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May 9, 2008
"You purified your own pain by willingly experiencing it with mindfulness and equanimity. Now, in daily interaction, you open yourself up to other people's pain. But you apply mindfulness and equanimity to it as it resonates within you. By experiencing another person's pain in this liberated way, you are subtly, subliminally helping them to do the same." --Shinzen Young
A Polio Survivor Serves the Dying
From the neck up, John Welton looks like Santa Claus before his beard turned white. From the chest down, he is atrophied. He walks with crutches, his right leg bearing the weight of his 130-pound body. Welton, 60, has survived polio. And yet, he serves dying patients at Montefiore Medical Center, working there as a Physician Assistant. He does not wear a long white coat because it might tangle his crutches. Still, Mr. Welton's appearance is a professional advantage. "A lot of times when I come into the room and a patient sees me," he said, "there's this feeling of, O.K., he's going to understand what I'm going through." Mr. Welton is unusually familiar with the wounds that flesh is heir to. He has therefore learned something important: to savor life, in his patients and in himself.
BE THE CHANGE
Is there some pain that you have undergone and transformed? Use it as a foundation for serving someone else going through a similar challenge.
