Many things have transpired since my last blog. Perhaps it would be best to focus in on just a couple of areas to bring everyone up to speed. Today, let’s look at the whimsical and the practical.
Sardonic Radio
My radio show, Spiritwell, has made tremendous inroads in the local community here at the University of Illinois. The radio program was originally designed to probe the powers of mind-body healing, metaphysics, religion, and politics. After years of promoting Modern Buddhist Healing, writing my newest book, Riding the Wheel to Wellness and its intense promotion, I became burned out with the seriousness of my quest.
As some of you may know, I studied and practiced magick for four years prior to becoming a Buddhist. My teacher was occult author, Dr. Israel Regardie, the former secretary of Aleister Crowley. One could say that my humor, personality, and discipline were – for better and worse, profoundly influenced by the infamous old Uncle Alex. In other words, I have always been capable of inducing a state of samadhi, emerging from it with the potential of punching someone out. Although such a contradictory persona is not exactly the ideal of the peaceful Buddhist, I’ve never claimed to be a Gandhi clone. In fact, one of my oldest friends dubbed me with the tired old moniker of a man whose “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” As much as I would like to be more like the gentle Baba Ram Dass, I find myself at age 55 to be more like the imp, Crowley. The key to deconstructing Crowley is to never blindly follow him, as he is the consummate trickster, leaving iron pyrite for gold, polished crystals for gems, and metaphysical booby traps for the wide-eye aspirant. I learned this truth before it destroyed me – I can’t say the same thing for a host of other would-be magicians that were consumed by his elemental deception. I’m sure he’s still laughing in the city of the pyramids. In Buddhist terms, this means follow the Law and not the person.
Now back to the radio. The morning before the first show, I expressed my frustration to the Gohonzon. I felt as if I was becoming one of those boring stiffs that roam the campus here, sucking up the taxpayer’s money on their tenured track to fully realized mediocrity. As my daimoku progressed, it occurred to me that a satirical approach would be a lot more fun and might displace the cobwebs nesting between some people’s ears. At the time of my research, writing, and book promotions, I was also working a full time job as maintenance superintendent for an area business while maintaining a household. The merry prankster in me surfaced and the rest is now local history.
Thanks to thirty-five years of consistent study of comparative religion, mythology, science, and politics, I was able to take on the universal absurdities of the world’s religion and political hucksters. Thanks to decades of training, I was ready to take on the Muslims, evangelical Christians, Hindus, and even my brethren Buddhists who frequently need a good swift kick in the bum. I discovered that listeners were much more responsive to the lampoon approach than the often mind-numbing seriousness of the spiritual healing pitch. Being a latent smartass sometimes has its advantages.
The results have been excellent. Not only have the neophytes been educated and entertained, I have had a lot of fun cuffing the charlatans and political vampires that think nothing of trading our children’s future security for their own comfort. Life has never been so good for me. Now let’s look at the eminently practical and altruistic persona that has for the most part, become the Charles you are most familiar with.
Healthy by Design
Wellness is a precious gift. Sometimes we take our health for granted. When one loses their good health, that precious state of wellness once enjoyed becomes even more obvious. For all those who have recovered from cancer or other chronic conditions, the dread of relapse is often a daily, although fleeting thought. As you all know, I have made it my life’s work to transform my battle with fourth-stage lymphoma into a boon of encouragement for humankind. Yet, even after nineteen years, I must relive all my fears on a biannual basis as part of a clinical trail protocol where I am examined from head to toe, with no orifice remaining undefiled. Then there is a full battery of blood tests that seek out any potential imbalance.
Imagine my situation, please. I have set myself up as an example of recovery from deadly Illness. On a conscious level, this was never my intention. My purpose was to be someone who could offer encouragement to others facing a health crisis. After two books, countless speeches, and all that being an authority on triumph over illness implies, to have a relapse or suffer some other chronic illness would be troubling indeed. Yet, I know that one day something or other will happen to me just as it happens to every other biological entity – that’s just the nature of life. But whom do I turn to for guidance when fear or nervousness about my own health or mortality emerges? As it stands, beyond the answers a medical doctor can answer about the mechanics of the body and the prognosis of illness, I am quite alone.
