Reiki and Equanimity

I was excited to hear of the upcoming release of a new book by the young Canadian author Karen Connelly. Her new novel, "Burmese Lessons: A true love story" will be available March 18, 2010. As regards her prior award winning novel, "The Lizard Cage," let me deny any intention of reflecting on the political aspects of the book - politics are neither my forte nor the intention of this Blog.

"The Lizard Cage" is a book that captures the essence of both Reiki and Hospice, which are the principles topics of this Blog. This book has a universality that I reflect on over and over again. Teza, the primary character of the novel, is terminally ill.

Teza is not in a hospital, rather, he is in a prison, and he does not have cancer, or HIV or dementia, rather he has a desire for political change, but, his human condition is universal. For a time he reflects on the situation around him, fellow prisoners, guards, what there is to eat today, memories of better times. He thinks of his youth and of loved ones. He thinks of music he might have played or poems he might have written. And as time goes on, his denial and anger turn to acceptance.

Beaten and starved, Teza continues his "decline trajectory." He knows his "prognosis," that he is heading toward "such a small word" - death.

In a very quiet way he follows the path of the Buddha - and like a Reiki master focuses on "just for today." Teza ceases anger, he ceases worrying, he is grateful for the most limited gifts, he works at kindness to others, and at emanating compassion, even for his guards.

Teza finds a place beyond compassion. Equanimity. "He begins and ends with this word. Equanimity in the face of what must be." As his end comes, he teaches a young boy, "It's the same for everything - people, animals, plants, all the things we make and build, Even if people or things look the same, they're always shifting or growing or dying. Nothing stays the same for any of us. So we try to have upekkha, to live with upekkha. That means to accept the change that comes and to be calm in it."

For me Reiki does not mean to enhance vibrational levels or increase power, since power is an illusion. Vibrational levels are an illusion. Reiki is simple. Each of us have a channel, and that channel can be widened, and grounded, and kept open and free of blocks. We can reach a place of calm and equanimity with our world, and from that place of calm and focus and with good intention, our hands can become vessels through which healing flows.

In Hospice, we meet people like Teza everyday, people who we cannot cure, but who we can assist in healing. We can gift them with presence and with our own calm, and help them to not live their last moments alone.

Teza helps us break out of the "medical model," and understand the universality of our dilemma, and why Reiki is simple and why it can help. If you get an opportunity to read "The Lizard Cage" by Karen Connelly, if you forget the politics as I often do, you can learn a great deal about Reiki and about Hospice.

I hope the book coming out on May 18, "Burmese Lessons: a true love story" will like Ms Connelly's prior book, touch my heart.

For those interested in the politics described in the book seek the website http://www.burmamission.org/

"The Wind of Falling Leaves -

It takes so much rain
To give the perfect color
To the maple leaves
But they are blown away
By a single gust of wind."

"In General"

Understand (life) by
Seeing how the stone has
Been
Hollowed out by the rain
Don't cling to the illusion
That nothing changes."

The above poems were from the Meiji Emperor, and were felt by Mikao Usui to be important. I understand these translations to have been by Frank Arjava Petter and Chetna Kobayashi. I reflect on them in thinking on the dilemmas posed by Karen Connelly, and the lives of people in Hospice, and the lives of people living under oppression in all times.