The Naked Monk

Archive for April, 2010

My wife Caroline’s lived with multiple sclerosis (MS) for eighteen years now. Canada has one of the worst MS rates in the world — 240 cases per 100,000 people when 30 cases is already high. A few drug treatments have been introduced over the years, more to the satisfaction of the pharmaceutical companies than of patients. They work a bit, some of the time, for some people, aren’t very pleasant, and are a far cry from being a cure. In fact, much of the medical literature around MS still centers on diagnosing it; even that can take months.

So when Paolo Zamboni, a vascular surgeon working in Ferrara Italy, announced a drug-free MS treatment and wonderful anecdotal cures, the MS world sat up. He reported that he’d found veins in the the necks of many MS patients to be constricted, as a result of which blood was unable to sufficiently drain from the brain. After widening these veins with temporary angioplasty, and sometimes stents (which are left behind), patients announced dramatic relief.  Zamboni called the condition Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency (CCSVI) and suggested that the reflux of blood caused a harmful build-up of iron in the brain, eventually producing lesions and MS symptoms.
 
This explanation leaves doctors with more questions than answers. For example, is the iron accumulation found by Dr. Zamboni a secondary effect or a cause? The issue of increased iron deposits in inflammatory sites has been under review for the last decade, and still is. Also, a follow-up study in Buffalo found less clear-cut results than those in Italy, including the existence of constricted veins in non-MS sufferers, and the lack of any constriction in a good portion of those with MS.

Many MS patients want the procedure now, feeling they can’t wait another five years while their body advances to a point of no-return. They’re antsy, upset with bureaucracy, foot dragging and doctors afraid of upsetting the pharmaceuticals. They want funding for standardized CCSVI screening and treatment now. Some are flying to Poland, where the procedure is available for $10,000.

So, worldwide, groups like MS Liberation in Canada are organising fundraisers, walks, talks etc. to raise awareness and work together to spur CCSVI testing, treatment and research. There’ll be a walk/protest on Parliament Hill for CCSVI action on Wednesday, May 5, 2010 at 1:00pm – 3:00pm Ottawa. Look here. At least, you can sign this petition to the Canadian Government to Support Zamboni’s Liberation Procedure for MS patients.

Nevertheless, the MS Society (Canada) has freed up funds with alacrity and is inviting proposals for studies ahead of its usual annual deadlines. Successful applicants will be announced in mid-June. Each project grant is worth $200,000. Altogether the society is contributing four to five million dollars for collaborative, multi-institution studies, some of them in conjunction with US researchers.

Doctors are paid to be skeptical, but they must be excited too. After all, if you were a neurologist with about half of your patients suffering from MS, wouldn’t you enjoy being able to give them some good news for once? Still, researchers are firm that clinical trails are best way forward because they:
a) provide appropriate safeguards; including ethical approval & consent
b) provide appropriate protocols for information that flows from the patients’ reponse in a way that provides the answers that will refine both diagnostic and treatment methods.

In 1848, Ryan Fleish related MS to vascular problems. Almost a century later in 1939, when anticoagulants were discovered, they were widely given to MS patients for 20 years — until the first randomized clinical trials established that the treatment was ineffective.

CCSVI also suggests that MS arises from a vascular problem, though in the venous rather than the arterial system. What’s apparent so far is that if the azygos vein is constricted, angioplasty (expanding it from the inside with a balloon) is effective because the vein remains open. If the constriction is in the jugular, however, the vein quickly collapses again. Stents can be inserted, but the procedure is now less straightforward and carries risk: stents sometimes migrate, even into the heart. Research so far also suggests that the procedure is of no benefit to those suffering from primary or secondary progressive MS — only those with the relapse-remitting form of the disease. Caroline’s prognosis is borderline, still relapse-remitting in some ways but progressive in others.

There are also difficulties differentiating the response rate. Evaluating results is difficult since the only way to find out is to ask patients; they’re inclined to find hope in the smallest relief — that’s the placebo effect — so their reports are considered unreliable.

