Is it OK to seek help for a health condition?
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Hello everyone. This is my first time posting something. I been lurking and just reading for a few months.
I want to ask if it is OK to ask Buddha for help to cure a health condition that is incurable by medicine? It's not a terminal disease, just a rare one. Maybe no one wants to do reasearch because even if they can find a medicine for it, too few people will buy it.
I find I am unable to let go and just accept my illness and it fills my days and nights with worry.
I just wonder if asking for healing is a legitimate request. I know asking for undue riches and worldly stuff are not encouraged, but what about if one is sick and wishes to get well?
If such request is legitimate, what's a good way to ask for help? Are there also things I can do to improve my karma, assuming it is karma that causes my sickness?
Of course, I won't give up studying about things like the eightfold path and learning how to let go. It's just that I am still young and it's tiring to be sick like now.
Hope people here can give me some good advice.
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I not sure about other linege of buddism, but I try to explain with my limited knowledge via the linege in Tibetan Buddhism.
1) Can you tell me what you are suffering?
2) Yes, you can. You can seek consultation with some high monks andthey will do a divination on your sickness, after which they will normally give you some advices, like certain practices to do or certain puja to perform to ease your problem
you can always try..
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Originally posted by saggigirl:
Hello everyone. This is my first time posting something. I been lurking and just reading for a few months.
I want to ask if it is OK to ask Buddha for help to cure a health condition that is incurable by medicine? It's not a terminal disease, just a rare one. Maybe no one wants to do reasearch because even if they can find a medicine for it, too few people will buy it.
I find I am unable to let go and just accept my illness and it fills my days and nights with worry.
I just wonder if asking for healing is a legitimate request. I know asking for undue riches and worldly stuff are not encouraged, but what about if one is sick and wishes to get well?
If such request is legitimate, what's a good way to ask for help? Are there also things I can do to improve my karma, assuming it is karma that causes my sickness?
Of course, I won't give up studying about things like the eightfold path and learning how to let go. It's just that I am still young and it's tiring to be sick like now.
Hope people here can give me some good advice.
yes, you can pray to Buddha for help. Recite Medicine Buddha name or mantra
the mantra is : TAD-YA-THA OM BHE-KHAN-DZE BHE-KHAN-DZE MA-HA BHE-KHAN-DZE RAD-ZA SA-MUD-GA-TAY SO-HA
Mp3 is available on youtube here...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPisQRz_r8Q
It is perfectly ok to ask for help as Bodhisattvas exist for the sake of helping to relieve sentient beings' sufferings whether on the temporary level or bringing them to liberation ultimately.
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i will write this here since you are not the only one with such kind of suffering on this forum i think.
Although it is hard to accept great suffering/illness. But due to past karmas that we have committed, we have brought sufferings to others. It is therefore something that we are paying back for now. No matter how difficult. Just like a credit card debt has to be paid back sooner or later no matter how hard it is to pay back.
If we take responsibility in our heart for the illness based on our understanding of karma, and feel that this is deserving due to our past misdeeds, just like some criminals who feel great sorrow for taking someone's life and turn themselves in, wishing even to be executed for it. If you can have this kind of repentance heart thoroughly, without even the hope for recovery through this method, as you are determined to pay your dues. Then this is one very good method for exhausting the karma much faster. And it brings so much peace to your heart in a way.
Illnesses can exhaust other karmas that would bring us down to the lower realms in future. It can also bring to us other benefits like turning our mind towards dharma and liberation, seeing the suffering in samsara.
There is nothing that is fundamentally good or bad. You have to understand this. Even if the illness may bring death, but isn't it the case that all of us have to face it. And it is just a matter of time. The spiritual understanding that your illness can bring you is much more important.
Some people think that to heal is to overcome the illness. But it can be more fundamental than that. Healing is to exhaust delusions, to come to terms with impermanence and to let go whatever that is a root cause of the illness in the first place. The success of the healing is not measured by the outcome of the illness. if the illness can burn away other karmic dispositions that transform our minds in a more fundamental way, i think the illness itself is a healing.
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Thanks "newbie" and Dharmadatu.
Is there any sort of mental or emotional attitude one must have while chanting mantras in hopes of healing illnesses?
