless One looking out through those eyes. This is the treasure. Sickness can come to the body, but it cannot touch the Atman.

This is a profound realization. And the Buddha, sitting under his tree, saw it from another angle. He saw that all our suffering—our Dukkha—arises from one simple root: Tanha, or craving. It is the craving for things to be different from what they are. The prayer's instruction—"Do not cling to the wave of 'self' while pushing away the wave of 'sickness,' for both are expressions of the same water"—is the very essence of Buddhist practice. It is the cessation of Tanha. It is the end of suffering.

The Hindu sage says, "Realize you are the divine, untouched by the illusion." The Buddha says, "Let go of the craving that creates the suffering." And I, as the Zennist, stand here and say: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Not "theirs will be." Is. Right now.

Who are the poor in spirit? They are the ones who have stopped preferring. They have let go. They are empty of "like" and "dislike." And in that emptiness, the Kingdom is revealed. It was never absent. You were just too busy with your preferences to notice it.

The prayer says: "Rest in the oneness of all things, and the mind's confusion will cease."

This is not a passive, fatalistic giving up. This is Wisdom in Action. You still go to the doctor. You still receive the treatment. You still "do the things" that arise to be done. But you do them from a new foundation. You do them from the rock. You do them not in a state of white-knuckled terror, clinging to the "self" wave, but in a state of profound, open peace. You do them as the water, simply experiencing the wave of "treatment" as it passes. This is building your house on the rock. The winds of the diagnosis may blow, the floods of fear may rise, but the house does not fall, for it is founded on the Inner Kingdom.

Now, look at our world. Look at the news from this past week. See the screaming headlines. See the wars and the rumours of wars. See the absolute, intractable certainty on all sides. "We are right." "They are evil." "We are good." "They are monsters."

This is the "Prayer for a Person With Cancer" on a global scale. Our world has cancer. It is the cancer of preference. The cancer of "us" versus "them." We are desperately clinging to the wave of "our side," our nation, our tribe, our ideology, and we are violently pushing away the wave of "their side."

And I say to you, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy,' but I say to you, love your enemies."

Why? Not because it is a "nice" moral platitude. It is a statement of fact. It is a description of reality. Your enemy is not separate from you. They are another expression of the same water. To hate them, to push them away, is to be at war with reality. It is to suffer the disease of the mind.

The only path to peace is to first "remove the plank from your own eye." The plank is your preference. The plank is your judgment. The plank is your addiction to "right and wrong." Once you remove that, then you will see clearly. You will see the Oneness from which all dualities arise.

This is the merging of the two circles. "Self" and "sickness." "Me" and "my enemy." "Health" and "illness." They are not two. They are One.

This prayer, this teaching, is not a string of words. "Words! Words! The Way is beyond language." My words, the Buddha's words, the sage's words—they are just fingers pointing to the moon. Do not mistake the finger for the moon.

The prayer, and my deepest teaching, ends where it must: in silence. Beyond words. In the direct experience of what is.

"Simply be still. In this eternal instant, you are whole, complete, and lacking nothing."

You are not the person with cancer. You are not a healthy person. You are not the person who is "right." You are not the person who is "wrong."

You are the stillness underneath it all. The rock. The water. The Kingdom.

Rest in this truth. Be this peace.