Having spent three weeks in busyness, I was pleased to have an open
morning. I used it to read all the postings on the topic and would like to
thank you all for your contributions.
Peggy Smith-Lewis talked of the difference in western and eastern
medicine as an example of a focus on parts,disease and cure, (Western) and
the whole, relationship and healing, (Eastern). It brought to my mind a
story of a visit from the physician to the Dalai Lama, Yeshi Dhonden, to a
teaching hospital in the states. I see in the work of this Eastern
physician an awesome, simultaneous holding of a focus on the whole and the
part. This story also exemplifies the benefits of personal mastery, the
essential need for deep respect of others, and the fact that many tools
and techniques can support a single purpose. The story is told so well
that I will quote it here, at the risk of lengthiness, rather than
translate it. The story is told by a Western trained physician who
observed the work of Yeshi Donden.
" I join the clutch of whitecoats waiting in the small conference room
adjacent to the ward selected for the rounds. Yeshi Dhonden, we are told ,
will examine a patient selected by a member of the staff. The diagnosis is
unknown to Yeshi Dhonden as it is to us. We are further informed that for
the past two hours Yeshi Dhonden has purified himself by bathing, by
fasting, and prayer. I, having breakfasted well, performed only the
desultory of ablutions, and given no thought at all to my soul, glance
furtively at my fellows. Suddenly we seem a soiled, uncouth lot.
The patient had been awakened early and told that she was to be
examined by a foreign doctor, and had been asked to produce a fresh
specimen of urine, so when we enter her room, the woman shows no surprise.
Yeshi Dhonden steps to the bedside while the rest stand apart, watching.
For a long time he gazes at the woman, favoring no part of her body with
his eyes, but seeming to fix his glance at a place just above her supine
form. I, too, study her. No physical sign or obvious symptom gives a clue
to the nature of her disease.
At last he takes her hand, raising it in both of her own. Now he bends
over the bed in kind of a crouching stance, his head drawn down into the
collar of his robe. His eyes are closed as he feels for her pulse. In a
moment he has found the spot, and for the next half hour he remains thus,
suspended above the patient like some exotic bird with folded wings,
holding the pulse of the woman beneath his fingers, cradling her hand in
his. All the power of the man seems to have been drawn down into this one
purpose. It is palpitation of the pulse raised to the state of ritual.
..... I cannot see their hands joined in a correspondence that is
exclusive, intimate, his fingertips receiving the voice of her sick body
through the rhythm and throb she offers at her wrist. All at once I am
envious- not of him but of her. I want to be held like that, touched so,
received. And I know that I who have palpated a hundred thousand pulses,
have not felt a single one.
At last Yeshi Dhonden straightens, gently places the woman's hand upon
the bed, and steps back. The interpreter produces a small wooden bowl and
two sticks. Yeshi Dhonden pours a potion of the urine specimen into the
bowl and proceeds to whip the liquid with two sticks. This he does for
several minutes until a foam is raised. Then, bowing above the bowl, he
inhales the odor three times. He sets down the bowl and turns to leave.
All this while he has not uttered a word.
As he nears the door, the woman raises her head and calls out to him.
"Thank you doctor," she says, and touches with her other hand the place he
had held on her wrist. Yeshi Dhonden turns back for a moment to gaze at
her, then steps into the corridor. Rounds are at en end.
We are seated once more in the conference room. Yeshi Dhonden speaks
now for the first time. He speaks of winds coursing through the body of
the woman, currents that break against barriers, eddying. These vortices
are in her blood, he says. The last spendings of an imperfect heart.
Between the chambers of her heart, long long before she was born, a wind
had come and blown open a deep gate that must never be opened. Through it
charge the full waters of her river, as the mountain stream cascades in
the springtime, battering, knocking loose the land, and flooding her
breath. Thus he speaks and is now silent.
The host of the rounds answers, with the diagnosis he has known:
"Congenital heart disease, interventricular septal defect, with resultant
heart failure."
told by Richard Selzer
again, thank you you all for your consistently engaging thoughts on this
list.
-- Fran Alexander fjalex @aol.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>