Ever since multiple sclerosis was first named, the disease has caused fear, disability and misery to countless millions of people; in recent years the incidence of the disease has grown rapidly. This possibility of a new treatment is the only slender thread of hope that’s ever been offered, so the overwhelming response is understandable. The down side, of course, is that if it leads nowhere, the fear and misery will be redoubled. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. We talked of going to Poland, but Caroline’s opted to wait for a thorough protocol to emerge, and then see where it leads. One thing’s for sure, if doctors can’t find any constricted veins, there’s nothing to be done anyway. The wait is agonizing.

I mentioned in my last entry Glenn Wallis, scholar, translator, teacher, author. He set up our Philadelphia trip last week, as a result of which I was able for the first time to sit down with him face-to-face. While there’s always a difference between friends and acquaintances; with Glenn, it was as if we’d been friends for years.

I first met him by email after reading his book, Basic Teachings of the Buddha — the work of an eminently independent mind. In his introduction (which I wish all Buddhists would read, even if they disagree) he describes young Siddhattha — the Buddha — as a “bombastic braggadocio” who claims shortly after his historic awakening to “have no equal” (Ariyapariyesana Sutta). This isn’t to say that he’s down on the Buddha — quite the contrary; it’s just that he’s boldly staking out his personal opinion that the man was, well, just a man who took a while to refine his message. In so doing, Wallis reminds us that all those who claim to be the Buddha’s rightful heirs, as well, are just expressing their own personal opinion, ancient traditions notwithstanding.

The various Buddhist faithfuls, each seemingly innoculated by the weight of its own ancient roots (Theravadin, Tibetan, Japanese, etc.) presume themselves to be pristine — a claim I really can’t imagine the Buddha supporting. As is becoming increasingly apparent in these secular days, monolithic institutions encourage believers to believe what they believe because their elders want them to and most of the people they know go along with the charade. This is a human weakness unworthy of anyone claiming to follow the Buddha. Siddhattha Gotama tirelessly championed the precarious art of thinking and discovering for oneself.

Out of the thousands of Buddhist sutras, Wallis has strategically chosen sixteen, and translated them. These are the core of the book, but not the whole. The introduction is lengthy, innovative  and informative, and his explanatory Guide to Reading the Texts is challenging and thoughtful. In a field where the preeminent approach is conservative guardianship, his creativity is a breath of fresh air and a reminder that the Buddha taught for the sake of living human beings, not to create an indestructable institution. The whole is a slim but intense resource for anyone who’s ever sat back and imagined what it must have been like to walk with the man from Sakya twenty-six hundred years ago.

*       *       *

Until I met him last week, I presumed Glenn to be a product of the religous studies department of Harvard University, where he obtained his PhD. I learned instead that he considers himself primarily a philologist — someone who studies texts, not beliefs. (Before that, incidentally, he was a high-school dropout and touring punk rocker.) While religious Buddhists study the very same texts, it’s exceedingly rare to see them leave their devotional agenda behind. The hands-off attitude of textual analysis leaves more room for discovery, innovation — and inconvenient interpretations — not to mention glimpses of the Buddha’s humanity. For example, the words of the Ariyapariyesana Sutta have been around for millennia, but who in that time has ever made the apparently self-evident observation that the young founder of Buddhism sounded like a “bombastic braggadocio?” To the religious ear, it just won’t do; to the disinterested reader, however, it’s sort of obvious. Wallis goes to some lengths to describe the relationship of the text to the reader and of course, encourages a disinterested reading in the strongest possible way.

Which is where I stand up and applaud. I’m eternally grateful to my old Tibetan teachers, and wouldn’t dream of discouraging young men and women from entering monastic life if they’re so inclined.  I trust the Buddha’s teachings to lead those with little dust in their eyes to a place of dispassionate honesty about what they’re learning and how they’re learning it.  However, the dangers of institutional ‘truths’ are legion; they must be constantly challenged by knowledgeable dissenters and not just by opinionated outsiders.

