State of Emergency and Grace
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
This quote attributed to the French Jesuit Priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin has always stuck with me. I first read it while volunteering in hospice in 2011 and spending the last hours with a resident both Upayadhi and I had been seeing for about a month. He had this quote sitting on his bedside table. It was clear to me that he would likely die that day, and reading that quote at that moment implanted it somewhere deep in my heart.
A few days ago, due to some complications with Upayadhi's recovery from abdominal surgery, we had to spend most of the day in the ER of Mount Sinai Hospital, arriving in the early hours after a difficult night.
Neither of us had ever experienced anything like this. The room was enormous and beds lined up some 5-10 inches apart, barely enough space for a nurse or doctor to fit between. "Privacy" was provided by flimsy curtains. The cacophony of sound was so loud that all we could do for the many long hours that followed was sound meditation. Talking was too challenging. Sounds ranged from the unceasing beeping and buzzing of monitors, to the chilling screaming of patients in pain or in fear or both, to intimate conversations of patients happening on speakerphone, and of course numerous conversations between nurses, doctors, security guards and other staff. There was loud music being played from various phones.
When we first walked in, Upayadhi described it as walking into a loud disco. The energy at 6am was high, with night staff looking forward to ending their shifts, and morning teams coming in "pumped" and ready for what was, arguably, something of a warzone. Some of you might be aware that the nurses of Mount Sinai recently went on strike, and the ER was highlighted for its numerous issues. We had followed their battle closely, but living inside of it was another matter. As the day progressed, patients continued to pile in, often without beds or even chairs. It was sometimes impossible to move around.
In many ways, the ER was a radically equalizing space: seemingly all social layers of humanity were present. This was a true human experience of dukkha - suffering, discontent, and uncertainty. It was full of human beings having an awful human experience. It included the insured and well-heeled who still had to wait. It included all those for whom the ER is their primary and only access to care, whether acute or routine. It included all the healthcare workers who were clearly submerged, fighting a fire that could never be put out.
I won't speak for Upayadhi, since I was just there in support of her and wasn't having the physical pain and discomfort that she was working with. But I can share with you that there were moments when I could let myself utterly be in the middle of this conglomeration of human suffering... and human compassion. In those moments, I could feel myself, and everyone else, as a spiritual being having a human experience. Those moments felt like the self could drop away and just be present for the continual permutations of experience. Then, a spell would break. I would re-become "just human" again. Impatience, frustration and helplessness would all kick in, confronted as I was by the situation here in this particular ER, and all the much larger causes and conditions leading to the present state of healthcare in this country.
"Spiritual beings having a human experience" might be understood as the co-arising of our Buddhanature and finite humanness. I get a glimpse of this in moments when I am fully awake to the reality of experience beyond my identification as the one having an experience separate from others. There is just experience. In the case of the ER, the experience was full on in every way, for all of us and all at once. Yet each person can become very identified with their particular pain and suffering, with the typical lingering questions: why me? why now? when do I get my X-ray? why am I in this job? etc. Yet flickering through all this was a sense of being in dukkha together, unindividuated. A palpable spiritual solidarity and collective compassion. A deeper silence beneath the cacophony.
Now, out of the trenches of the ER, how can we turn that knowing of interconnection and solidarity into an actual caring society for all? How can the spiritual beings that we all are, bring into being a more human world?
PS. After 11 hours in the ER (apparently a record-short time), Upayadhi was readmitted to the hospital. I have since brought her home again, and she is on the mend. She wants readers to know she is at ease and feeling good about her recovery process, and very grateful to all the staff of Mount Sinai Hospital working in difficult conditions.