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20100517

Short Meditation on Illness

For the Buddhist who seeks the validity of the Buddhadharma, illness becomes another welcome challenge for its symptoms to teach one of the limits of the human body.

Though fever and chills may ravage the body, she who mindfully practices knows that the well-trained mind is abley withstand the pain of suffering which illness brings.

Yet the wise ones know too that when there is medicine for a sickness, it is wise to take it.

Despite the fever, the chills and even the aches that illness brings him, the illness itself has much to teach the mindful one about the transient nature of life.

No pain, no fever, no chills - none of these are distractions to the Buddhist who learns from her experience to accept the help of trusted friends to relieve her of the misery that illness sometimes brings by seeking medical advice.

Grateful is this one to the Buddha and his Dharma, for illness validates his teaching of dependent arising.

Indeed, it has a past cause in a previous illness, and a present cause in a sudden change in immunity; but through the use of medicine to treat this illness, it has an end.

Thus does physical illness teach this one about the spiritual illness of the six senses, and its cure, the Eightfold Noble Path.

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