#I think their feelings are delightful. I also think they completely misunderstand what prayer and religious worship is

[captainofthetidesbreath]

in the course of thinking about all the discussion about the gods and the concept of "well, the gods never answered my prayers" and especially upon thinking about Ashton saying that they HAVE prayed to the gods only to get no answer and that some rocks had a better response, like...

it's occurred to me that many (within the fandom, within the narrative) maybe do not really and fully grasp that there is a difference, and a massive one, between prayer and saying words in a divinity's or similar's direction

there is a sort of focused process to meaningful prayer in which one is to reflect on their intention, what they're trying to achieve or express in this moment of communion, and then make a focused and intentional articulation of that, followed by meditating on that (if you are praying to a deity as part of a petition or prayer of supplication, this is the listening portion, because you aren't supposed to just talk and then hang up). the form of prayer changes per religious tradition, ritual structure, intent of the prayer, setting, etc. but the core idea is that it involves intent, focus, and reflection.

actual and meaningful prayer—not just saying words or making a haphazard request of a god—is a focused, reflective, intentional process that asks you do to a lot of work actually. and, it is often found to be not fulfilling if one does not undertake that work.

[garywonghc]

Gratitude for My Torturers

by Phakyab Rinpoche

After escaping from a Chinese prison, Tibetan lama Phakyab Rinpoche travels to the United States as a refugee and is treated at New York City’s Bellevue hospital for a severe pain in his ankle that eventually turns to gangrene. In the following excerpt from his book, Meditation Saved My Life, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher recalls his admission to the refugee program and the different ways that he and his doctor view his torturers.

The interview with the psychologist for my admission in the Program for Survivors of Torture will last two hours. I know these two hours will stir up many sufferings — first of all, my present condition as a refugee. I have been greeted with tremendous generosity at Bellevue hospital. But at this point I have lost everything, including my health. The interview will also bring back the shameful denial of humanity that I was subjected to in Chinese jails. Not being human any longer, being reduced to the despicable dregs of society with a dismantled body dismembered by torture, humiliated by degrading treatments — how can I express all of this to human beings whose physical and moral integrity has never been trampled? It will feel as if I am attacking their intact humanity by displaying my own violated humanity.

I have never told anyone about my experience in prison, neither people close to me nor my masters. When I met the Dalai Lama after my escape, I did not need to describe to him my tortures. He knows only too well what goes on in the prisons of the Roof of the World. Without asking me any questions, he hugged me silently. Then he simply said: “Three months of prison and torture! It’s a terrible ordeal! But for others, it lasts 10 years, 20 years! It kills some!”

I understood then how important it is to put our sufferings into perspective, to not lock oneself in a painful past that indefinitely extends the ordeal. When that happens, we become our own torturer.

On June 17, 2003, in the office of the Program for Survivors of Torture, I am greeted by the psychologist, a smiling young woman with the blue eyes of a doll. Her manners are demonstrative and her kindness is conventional — both features of social relations in the United States of America. I have not yet gotten used to this in the weeks that have gone by, and I must seem very coarse to some of the people I speak with. Indeed, my culture is not very exuberant.

Although I can see this young woman intends to be genuinely benevolent and open to my story, a misunderstanding quickly arises between us as soon as I mention my detention and tortures. I will soon realise that Westerners easily indulge in victimisation. This explains their amazement, and their total lack of understanding, when I joke about the ill treatments I suffered in prison.

In her eventual report, the Bellevue psychologist will state: “Mr. Dorje’s affect was stable, however, it seemed inappropriate at times. For example, he was smiling, animated, and even laughed as he described his torture in detail and his survival.”

She would have better understood my feelings had I acted like a punching bag and expressed myself with the tearful language of complaint. Then she would have sympathised and undoubtedly shared my wailing, my indignation, my anger, and my hatred to­ward my torturers. During our interview, I got the impression that she was driving me into a corner and wanting me to accuse my tormentors. That was when I burst out laughing.

How can I take on a hatred I do not feel?

In fact, on that day, even if I was only a penniless refugee and a sick man with a gangrenous leg, I was not the victim. The victims were my jailers. I had left prison, but what about them? They were locked up in a vicious spiral that would hound them during this life and for many lives yet to come!

