Mindfulness is the best medicine

After thirteen years as a Buddhist nun, Sister Dang Nghiem looks back on her medical career and realizes monastic practice and medicine aren’t really that different.

I had graduated from medical school and was doing my\r\nresidency in family practice when I met Thich Nhat Hanh and his monastic\r\ncommunity. Soon after that, my partner died suddenly in an accident. His death\r\nhelped me make a decision to follow a life of Buddhist practice. I left\r\nmedicine after seven years of training and became a nun.

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I have been a monastic for thirteen years. Yet I see now\r\nthat you do not need to leave your profession in order to live a mindful life,\r\nwhether it’s medicine or another kind of work. In everything you do, you can\r\nbring to it awareness of your breath and body. You can unite body and mind,\r\ninstead of keeping them separate from each other. When you stand up, you can be\r\naware that you are standing up. When you stretch your body, you can follow your\r\nbreathing and your movements. With mindfulness of the body, your listening\r\nbecomes deeper and you are more aware of what’s going on around you. Then take\r\nthat awareness into your daily life and into your work.

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Imagine that you’re a doctor and you’re listening to a\r\npatient. If you’re thinking about other patients in other rooms and you ask the\r\npatient the same question several times, this will only add to their sickness\r\nand fear. The patient already feels vulnerable from being sick in the hospital.\r\nNow they feel that you’re not truly present for them. If your mind is thinking\r\nof other patients in other rooms, you’re wasting your time and your patient’s.

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The present moment is the only moment we have.

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It’s the only moment in which we can make a difference for\r\nourselves and others. Whatever we are doing and whomever we are with — whether\r\nit’s ourselves, patients, clients, friends, or strangers — if we are truly\r\nanchored in our breath and our body, we can touch the moment deeply and be of\r\nbenefit.

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When I was a medical student, I took on a patient with\r\nend-stage gallbladder cancer. It was only three months into his diagnosis, but\r\nthe cancer was already full blown. The patient, in his sixties, had become\r\ndepressed and refused to eat. He was abrupt and harsh toward the nurses and\r\ndoctors.

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In the beginning, he wasn’t friendly to me either, but\r\nslowly he opened up. Then he was given the option to have an operation to see\r\nwhether or not the cancer could be removed safely. He was reluctant and afraid.\r\nI told him that he had my full support in whichever decision he made. He\r\ndecided to go through with the operation. Unfortunately, when the surgeons went\r\nin, they found that the cancer had metastasized to adjacent organs, and they\r\nclosed his abdomen immediately.

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That night I was on call and went to visit him. It was two\r\no’clock in the morning. The other patient in his room was already sleeping, and\r\nthe only illumination was from the light in the hallway. I sat quietly next to\r\nhis bed. He said to me, “You know, doctor, I have no more hope. Yet, strangely\r\nenough, I feel more at peace in this moment than I have ever felt before.”

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I just sat with him. Before the operation, I had told him\r\nabout my grandmother’s death in Vietnam. She knew she was going to die and was\r\npeaceful about it. She called for all of her children to gather around her and\r\nshe reminded them not to let me and my young brother know about her passing,\r\nbecause we were in the United States then and she didn’t want to affect our\r\nstudies.

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My grandmother remained alert and peaceful during the last\r\nhours of her life. When I heard this account six months after her death, it\r\nchanged my way of thinking about dying. When we live beautifully and when we\r\ndie beautifully, it’s a gift to ourselves, but it’s also a gift to those who\r\nwitness our lives and our deaths. This gift of non-fear is in fact the greatest\r\ngift that we can offer to our beloved.

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I said to my patient, “My grandmother died peacefully and\r\nbeautifully. You can also choose to die like that. You can recall all of the\r\ngrace you’ve received throughout your life and you can give thanks. You can\r\ndie, knowing your time of death and staying peaceful.”

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When my patient was sent home, he was put on morphine for\r\npain control, and he became confused and violent. His wife was frightened and\r\nsaddened by this. Yet, during the last moments of his life, he became lucid.\r\nShe called me the next day and told me, “He was so quiet and peaceful. Even\r\nthough he couldn’t talk to me, he knew I was there, and it made me so happy!”\r\nAt least twice she told me that she was happy.

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In my spiritual practice as a nun, I don’t feel that I have\r\nleft medicine. In fact, mindfulness is the most profound medicine that I can\r\nuse in my daily life to take care of myself, and it’s the greatest medicine\r\nthat I can offer to others. I do not regret that I spent twenty-four years in\r\nschool, then became a nun. There’s no regret when you have done everything you\r\ncan. If you give your whole heart to something, then when you make a shift to\r\ndo something else, there is nothing to regret. Every moment is an opportunity\r\nto live and discover ourselves.

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SISTER DANG NGHIEM – Lion’s Roar