Nielk
Senior Member
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Toni Bernhard, author and person with CFS, offers her 2nd blog post. http://bit.ly/gJ0XA4
I'm in middle of reading her book "How to be Sick".
Her emphasis in the book and blogs is the teachings of Buddha which she had embraced even before she became sick with CFS. Of course, she went into the study of Buddhism
more deeply since then.
To me, it parallels the serenity prayer:
God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
Except that it seems much more passive for my taste.
I am definitely by far not an expert in Buddhism but, from what I read so far from Toni's book (and Cort's comments on it), it seems that "desire" (of any kind) is to be avoided.
If for example, you find yourself ill -if you can just experience it and not give into the desire to be healthy, it will be much easier to tolerate.
I might be totally wrong with my interpretation and please correct me if I'm stating this incorrectly.
The problem that I have with this philosophy is that it doesn't spurn you into action.
There might be a lot of things that you might be able to do to alleviate your suffering instead of just letting go of the desire to get well. In addition, you might say that what if you are suffering from an illness that nothing has been able to help so far, isn't it better to just accept the fact that you cannot change things, it's not in your hands? How do you know when you tried enough things? How do you know that had you tried the next remedy out there, it wouldn't have helped? If you give up the desire to want to get well and accept this stage of life just for what it is how do you know you have not shortchanged yourself and missed out on a possible cure?
I'm in middle of reading her book "How to be Sick".
Her emphasis in the book and blogs is the teachings of Buddha which she had embraced even before she became sick with CFS. Of course, she went into the study of Buddhism
more deeply since then.
To me, it parallels the serenity prayer:
God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
Except that it seems much more passive for my taste.
I am definitely by far not an expert in Buddhism but, from what I read so far from Toni's book (and Cort's comments on it), it seems that "desire" (of any kind) is to be avoided.
If for example, you find yourself ill -if you can just experience it and not give into the desire to be healthy, it will be much easier to tolerate.
I might be totally wrong with my interpretation and please correct me if I'm stating this incorrectly.
The problem that I have with this philosophy is that it doesn't spurn you into action.
There might be a lot of things that you might be able to do to alleviate your suffering instead of just letting go of the desire to get well. In addition, you might say that what if you are suffering from an illness that nothing has been able to help so far, isn't it better to just accept the fact that you cannot change things, it's not in your hands? How do you know when you tried enough things? How do you know that had you tried the next remedy out there, it wouldn't have helped? If you give up the desire to want to get well and accept this stage of life just for what it is how do you know you have not shortchanged yourself and missed out on a possible cure?