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hello, first, you must not have fear of the illness. most people die because of fear, not because of the illness.
someone posted this in the forum:-
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i remember got another method using karma reflection, by Ven Hai Tao. help those people who have similar conditions. u can help by volunteer work or money donation. volunteer work is more effective though. you help them recover, in return karma, u yourself will recover. hence i still donate to NKF, and poor/hungry people, dharma propagation etc.
anyway i found http://www.us.tzuchi.org/us/en/index.php
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Originally posted by sinweiy:
hello, first, you must not have fear of the illness. most people die because of fear, not because of the illness.
someone posted this in the forum:-
i have heard of a group of cancer patient reciting Earth Store Sutra and cure their illness. i also recently heard a story about 2 couple in china, who was diagnose of cancer, but they did not continue with the cancer therapy(esp radiation therapy), but went back to eat black color food(like mu er(black mushroom, fa cai, seaweed etc) . sort of rather cure themselves. i thought one factor is that they get rid of fear and calm their mind.in buddhism or even TCM, we said, the conditions of illness is mostly the attitude/condition of the mind. try to be calm, get rid of greed, hatred, lazyness, pride and doubt. all these are the poisons of the mind. just go with nature, drink water, and get some sunlight. no need to over take so many medicines. body will heal itself. be strong with your WILL power!/\sinweiy, your pdf link above doesn't seem to work.
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Originally posted by saggigirl:
sinweiy, your pdf link above doesn't seem to work.
yea, think they are rebuilding. it's suppose to be "Interview with Andreas Moritz, 12 April 2010"lucky i got a copy.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/26b9n4
also see,
http://www.ener-chi.com/resources/free-health-information/cancer-is-not-a-disease/
/\
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Originally posted by saggigirl:
Thanks "newbie" and Dharmadatu.
Is there any sort of mental or emotional attitude one must have while chanting mantras in hopes of healing illnesses?
The attitude is to consider all sentient beings' sufferings too. The more you expand your heart, the more effective the practice.
My own way, this is up to your own adaptation:
If you have read the teachings of non-self, anatta (you can refer to some of AEN's posts) then you can also occasionally reflect on these teachings while chanting. It is also through non-self and dependent origination view that we can feel that we are truly connected to all other beings.
You can read this :
http://www.originalpurity.org/gurulin/efiles/e0/e0091.html
Other references:
http://www.originalpurity.org/gurulin/efiles/e0/e0010.html
http://www.originalpurity.org/gurulin/efiles/mb/mbk18.html
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Originally posted by sinweiy:
yea, think they are rebuilding. it's suppose to be "Interview with Andreas Moritz, 12 April 2010"lucky i got a copy.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/26b9n4
also see,
http://www.ener-chi.com/resources/free-health-information/cancer-is-not-a-disease/
/\
I was thinking of laying off this forum, since I don't think I'll be getting any better answers than I've seen so far. But the pseudoscience/psychobabble represented in that paper/book is misleading at best and, at worst, downright dangerous.
Here are a couple of responses on Andreas Moritz from bloggers with backgrounds in biology. The first, PZ Myers, is an associate professor at a university in Minnesota.
PZ Myers:
Note that (Moritz) has absolutely no credentials or expertise in medicine; he calls himself a "medical intuitive". Yet he is dispensing dangerous, defeatist advice on how to manage cancer, such as recommending against chemotherapy. Have you had a loved one die of cancer? It was their fault. Do you have or have you had cancer? It's your own damn fault for being so negative.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/andreas_moritz_is_a_cancer_qua.php
Michael Hawkins:
Does Moritz realize that 30% of all cancer deaths are due to smoking (or inhaling second hand smoke)? He must think smokers are negative nancies, too. It’s a good thing they’re getting cancer. Otherwise, they’d never find out what was spiritually wrong. I mean, why do we feel so off-put by the idea of cancer? It’s clearly just a method of discovering our innerselves.
http://withoutapologyinmaine.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/andreas-moritz-is-a-stupid-dangerous-man/
I'm disappointed that you are propagating these ideas without closer examination. Among other things, Moritz peddles the idea that vaccines cause cancer. It's one thing to proffer spiritual advice that kind put one's mind at ease. But his is the kind of nonsense that leads to people dying.
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Originally posted by reasonable.atheist:
I was thinking of laying off this forum, since I don't think I'll be getting any better answers than I've seen so far. But the pseudoscience/psychobabble represented in that paper/book is misleading at best and, at worst, downright dangerous.
Here are a couple of responses on Andreas Moritz from bloggers with backgrounds in biology. The first, PZ Myers, is an associate professor at a university in Minnesota.
