BERKELEY BUDDHIST TEMPLE September 2013 Web Edition

Nebulizers
By Diane Ames
I surveyed my new asthma paraphernalia gloomily. The drug warnings about the
prednisone said to contact your doctor if you suddenly go blind. The warnings
that came with the nebulizer said that if this device is not disinfected at least
every other day, the user will die. Yes, this was serious stuff.
At this point Death fluttered into the room again. This time he was dressed
up as the Maya see him, in a colorful Maya skeleton suit with a real human skull
for a head.
“Your first nebulizer!” he said. “How cute! And prednisone. Your lungs
must be a mess.”
“These things are temporary!” I snapped. “I’m recovering from the
pneumonia, but it’s made my asthma worse.”
“Which in turn will make you vulnerable to yet more lung infections, which
will mess up your blood sugar, which will make you even more vulnerable to
infections. You Buddhists call it dependent co-origination.”
“Have you ever wondered why you have few friends”
“Actually I have quite a social life. Sooner or later, everybody meets me.”
“It’s funny how you keep making Buddhist points.”
“Buddhism again! Your Buddha founded that religion to deal with me, and
it hasn’t gotten rid of me in two thousand years.”
“In the first place, don’t take all the credit! The idea was to deal with birth,
disease, old age, and death, and all the human suffering in between. In the
second place, the Buddha knew that we’ll never get rid of you. He set out to
teach us how to live with, among other things, that fact.”
“So after all these years of studying the Dharma, have you found out how
to live with it, now that you personally are old, sick, and staring me in the face in
the foreseeable future”
“No, but I will or I’ll die trying.”
At this Death smiled sardonically and fluttered out of the room whistling,
“I’ll be seeing you.”