For encouragement, I can refer to the sutras and Gosho, but there is nothing downright specific in there on how to become well. There is, of course, the message behind the myths, and the practice of perfection that can enable one to realize for themselves, just what to do and how hard to do it. It is the practice itself that unveils the unspoken wisdom of life and death. You can’t find that wisdom in a book or from the most heartfelt guidance. It is an awakening or realization that comes of itself. The sutras, Gosho, guidance, and books can only point the way; the rest is up to you.
Last week was one of those days where I had to spend an entire day under the scrutiny of the hawkeyed oncologists. What I want to share with you is something practical. Perhaps by doing so, you may find a means to improve your own health or be inspired to overcome an illness you are battling.
For me, it begins with a prayer. For example, I noticed that my weight was 212 pounds, a little high for my 6’1 frame. There are other important markers for men 55 years old as well. I must be concerned with blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, adequate blood counts, and there are a dozen or more other things the doctors look at.
At the risk of sounding simplistic, I sit before the Gohonzon and begin to chant daimoku communicating to myself that I want to manifest perfect blood counts in accord with perfect health. A friend once suggested I name my method for slimming down as the Atkins Prayer Diet. This was a great idea if I wanted to be sued by the estate of the late Robert Atkins, M.D.
A couple weeks before my appointment, I tell myself that I will weigh 200 pounds by the time of the examination. This is not mere wishful thinking. I eliminate snacks, soda pop; I make the determination to eat only when hungry, and then eat sensibly, ending the meal before I am full. The results for me are always the same. With the other tests, I instruct my body to have a good blood pressure of 120/80, cholesterol under 100, and so on.
This approach of leaving the balancing act of perfectly functioning bodily systems and blood counts to the unconscious has served me exceptionally well. Is it just a coincidence? The truth is that I don’t believe in coincidences. It wasn’t even ten years ago that I regained my balance that was devastated by chemotherapy. In fact, it took about ten years to regain my physical strength. Having become ripped, physically fit, and in robust health at my age is as much a surprise to me as it is to my doctors. I’ve concluded that even if I was told I had only moments to live, I have had one magnificent, amazing ride. There would be no regrets as what I overcame and what I accomplished in the years following my illness has inspired and brought hope to many thousands of people of all faiths, throughout the world.
As an example of my rebound, I share with you a semi-humorous incident that occurred the day after my physical exam. While at work, I caught one of my Mexican friends drinking a beer early in the morning. Apparently he was having some “hair of the dog” that had bit him the night before. I chastised him in front of his fellow Mexican friends. To save face by being funny, when my back was turned, he came from behind me and struck me behind my right knee to take my legs from under me.
Although I am not ordinarily a violent person, I was once a solider during the Viet Nam era and know how to defend myself. When the man, clearly as large as me, struck the back of my knee, I instinctively spun around and shoved him in the solar plexus with such force that both his feet left the ground and he landed on his back, gasping for breath and stunned. Once he composed himself he approached me with head down and said that he was sorry and that he loved me. I said, you’re my amigo, I love you too, Now get your ass back to work.” The point of my story is not that I’m some kind of tough guy. I am merely illustrating that I went from an emaciated, enfeebled old man to a person who could take out a thirty-year old man with one move. I owe it all to prayer and exercise.
In my exam last week, I weighed in at 200 pounds with a blood pressure of 120/70, and had perfect cholesterol. As the exam progressed, the doctor remarked that every blood test was perfect as if it came from a textbook. He had never seen anything like it.
What I want to do is encourage those people who have watched their body malfunction, against their wish for health. With prayer, please tell your mind to instruct your body to achieve a state of wellness. You don’t know what improved cellular or metabolic processes are involved to restore health, but your life does, so ask it to function perfectly in accord with perfect health. Now be well, my friends, but don’t forget to keep your sense of humor, even when things look bleak. If you need a funny image of health rebounded, imagine me taking out my amigo with one move when he (like disease) thought he had the drop on me. Now that's a bodhisattva with a punch line!