Don’t just read Basic Teachings of the Buddha; study it. You might hate the translations of what you thought were familiar terms. Fine — disagree strenuously if it’s in your bones, but articulate your disagreement. On the Amazon listing for this book, a reviewer wrote that he preferred another translation. If you can’t read the original Pali or Sanskrit, it’s a mistake to ‘prefer’ one translation over another; serious readers will study several. All those who can, should contribute to any debate that prevents old institutions and automated beliefs from slipping into the numbing slumbers of the sacrosanct.

Diligence is the path to the deathless.
Negligence is the path of death.
The diligent do not die.
Those who are negligent are as the dead.
—The Buddha, Dhammapada 21 [trans. Glenn Wallis]

We just had five great days in Philadelphia and New York, promoting The Novice. Up here in Canada, we tend to be critical of the good old U.S.A. — which is to say U.S. politics — while actually feeling pretty good about the people. Some of them still seem to think we all live in igloos. That’s okay guys; we make fun of you too. Really though, we are cousins  — two countries born from the loins of the same strangely repressed-adventurous Anglo-Saxon stock, then strengthened with language, culture, cuisine, religion skin-color and attitudes from a worldwide gene pool.

Glenn Wallis and the Won Institute of Graduate Studies gave us a warm welcome and a full house for my talk on Friday morning. Glenn was generous in his praise, which is to say that he and I see eye-to-eye on most things Buddhist. Like me, he has little time for supernatural nonsense about the Buddha and the Buddhist saints, and can only imagine the man Siddhattha as just that — a man, and hard-core empiricist to boot. To think othewise is to put his accomplishment beyond the reach of ordinary mortals, which is about as disrespectful of the Buddha’s life as you can get. Glenn and his wife Friederike fed us a wonderful dinner at their home while we tried to figure out why so many ’Buddhists’ end up as uncritical believers in search of spiritual security, far from the groundless, iconoclastic role model of the Buddha himself.

New York was strangely peaceful. It took us a while to figure out just how: as usual, the traffic was crazy, the sidewalks crowded with weaving, slouching, cell-phoning, jay-walking, happy, sad, crazy, tall, short, slim — unexpectedly not so wide — people of every color, size and shape; the sky hummed with airplanes, helicopters and radio waves. Then we realized what had changed — no honking. The formerly endless barking of cars, trucks and mostly taxis had finally been silenced by a new by-law equipped with a $350 fine. What a difference! The noisiest place of all turned out to be our hotel room in the Millennium Hilton — I mention it so you know to avoid it at all costs — which faced right into ground zero and it’s relentless 24/7 construction schedule. Still, as sleepless as our nights were, it was impossible to ignore the momentous significance of this mass murder site. I gazed again and again into the haunted, empty space.

The most unusual part of our trip was my talk at Tibet House — rather than a full house, it was intimate and select. One by one, the visitors filed in and introduced themselves as I put out chairs — a fine-artist, a copy writer, a young man in search of himself, a lady curious about Buddhist debate and — just as I was beginning, a straggler. An older man walked in carrying a seventies-era briefcase wound with duct-tape and a bulging plastic bag; he looked as self-possessed as he did out of place. He unfolded a chair right between Caroline and me, blocking our view of each other. Making himself comfortable, he folded his hands and stared at me.

“Good evening,” I ventured. He stared at me with expressionless intensity.

“You’ve come to hear about The Novice, then?” That’s about as good as I get at small talk.

“Is that your book,” he asked abruptly, pointing.

I held it up. “The Novice? Yes.”

He reached for it. I handed it over. He examined it minutely.

I wondered if he wasn’t all there and said, “I’m going to talk about it. You’ll be able to buy it if you want.”

He didn’t look up.

“I’ll begin now, then, I said more loudly.”

He continued to ignore me, opening the first page.

By now, everyone was staring at him from all sides. He was oblivious, seemingly unperturbed. Suddenly, he raised his head, gave the faintest of smiles and blurted out, “I’m deaf. I can’t hear.”

“You’re deaf?” I asked. “Completely?”

But he’d already turned back to the book.

“You can’t hear anything?” I said, this time very loudly. He didn’t look up.

He read for about twenty minutes while I spoke, then closed the the book and placed it face down on the floor. Concerned for its resale value, I reached towards it.