The psychologist did not understand that I laughed at the absurdity of hating those who had shown such hatred toward me. During my incarceration, I was often dumbfounded at the idea that people who did not know me, and whom I had never been harmful to, could relentlessly torture me. And I have meditated at length on karmic causality. What was happening to me was only the result, the consequence, of a negative spirit and negative thoughts that in previous lives had led me to injure and cause pain to other beings, both human and nonhuman. My torturers were not my enemies. The real enemy is not outside of us. It is to be confronted within us. It takes the shape of selfishness, attachment, self-cherishing. I was therefore laughing at how absurd hatred, thirst for revenge, and anger are. By laughing, I was hoping to relax the psychologist. But I only managed to make her tense.

Sometimes when I think of the bad karma built up by the People’s Armed Police officers who tortured me, I feel tremendous compassion for them. Moved to tears, I pray for them more than for anyone else. And I have completely forgiven them. It is only thanks to my forgiveness that one day, as soon as possible, I hope, they may free themselves from their infernal karma.

In appearance they were the torturers and I the victim. But in reality, we were all victims. I was their physical punching bag, and they were the victims of their own uncontrollable, destructive emotions. The actions they committed to ensure the meager sustenance of their families could lead them to the terrible torments of being reborn as hungry ghosts, hot or cold hellish beings, or animals . . . How can I know? I dedicate to them the positive energy of my praiseworthy actions so that they may find peace of mind at last.

While talking to the psychologist at Bellevue Hospital, how could I explain that the understanding of karma I developed in prison freed me from the unbearable burden of negative emotions? I thus feel gratitude toward those who tortured me. They taught me patience, unconditional compassion, and impartiality, more than have any of my masters. Every day, I express my wishes for them and offer them my prayers so that they may free themselves from mental states upset by hatred and anger. Has the psychologist in front of me ever heard about karma? I doubt that it was part of her studies. If it had been, she would express herself differently.

The law of karma implies that we must assume our share of responsibility in what happens to us. This is easier in the case of happiness and when positive developments occur in our life. But in adversity, I find a source of deep wisdom. It has allowed me to become friends with what I would otherwise deem bad and therefore reject. As it is said in one of the fundamental teachings I meditated on during my training at the monastery:

When the container and the contents are full of negativity, Transform adverse fortune into an awakening path. Use all immediate circumstances in meditation.

I have therefore fully accepted the idea that I created the causes of my detention through actions whose essence came to maturity in this life, and I am delighted at having cleansed these negativities. Such an attitude has transformed the way I see those who brutalised me with unimaginable barbarity. Through the sufferings they inflicted on me, they created the necessary conditions for my transformation. How can I not feel infinitely grateful to them?

[writestufflj20]

Erica’s August 2015

“People can become even crazier than patients in that cramped waiting room thinking about their loved one. I knew it was a mind game, so I played with the intention of winning.”

Walking around the familiar hospital hallways, Erica Baker surveys the sanitary health measures that are taken too seriously by every nurse, except for Bob the Asshole. Bob was given this prestigious title a couple of days before, when Erica’s aunt caught him watching the TV in another patient’s room for much longer than he probably should have, which she ranted about with scorn. With four weeks of roaming the hallways of the UC Irvine Medical Center and experimenting with mysterious cafeteria food, Erica became pretty familiar with the hospital, which Erica adds is the polar opposite of Grey’s Anatomy. During August 2015, she snuggled up as comfortable as she could be in the hideously patterned waiting room armchairs, constantly moving from seat to seat to observe a different group of people every so often, trying to shift thoughts once her ICU-admitted dad came to mind. From what her mom told her, the doctors made it clear that his chances of surviving were slim. “People can become even crazier than patients in that cramped waiting room thinking about their loved one. I knew it was a mind game, so I played with the intention of winning.”

For the most part, she wasn’t permitted into her dad’s hospital room because he was under constant care as an unconscious patient who had been diagnosed with valley fever at the start of August. Although she felt trapped at times, the waiting room gave her an open space to observe a new set of faces every time she decided to take a study break from completing her endless school assignments. Erica was a wide-eyed, eager, 2015 high school graduate who willingly enrolled herself in the optional summer program at UC Irvine before the start of her freshman year. To kickoff her summer, she moved into her on-campus dorm, which is about an hour drive from their hometown of Canyon Lake. Looking forward to meeting fresh faces and experiencing new activities, Erica, the typical studious scholar, was as eager to make friends, as she was to take classes. So when she began to frequently spend time in the hospital, she passed the seemingly endless hours doing homework in order to make sure her grades weren’t suffering because of her dad’s unexpected condition.

