Cancer in the body.
You may know someone with a cancer. Already, cured or succumbed. Cancer has become such an epidemic in modern world. It seems when our life expectancy went up as a population, it may have unmasked, these with more diagnostic facilities. But it seems a daunting experience to have one. Personally, I do not have this experience however I have seen someone closer to me going through this. He was a cheerful relative of mine, in his fifties, had a cancer diagnosis. And he was cheerful throughout his treatment period, even when he knew, he has few days to live. He came into terms within himself and passed away peacefully. And I am sure, that is not the case for everyone. Cancer has brought us enough mental and physical suffering, that I could not ignore it in the space. How someone can overcome such emotional consequences of a situation like diagnosis of a cancer. Even in that case some debilitating illness. It seems we have no other option than look into the faith, religion and if we fail, psychiatrist, to keep ourselves going. Let's look at cancer to understand some facts about it. As Just as death, it creates opportunity for us to think about the meaning of life seriously before life is cancelled out.
Cancer in the mind.
I do not have a cancer. Am I sure? Yes, so far there are no symptoms. But as you can understand this is not an absolute truth. There are few ways I can explain the relative truth in this, macroscopically speaking, microscopically speaking and philosophically speaking.
Macroscopically
It is true I do not have symptoms from a cancer. But now when I think about it, I know I am not 100% sure. I have a little back pain going on for some time. How sure I am that this is not a cancer. I can only assume. If someone did a whole-body scan today, in me they might find out a focus of a cancer in this body. Fully grown, half grown, curable, incurable, at any stage. That is one way, they detect cancers, in routine checkups. Good if it is curable at that time of diagnosis. So, bottom line macroscopically, I am not sure I do not have one. Imagine someone screened you whole body and did all the tests in the book to identify cancer in your body and you came up negative. What does this mean?
Microscopically
What it really means, just like you do not have symptoms, you do not have any detectable cancer, and you can live happily. Does this mean you will never get a cancer? No, on one side you can still harbor a focus of cancer in your body. If you know anything about tumor biology, cancer starts as a single abnormal growing cell. And there are dozens of defense mechanisms in our body at a microscopic and molecular level to prevent such a cell developing into a cancer. And as cell replication happens so often in our body, several thousands of cancer cells are born each day. And there is a chance that one can escape and grow into a full-blown cancer at any moment. Hence you are never out of risk of a cancer as long as you possess your body. Should we get panic? That is danger there itself, life is a risk every minute. If you have read my previous article dumb ways to die, you would understand this fact, it is a miracle we are living each day.
Philosophically.
Now, we know how cancers develop in our body, and the fact that it is a persistent risk. Just like crossing the road. However, there is a caveat in this. If you have read the previous article about consciousness, there I have discussed about a person who had an autopsy after death and diagnosed to have a cancer postmortem. And we concluded that it did not matter to the man who was dead. And relative to his consciousness, the cancer never existed. Similarly, if you imagined a severe dementia person, who cannot even remember his name, he would not have the mental suffering of the cancer. So, the cancer does exist in two forms, in a physical form in our body and in a mental form in our mind. Like everything else, like a reflection in a mirror. And obviously we cannot, stop the suffering from the physical part of the cancer. But it is important to recognize the mental cancer, as it is our own reflection, we can really reduce the mental suffering.
And if we expand any kind of suffering, I will say mental part is heavier, and more painful. Let them doctors tackle physical suffering, But I suggest we sharpen our mindfulness to tackle mental suffering when it arises. How do we do that?
Curing cancer in mind
Someone would suggest, let it go. Just like in article I previously wrote about in worse kind of mental pain. This is easier said than done. You can try all the advice given by psychotherapist to replace bad thoughts with happy ones. And I would say, it may or may not work.
And there is another way which is to understand the true nature of our mind. To understand how we perceive the world and to understand relative nature of truths which helps us to survive in the world. It is by mindfulness and wisdom we can see, even the cancer in our minds is formed in the same process, just like other mental objects. And if cancer in mind, and the suffering in mind associated it is a mental object, the characteristics are the same. So, mindfulness is not just looking at the pain hoping it will go away, it is the correct way of letting it go by understanding it. But the problem is, we should start doing it long before, we get inevitable macroscopic cancer, so our mind is a hydrophobic leaf, when the storm arises. Mindfulness is the cure for the mental cancer, alike.
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