Tuesday, December 13th

II.1: Heyam dukham anagatam—Avoid the suffering that is yet to come

This is some sage advice from our old friend Patanjali. The implication is that the conscious choices we make in the present can eliminate much of the possible suffering that could lie ahead of us. The American version of this might be, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Case in point: Three weeks ago, just when Mercury was turning retrograde, I got my teeth cleaned. Lena, my hygienist, found a discoloration on one of my molars and probed it, causing me to almost leap out of the chair. “That’s a cavity,” she said, “better get it taken care of, soon.” Every time I get my teeth cleaned, Lena gives me the same rap, “You have bionic plaque—you need to floss, use the rubber tip, and the water pic with baking soda to make your mouth more alkaline, otherwise you’ll get these gum line cavities.” I always smile and nod and tell her I’ll do better, but, obviously, my dental hygiene still needs work. The next week I saw my dentist to get the tooth filled. As he was drilling out the cavity he kept checking in with me to make sure I was okay. At one point he stopped and said, “I just hit a little pin prick of blood, that means we’re at the nerve. I’ll go ahead and fill the tooth, but you may need a root canal—time will tell.” That night the tooth hurt like hell and I barely slept. The next day it was a little better and gave me some hope that I wouldn’t need the root canal. The pain was off and on for the next ten days and I tried to keep it at a manageable level by taking ibuprofen. Eventually it became obvious that I would need the root canal. Last Friday night, the night of the lunar eclipse, the pain was so intense that I barely slept all night. I went outside at 4am to check on the moon. At about 4:45am a shadow began to creep across the moon. For the next hour and a half I watched the moon slowly being eclipsed by the shadow of the earth while meditating on the nature of pain. As the sky began to brighten with the rising sun the effect was much less dramatic so I went inside. My wife, Carol, freshly awake, asked me what time I had gotten up. When I told her 4am she looked at me as if I was crazy, “4am on your day off—why?” I told her about my tooth and she said, “Honey, I’d really like to be sympathetic, but if you took Lena’s advice you wouldn’t have to go through this.” What I wanted was sympathy, of course, not a lecture on the Law of Karma.

Carol showed me a note that she found taped to our bathroom door from “Fred, the Christmas Elf” (my daughter Leela). Fred the Christmas Elf was taking us to task for the total lack of Christmas cheer in the Miller household—no tree, no decorations, no presents, no Christmas music—it was all true, her parents had been preoccupied. That day we got a tree and began to put up some Christmas ornaments. I even began to practice some Christmas carols on the piano. “Leela,” I said, “did you hear me playing Christmas carols?” “Yeah, Dad,” she said, “you don’t play them very well.” I vowed to practice more diligently. Today, on the last day of Mercury’s retrograde, I got the root canal—it was very painful. Of course, I should have gotten it 10 days ago and saved myself a lot of suffering. Then again, if I’d followed Lena’s instructions I could have avoided all of the pain. My lesson for this last Mercury retrograde is, “Stupidity should be painful.”

Comments

[Kyla Stinnett]

Lesson 2: Avoid the suffering of self-recrimination! :)