A long awaited medical study on the effect of prayer and healing was just released. The results of this study have confounded advocates of prayer and bolstered the claims of skeptics. The research found that “prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery...”
Further, “patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.”
For nearly two decades, I have been following this kind of research. There were no surprises in this study for me. Attachment to a particular outcome is bad science and deluded religion. "This study was begun almost a decade ago and involving more than 1,800 patients.” I couldn’t contain a major eye roll when I read that “the new study was intended to overcome flaws in the earlier investigations.”
The purpose of this particular study was to satisfy the criticisms leveled at earlier studies. Dr. Herbert Benson, one of the authors of the study, is the researcher that discovered the phenomena known as the relaxation response and remembered wellness. This study of intercessory prayer proves to me how little we understand of the nature of prayer or the scientific method.
“Researchers monitored 1,802 patients at six hospitals who received coronary bypass surgery, in which doctors reroute circulation around a clogged vein or artery. The patients were broken into three groups. Two were prayed for; the third was not. Half the patients who received the prayers were told that they were being prayed for; half were told that they might or might not receive prayers.”
The members of three Christian groups delivered prayers, using the patients' first names and their first initials of their last names. They were instructed to pray in their own ways, but they were to include the phrase, "for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications." After analyzing complications in the 30 days after the operations, no differences were found between those patients who were prayed for and those who were not.
There are various problems with this long awaited study, as I see it. My problem is not with the results. Even though I have written two books on the power of prayer and healing, my position is firmly on the side of science – not the mythos of speculative mysticism. However, anecdotal evidence of the power of prayer to heal is more than compelling; it is like a weather vane that points the direction that wind is blowing.
Even if future scientific studies on the effect of prayer and healing concluded that prayer has no effect on biological systems, it wouldn’t concern or sway me for this reason – personal experience. In other words, in my reality and way of thinking, science is clearly in its infancy and living beings have been hardwired for prayer since the dawn of man. If prayer were not useful or effective, it would not be as fundamental to our species as the go to tool for our survival.
It is also a fact that I have both personally experienced and observed in others the indisputable effect of prayer, meditation, and intention on biological systems. Make no mistake – prayer and/or meditation and intention works on the mind, the body, various biological systems, insentient life, and even weather. Science has not yet figured out how to properly test prayer, meditation, and intention. This particular study’s deepest flaw, in my opinion, was the people who were praying being given a first name and last initial. There is no connection here between the person praying and the recipient.
Another problem with any kind of quality prayer research study is the person who is praying. How does one truly know how they pray – the duration, the quality, perhaps the internal banter of conflicting ideas or goals? How does one quantify that problem? If I were to conduct a study on prayer and healing, I would use certified meditation masters like Tibetan monks, qigong masters, or those who have spent decades being able to induce trance states. Based on past studies, there is no question in my mind that the results of that study would be much different. But that is not a slight or dismissal of the average faithful person uttering prayers to aid themselves, a loved one, or an individual in need.
This study is proof that the whole model for intercessory prayer research is in need of remodeling. Perhaps the best way to go is found in the methodology carved out by the prayer research group Spindrift that used bacteria, bean sprouts, and plants to investigate the power of intercessory prayer on life. Until then, the skeptics will herald this study as proof that science has no business wasting valuable money and resources on a religious matter. The advocates of the healing power of prayer will back-peddle and lick their wounds – as prayer itself may no longer be the all-curing ointment they once supposed. As I see it right now, neither group can see the truth – they are double blind. I believe the future will reveal that prayer and meditation are scientifically valid and that science is becoming the quasi-religion of tomorrow. Science needs religion and religion needs science. Neither should fear the other, but they do. In the mean time, do not abandon your prayers for the sick and suffering. Prayer works – if it didn’t, you wouldn’t be reading this article.
Quoted material is from "Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer"
by Benedict Carey ("NY Times," March 31, 2006) New York, USA -