PZ Myers:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/andreas_moritz_is_a_cancer_qua.php
Michael Hawkins:
http://withoutapologyinmaine.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/andreas-moritz-is-a-stupid-dangerous-man/
I'm disappointed that you are propagating these ideas without closer examination. Among other things, Moritz peddles the idea that vaccines cause cancer. It's one thing to proffer spiritual advice that kind put one's mind at ease. But his is the kind of nonsense that leads to people dying.
i say out of personal experience with a late 20+ yr old friend. i'm more against chemo, that kill both good and bad cells, i rather they use the new Cyberknife technology, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberknife
the whole idea, just mean don't keep demoralise oneself, like saying to oneself that "i'm dying", when one is doing the treatment, simper as that.
nay it's not nonsense, sort of base it on its similar approach as TCM, 2000++ years history. it does has it's alternative stand in western med. like England Queen also like to use it. and i'm not trying to reject western med altogether, but it's good to harmonize them,
http://www.cewm.med.ucla.edu/sources/WHO_paper.pdf
Harmonizing Traditional Chinese and Modern Western Medicine: A Perspective
from the US
Ka Kit Hui, M.D., F.A.C.P.
Professor, Department of Medicine, UCLA School of Medicine; Director, UCLA Center for
East-West Medicine
The current interest in traditional and complementary medicine in the United States is attracting attention in many parts of the community - the health care industry, governmental agencies, media and the public.
An increasing number of insurers and managed care organizations are providing benefits for traditional medicine, a majority of U.S. medical schools now offer courses covering traditional medicine, and, as Eisenberg’s national studies have revealed, more people are using complementary therapies.
To facilitate research on the effectiveness of alternative therapies, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) received a budget of $50 million in 1999. Recognizing the need to encourage quality and quantity of scientific information on botanicals, as well as develop a systematic evaluation of safety and efficacy of dietary supplements, two research centers were also established this year to investigate the biological effects of botanicals.
Many patients are using traditional and modern medical paradigms concurrently, creating a need for the appropriate and smooth merger of the two medicines. The theories and techniques of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) encompass most practices classified as complementary medicine in the United States, and have become increasingly important in the health care system.
Traditional Chinese medicine is affordable, low tech, safe and effective when used appropriately. Ongoing research around the world on acupuncture, herbs, massage and TaiChi have shed light on some of the theories and practices of TCM. Evidence derived from vigorous research design as well as patient demand are fueling the merger of TCM with modern medicine at the clinical level, while more academic researchers and institutions are becoming more interested in the potential of integrating these two healing traditions.
Acupuncture
Based on evidence reviewed during the 1997 NIH Consensus Conference, the NIH Consensus Development Panel conservatively recommended that acupuncture may be used as an adjunct treatment, an alternative, or part of a comprehensive management program for a number of conditions. The panel ascertained that acupuncture can be used to treat post-operative and chemotherapy induced nausea and vomiting, as well as post-operative dental pain. It was also recommended as an adjunct treatment or an acceptable alternative for addiction, stroke rehabilitation, headache, menstrual cramps, tennis elbow, fibromyalgia, myofacial pain, osteoarthritis, low back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and asthma.
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Hi Saggigirl, it is OK to seek help from the Compassionate Buddha and Bodhisattva. I see that you feel troubled. From a scientific view, practising meditation helps to calm the mind and relax the body. As you probably know, mind and body are inter-related and may be able to alleviate your condition. I don't really know your condition, if you can, can try volunteering work and help others who are dire condition. It lends one to see and appreciate life in a deeper perspective. I have heard of people who have cured their terminal illness through meditation and chanting. It is possible to help oneself through these practices but there maybe some conditions. For example, one have faith in Buddha Amitabha and his 48 Great vows if one want to practise pureland teaching. It is good to practise when we have understanding of what we doing and practise under guidance of a good teacher. May you be able to find a qualified teacher to help you if you still haven't found one. May you be well and happy (:
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To all kind people here, thank you for your suggestions. I will think about advice given.
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Originally posted by sinweiy:
i say out of personal experience with a late 20+ yr old friend. i'm more against chemo, that kill both good and bad cells, i rather they use the new Cyberknife technology, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberknife
the whole idea, just mean don't keep demoralise oneself, like saying to oneself that "i'm dying", when one is doing the treatment, simper as that.
nay it's not nonsense, sort of base it on its similar approach as TCM, 2000++ years history. it does has it's alternative stand in western med. like England Queen also like to use it. and i'm not trying to reject western med altogether, but it's good to harmonize them,
http://www.cewm.med.ucla.edu/sources/WHO_paper.pdf
Countless people have beaten cancer through chemotherapy. Yes, it kills both good and bad cells, but until we have a better procedure, it remains our best bet.
If the goal is to improve the morale of the afflicted, there are plenty of better ways. Indulging in deceitful statements like "cancer is not a disease" is not the answer.
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those i saw are the other way around.
the better newest procedure is in Cyberknife as mentioned.
at least one is not afriad of it.
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