Healing Myself in the Process of Helping Others

Today is the seventh anniversary of my mother's death. After she died, I kept vigil by her grave in my hometown for a while. I had originally meant to do the three-year grave-mourning, but with elderly parents above and children below to support, I had to break it off halfway.

I later planned, on the seventh anniversary of her passing, to take temporary monastic orders at a temple for a while as an expression of grief. But when the seventh anniversary arrived, that plan too had to be set aside.

On May 3, 2012, my loving mother left this world. On May 3, 2019, I was treating patients who had traveled far to see me.

Their earnest plea for help was no different from my own feelings when I had carried my mother from doctor to doctor. The anxiety these patients' families faced at life-and-death moments was something I had known myself.

In the days before my mother's death, I wrote an essay, Meditations on Life. Reading it now, it all feels as if it happened yesterday.

That Qingming, the countryside back home was bleak with bitter wind and rain. My mother lay dying, and I was helpless. My heart was torn; I bitterly hated my own inadequate skill, unable to save her.

One night I dreamed my mother came to my bedside and said, "Son, save me." But I could do nothing; in the dream I could not stop myself from wailing aloud.

My father heard me, pulled on his clothes, and came to my room to ask if I'd had a nightmare. My frail mother, a light sleeper, must have heard me too, but said nothing.

During that time, my mother always urged me not to stay with her in the countryside. She wanted me to return to normal work as soon as possible and earn a living.

The last time I left home before she died, only half a month remained. As I left, she stuffed a bag full of oranges for me to eat on the way.

On the train, when I peeled them, I found they had all gone bad. But I did not throw a single one away; I ate them all. Because I knew this might be the last way my mother expressed her love for me. When I came home half a month later, she was already in extremis.

In the final hours, my mother sobbed in my arms. The moment she stopped breathing, I fainted away.

My mother's death plunged me into deep depression—the second spiritual crisis of my life; the first had been in college.

The word "depression" is closely tied to bereavement. Freud even held that depression is a product of loss.

What truly pulled me out of that depression was my patients.

The most important of them was a Mr. Li, a peritoneal mesothelioma patient from Rongcheng, Weihai, Shandong. Every time he came, he basically brought me some kelp from his hometown, so later I even jokingly called him "Kelp Brother."

He needed my help, and in turn helped me rebuild my confidence.

My mother's death had left me deeply doubting both Chinese and Western medicine, and my faith in my own skill plunged to its lowest point. At that time I felt I was worth nothing.

I had once been a confident and headstrong person, carried by my brilliant student days into thinking I truly stood out. But my mother's death dealt me a fatal blow. I had studied medicine day and night to cure her, yet stood helpless when death took her. That experience made me realize my own incompetence and smallness.

Yet my patients never doubted my skill for a moment because I could not save my own mother. They firmly believed I was the best doctor they could find. They comforted me, supported me, and still hoped I would keep treating them.

Every year when "Kelp Brother" came to me, we would talk about life. We agreed not to worry about the future: I would just work hard to keep him alive that year, so he could spend one more year with his family, and then we'd plan for the next. Year by year, we kept extending his life.

Treating these patients distracted me and gave my life meaning. As their lives were extended, I saw hope again—the useful side of this imperfect medicine.

But like a karmic cycle, just as the seventh anniversary of my mother's death approached, Kelp Brother passed away.

On April 24, 2019, "Kelp Brother," the mesothelioma patient, died of recurrence despite treatment. His leaving also grieved me deeply. Those who have not known the pain of loss can hardly understand how important the people who stay by us after bereavement are.

On April 28, I went to Weihai again to treat another patient. Recalling a previous visit when Kelp Brother had driven me along the seafront, I could not help but sigh.

In treating these patients, I gradually walked out of the grief of losing my mother. Helping them was also a process of healing myself. And now, some of the very patients who helped heal me have themselves left me, one by one.

The Buddha taught that life has eight sufferings: birth, old age, illness, death, parting from the beloved, meeting the hateful, not getting what you seek, and the burning of the five aggregates. A doctor who treats cancer is the person closest to these eight sufferings; every day I witness sentient beings tormented by them.

What is hell on earth? These people enduring every kind of suffering are living in hell on earth.

Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva made the great vow—if I do not enter hell, who will? A doctor's vow is not so grand. But from history to today, there has been no shortage of doctors who, after suffering loss, reflected deeply, set aside the noise of the world, and chose medicine.

Though it is a road strewn with thorns—practitioners often feel keen frustration from failure—healing people always brings inner solace.

Medical Sage Zhang Zhongjing took up medicine in earnest when over 80% of his family died of plague within less than ten years. Li Dongyuan of the Jin-Yuan four great masters, grieved that his mother died of an illness no doctor could name, resolved to abandon his wealth and study medicine. Japan's Tsumura Harakazu endured eighteen years of wandering to master Kampo after his eldest daughter died of typhoid. The great warm-disease physician Wu Jutong, too, when his own relative fell ill and died, felt deeply that "not knowing medicine is unfilial," gave up official career, and settled into medical study.

The grief I have personally felt, they must have felt too. And they, like me, probably healed themselves in the process of healing their patients.

Three years ago, a patient with depression whose mother had died in a car accident sought my help; we later became kindred spirits. Today that patient, who is in retreat at a temple, invited me to visit, saying the temple's quiet environment suits me.

It is just a pity that my own practice ground in this life cannot be in deep mountains and old forests, but must be this medical road on which life-and-death parting lies in wait at every moment. I can only, in my dealings with patients and families sunk in suffering, diligently cultivate my sila, samadhi, and panna, and extinguish my greed, hatred, delusion, pride, and doubt.

So many people seek all kinds of paths to liberation—or self-healing. Deep in many hearts lies a deep scar. The scar deep in mine was slowly closed in the process of helping patients solve their problems.

That scar is also the force driving me forward. Though the road of medicine is the hardest road I have walked, I am willing to walk it.

Only after practicing medicine did I deeply understand how hard it is to be a doctor: we face the multitude of ordinary people who need help.

Since they are the multitude, they come in every shape and form. To adapt to this multitude in all its variety, a doctor must step by step overcome his own shortcomings, conquer his weaknesses, endure what others cannot endure, bear what others cannot bear, and still strive to relieve patients' suffering and absorb the blows of failure.

So practicing medicine can also be called a supreme path of self-growth. The ancients said, if not a great minister, then a great physician. But how easy is it to be a great physician?