Born in 1996, Erica has had a pretty stable childhood for the most part. However, growing up, her parents’ relationship was slightly rocky, but they were almost successful in hiding that from their two children. As a family of four, Erica’s parents encouraged her and her younger brother to value family and household dynamics. Her mom was a practicing nurse and her dad worked as a pictorial artist at Disneyland, from which he took a six month medical leave. But Erica’s nights didn’t seem complete until she routinely pressed her ear against their bedroom door to hear her parents misunderstandings and differences. However, like any American household that is filled with the smell of pancakes on a Sunday morning, once the bedroom doors opened, any signs of a weak relationship had magically disappeared. Although Erica didn’t like the negative environment her parents tried so hard not to create, she’s grateful she was aware of their differences. Erica is now able to appreciate how much their relationship has improved.

What didn’t improve, however, was Erica’s dad’s health. In July 2015, the Baker Family was driving home from Erica’s ‘Thunderstruck’ Nationals Dance Competition in Las Vegas and stopped for gas on the way back to Southern California. Little did the family know that stopping for gas was the pivotal point in the development of his disease known as valley fever. Although pregnant women and people with AIDS/weak immune systems are more prone to developing valley fever, Erica’s dad started to develop the symptoms one and a half weeks after stopping for gas. Entering through his lungs, the fungus began to impair his breathing capabilities, the moment when Erica’s mom knew he had something serious. Being a nurse herself, she recognized the combination of a fever, chest pain, coughing, and rashes-- symptoms Erica didn’t think anything of.

Hand on the wheel, Erica’s mom sped to the UCI Medical Center, the hospital he was admitted to, while frantically calling Erica with the phone in her other hand. Without hesitation but with a backpack filled to the brim, Erica called a friend and asked if she could get a ride to the hospital. The drive seemed to drag on. It might have been the traffic on both routes they took or it might’ve been the silence the entire journey, Erica didn’t know. Arriving at the hospital, Erica sensed urgency when she greeted her mom. Long hallways, slamming doors, hasty nurses, and buzzing radios are all Erica remembers before she was told she couldn’t see her dad quite yet. Dragging her feet back to the waiting room, she habitually started working on homework, and blocked any negative thoughts out of her head. Although she knew her dad was in a serious condition to be admitted into the ICU and on a respirator, she couldn’t bring herself to imagine the worse case scenario. “How could my dad just instantly die? I did my best to only think  about school in order to reject the fact that I was spent my days in a hospital because my dad was unconscious.”

Unmoved, Erica kept that same mentality over the entire month because at the back of her mind, she had a feeling that everything would return to normal. Her mom on the other hand couldn’t quite keep her butt in a waiting room seat. Erica tried to get her to de-stress by assuring her that God was watching over Dad, but her mom would brush off any dialogue about her husband’s condition, except when she was speaking with a doctor or a nurse (Bob the Asshole was of course the only acceptable exception.) Erica’s cousin was a pastor in the area and encouraged Erica’s mom to reach out to him for prayers, but she couldn’t bear the thought of making that phone call. Erica decided to take initiative and called him, but she couldn’t help but think that her mom was losing faith. Her dad had always been the most religious, so without his constant reminders to pray and say grace, Erica recognized that her mom felt doubtful about his successful progress.

Through God’s graces, Erica’s cousin’s prayers, and Erica’s mom’s constant directions toward hospital staff, Erica’s dad regained consciousness. He defied doctor’s predictions, which indicated that he had a low chance of surviving. The room filled with delight the day he didn’t need support to breathe: cries of happiness, gasps of relief, and shuffling of feet all day as more and more loved ones scurried in and out the room. Extended relatives and family friends repeatedly thanked the doctors and out of the hospital, let alone his room, but got frustrated that routine check-ins were still necessary. “It was the drugs he was on. They were impairing his mind.” Likewise, the drugs made him increasingly drowsy, constantly falling in and out of sleep. Medication was also noticeably taking over as he would repeatedly ask for Erica. She would follow a staff member to his room to find that he didn’t remember ever asking for Erica. Every time this happened, she would just laugh it off.

He began making strides to improve his health: he spent two weeks in South Land Physical Therapy rehabilitation center and relearned how to walk by completing basic muscle strengthening exercises. Thankfully, he hadn’t lost any of his cognitive processes, so therapy just focused on regaining lost strength. That October, Erica started her freshman year and visits to home became a regular weekend occurrence. She knew that if she pressed her ear to their bedroom door, she wouldn’t have heard any bickering. The house became more quiet than usual, but that allowed time for her to reflect on the past few months. She now has a deeper appreciation for her dad because she realizes that his health could deter at any moment, just like it did at the start of August. The game was over and Erica couldn’t be any more relieved.