Patricia Lyne
Patricia Lyne, who lives in Ireland, reflects on how both Zen practice and her Christian faith helped her to find the love, courage and strength she needed to support her through the vulnerability and pain of living with cancer and its treatment.
In May 2021, I heard a Jesuit priest and Roshi (a Zen master) called Robert Kennedy, say “Have your experience but don’t have any opinions about it”. Tough instruction! I knew what he was saying. I was four months into cancer treatment for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. The Rule of Benedict also reminds us to speak from the mouth the truth that lies in the heart. Another powerful instruction!
Today, nearly five months since the last chemotherapy, the experiences are fading. There is a difference between speaking from the experience and writing about the experience. My ego is keen to create narratives. In meditation we let go of our narratives, our thoughts, our emotions and go beyond. There is much that cannot be expressed in words. That said, I will share, as best I can, from my practice, from my life, from my heart, how Zen practice and Christian faith supported me through cancer treatment in the hope that it may touch and be useful to some readers.
In one of my first encounters with Roshi Kennedy he asked me, “Why Zen?” I replied, “It points me beyond myself”. Later I read Benedictine monk John Main speak of meditation as “going beyond ourselves”…“beyond dualism, division, barriers” …“seeing with our own eyes in fearless openness to what is” …being here and now as we are”. I have heard similar from Zen Masters. Roshi Kennedy says, “You can find Zen anywhere. All you have to do is pay attention. Nourish the flame of awareness”. Both say the essential thing is the practice of meditation and that our own experience teaches us. No one can practice for us. No one can have the experience for us. We must do it ourselves.
One of the last times I saw Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, known as Thay, was at his retreat centre, Plum Village in France. We were listening to a talk when Thay slowly came up the window aisle in his wheelchair. As he came along side me our eyes met, and he turned his head and looked out the window. It was like being hit with a stick in the Zen stories. Christ’s words arose, “Do not cling to me” (John 20:17).
I had other precious times when I come across Thay by myself. I could have responded in a number of ways.Yet his embodied practice always strongly pointed me back to the practice. Like he was saying, it is not about me, it is about the practice. This is what Thay transmitted to me, over and over again. Being with the sangha (community) taught me how to practise joy, love, brotherhood and sisterhood, and how to take care of suffering and sorrow in daily life.
Zen, for me, is life. As it unfolds. Being fully present to breath is Zen. Being with whatever arises. Responding to it. Doing the appropriate thing at the appropriate time. Zen does not replace my Christian faith, it enhances it. For me, being fully present to Christ is Zen. Practising Zen and Christian faith during cancer treatment was my Lenten journey.
I had a biopsy in December 2020. I waited in the unknown. Mid-January I was told no cancer. I celebrated and returned to hospital chaplaincy training. However, on 20 January I was told I had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. They’d missed it! They had also missed it six years earlier. Isn’t this how life goes? I had ten years experience supporting people with cancer and their families. I thought I knew a thing or two. I had no idea.
The first treatment overwhelmed me. I collapsed. It’s not that I wanted to die. I just didn’t want to live through this. It was too hard. I was hospitalised. Somehow, and I don’t know how, the love, presence and practical support of friends got me through it. The plan was chemotherapy every two weeks. I’d be severely neutropenic and prone to infection for the duration of treatment. Hypersensitive, I couldn’t take many of the side effect drugs. I had multiple side-effects. Regardless of Covid, I had to isolate. I didn’t know how I was going to do it.
In May 2019 I had been in a road traffic accident. My stationery car was hit from behind at 100km/hour. It was written off. I was luckier. During recovery I learned many lessons. To be vulnerable. To accept love and care. From friends and strangers. To trust. I experienced the healing potential of Zen practice and Christian faith. I attended a sesshin (an intense period of silent practice in Zen). Arriving extremely weak, a place had been set for me to lie down. The energy of the sangha embraced me and we practised together. Each evening we shared mass and the eucharist. I left stronger in less than a week.
In For Courage Irish poet John O’Donohue says “invoke the learning of every suffering you have suffered”. I did. I adapted a sesshin structure and took refuge in sangha. I woke at 7:30am. Prayed/read the Gospel. At 8:00am I meditated in sangha on Zoom. Then Breakfast. Then into nature/walk/tai chi. At 12pm, Zoom meditation in sangha. Then lunch. Then Deep Relaxation. Then evening walk before dinner. Then board games or colouring. Then bath. Then prayers/meditation before bed at 10pm. Repeat. For six months. Doing what was needed moment by moment. Calling on all resources. Years of disciplined practice and faith held me, even as I fell. I could not have anticipated this.
When I first lost my bearings, I contemplated the Cross. Jesus on the Cross. Me on the Cross. How was it for him as his mother and the women looked on and did not turn away? The importance of being witnessed. The importance of bearing witness.
Each day on zoom during the sangha I witnessed the loss of my hair, my eyebrows, my eye lashes, the deterioration of my body. We did not turn away.
Interiorly, the chemotherapy did not discriminate, it took the good and the bad cells. It took everything. Exteriorly, nature renewed itself. I saw daffodils poking out from the flood waters, cracked eggshells as babies hatched. I touched the earth with my sore feet. Such joy and love. Such pain and suffering. I practised gratitude. On Sundays, I attended online contemplative mass. I was nourished by the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) and Bonnevaux communities. At times I wept. I prayed. I was prayed for. The communion of it all kept my heart open.
There is bottomless treasure in our Christian tradition. I contemplate the stations of the cross. One question I sat with was, Who suffers? … Mary/myself at the cross, at the tomb, Jesus/myself at each fall, on the cross, the healthcare workers, friends, family/myself throughout treatment, God/all of us. I sat with brokenness and vulnerability and powerlessness and pain with courage, compassion and love.
And when finally I could no longer practise, I stopped. I was humbled. A doubtful hopeful faith remained. John Main expresses it well: “Divine energy develops the human capacity to stay with what must be got through. It also releases the joy to expand our hearts and celebrate what must be celebrated.” In my experience meditation is the preparation for the grace of the unexplainable.
Zen practice opens me to life, love, God. It lets me, as John Main puts it, “verify the truth of my faith in my own experience” and to see truth in other faiths. I’m grateful to the wise ones from all sacred traditions. May we continue to help each other to greater love.
For more information about John Main, how to meditate and the WCCM see: https://www.thelivingwater.com.au/christian-meditation
Patricia’s article is based on a talk given at Benedict’s Well on 22 November 2021. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW0RU7xCAQg
Benedict’s Well is an outreach of the Benedictine Oblates of the WCCM. The weekly event (Mondays) consists of a period of meditation followed by an inspirational talk. See: http://oblates.wccm.org/v2019/news-from-the-oblate-community/events/benedicts-well-6/