“I’m going to buy it,” he assured me. “I’m going to buy it.” He opened his briefcase, which was neatly packed to the brim, pulled out a check book and filled out a stub, then a check. He handed it over.

I opened the book and wrote in it, ‘To Richard O’Neill’ — the name on the check — ‘who came to hear me speak.’ I signed it.

He accepted the book without a smile, without a word of thanks and yet in some way I can’t explain, graciously. I thought his eye twinkled, but can’t swear to it. He leaned back and watched me for the remaining hour and forty minutes with rapt attention. At first I mouthed my words precisely, but had no sense that he was lip reading, or had any idea what I was saying. When at the end he got up to leave, he came to me and asked, “Where can I write to you?”

I pointed to my web site address on the dust cover.

He nodded, satisfied, and then announced. “I’m writing a book.”

“A memoir? I asked. Disappointingly, he didn’t even respond to that; he just turned on his heel and made a bee line for the door.

We were all wide-eyed as he left without a backward glance. Nobody was untouched by this man. Even by New York standards, he was unique. He made our evening unforgettable.

It was the end of a tiring, annoying day, and the overwhelming emotion was “bugger it!” Caroline would never employ such coarse language, of course, but she still expressed herself in a surprising way: “You can have all the purpose and meaning of life in the world,” she said, “or, you can just have a great glass of wine. It’s all the same in the end; I mean, we’re all going down — aren’t we?”

We looked at each other in shock for a moment before all the complicated emotions of the day exploded into laughter. The fact is, we both spend one day after another preoccupied with finding purpose and giving meaning to life — but there’s a point at which you just stop taking yourself seriously and let go. Sometimes short-term catharsis trumps profound universal truth.

The idea of Truth has driven ethical philosophers and spiritual seekers for thousands of years, and it’s not a bad thing, but it’s still just an idea. The reality of life is that no matter what we believe, we don’t know much, and probably never will. You might call ‘I don’t know’ the truth that underlies everything. It doesn’t mean we give up, or lose heart. It’s just that when it stands before you in all its irrefutable glory, words and ideas cease, not to mention pretentions of knowledge and righteousness. All that’s left is consciousness itself; it’s as if we’re tricked into pure mindfulness by the blatent bankrupcy of theorizing. It’s a good thing. There’s no harm in a glass of good wine, and there may be hidden splendors. In those moments of visceral mindfulness, it’s not what you do that matters; it’s how you do it.

Even though not everything I’ve said about the Tibetan tradition is unalloyed praise, I’ve been invited to speak at Tibet House in New York City next week. I’m always reassured by Buddhists who do what the Buddha did (keep open minds) rather than try to maintain an ideology at all costs. So, we’re heading out there next week, and also to the Won Institute in Philadelphia, to give a talk and promote The Novice. For more information, follow these links:

Won Institute: Friday morning, April 09, 11:30 am – 1:30 pm: Journey of a Buddhist Skeptic
Is the primary responsibility of a Buddhist to defend the historical teachings or to question them? Stephen Schettini recounts his harrowing quest for spiritual purpose as a struggle between conformity and integrity.

Tibet House:  Friday evening, April 09, 7:00 pm: Buddhism & What the Buddha Taught — Is There a Difference?
Stephen Schettini took his Buddhism so seriously that after eight years as a monk, he quit his robes, his teachers, his fellow monks and his hard-earned fluency in Tibetan, slamming the door on privileged monastic life. Now, thirty years later and teaching mindful reflection to secular, stressed-out consumers, he makes a careful distinction between Buddha and Buddhism. He’ll talk about the difficulties of balancing faith with open enquiry, and the challenge of transplanting the Buddha’s message in the West.

Stephen Schettini was a Buddhist monk for eight years. He studied in the Tibetan tradition and in Sri Lanka in the 1970s and early eighties and was trained to be a teacher of Buddhism to Westerners. He is director of Quiet Mind Seminars in Montreal and author of The Novice, How I Became a Buddhist Monk, Why I Quit and What I Learned, and of It Begins with Silence: The Art of Mindful Reflection.