What's This? Don't Know

An old meditation, a frightening hospital stay, and the practice of living with uncertainty. By Sage Cohen

In college, I attended a monthly gathering of the interfaith community. Each month, a spiritual leader from a different tradition would come to introduce us to their religious beliefs and practices. I remember only one of these speakers: a woman with a shaved head and an orange robe with a presence that stilled the room around her. She was a Buddhist monk who also served as a hospice nurse.

She spoke of why it was important to have a relationship with the human condition of impermanence—and how her meditation practice led her to be with people making the crossing from this life into the next. This was the first I’d heard of death being an opportunity for the living: something one might meaningfully embrace.

I had never encountered a person who felt like this monk. She was entirely present. She seemed rooted to the earth in the way a tree might be. I imagined the winds and tides of human emotion and cogitation simply moving around her. I often felt like a tumbleweed at the mercy of such forces. I wanted to feel on the inside like this woman felt on the outside.

She taught us a meditation—my first. On the in-breath, we asked ourselves, “What’s this?” On the out-breath, we answered, “Don’t know.”

I resisted at first. I have always been a meaning-maker. I find great comfort in telling a story that transforms obstacle into opportunity. I wanted to practice knowing—and benefit from its wonderful halo effect of imagining myself in control.

Why would anyone practice not-knowing? Because comprehending the human condition is not possible, the monk explained. When we acknowledge that we cannot truly perceive events or people as good or bad, right or wrong, this lets us relax into the uncertainty and impermanence that are the more essential truths of our existence. Though I wasn’t convinced that I wanted to hang out in that interstitial place, I practiced it to see what I’d find.

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In the almost forty years since learning “What’s this? “Don’t know.” I have plumbed the depths of endless traditions, practices, meditations, and strategies in a quest to skillfully navigate my emotional wiring, my interpersonal patterns, and the impact these have on my body. Along the way, I have cultivated a robust self-care toolbox.

And yet, I always return in my most challenging moments to this original meditation. From sleeplessness to hopelessness, it has helped me simply accompany the parts of myself unable to find their way until, eventually, a way appears.

I was recently hospitalized for the first time since my son's birth 18 years ago. I had a high fever, which I quickly learned is a life-threatening event for a person in chemo treatment. I entered the ER on a Friday afternoon and ended up in a four-day saga of diagnosis and treatment related to my white blood cell count.

The first night I spent in a sort of hallway with cubbies for overflow ER patients (due to an underflow of hospital beds). On my second night, sleepless in my private room, the inquiry began to breathe me: “What’s this? Don’t know.”

As the words moved through me, it occurred to me that with my bald head and shapeless pajamas, I now look very much like the monk who woke me up to impermanence some 40 years ago. And then I realized that like my monk spirit guide, I have entered the realm of hospice as I accompany myself through the death of my identity as a healthy person with the devotion a diseased body requires.

For four days the doctors, too, asked “What’s this?” And the answer they got was, “Don’t know.” It was never determined where my compromised white blood cells opened the gate, or what system took the hit of whatever entered. What we do know is that 48+ hours of IV antibiotics seems to have solved it.

As it turned out, my surgeon was rounding on my final morning in the hospital. After telling me I’d be going home that day, she spoke the words I had been praying to hear: “Your scans look great! Everything is shrinking. Surgery will happen next week, as scheduled.”

I hugged the surgeon, this new and essential interpreter of my inner world. And I came home, white blood cell count restored to normal, energized to begin planning for an event that I intended to be the next step in saving my life.

What’s this? Don’t know. Breathing in the beauty of light slanting through my silent blinds. Breathing out this moment to make space for the next. The heavy assurances of my dog’s head in my lap as he breathes into impermanence with me.

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Sage Cohen is a poet, essayist, fiction writer, and writing teacher who served as the first poetry editor of Certain Age Magazine. She is the author of the poetry collection Like the Heart, the World and three books on the writing life: Writing the Life Poetic, The Productive Writer, and Fierce on the Page. A Pushcart Prize nominee and award-winning writer, Sage has published widely and spent decades helping others find their voices on the page. Learn more at SageCohen.com

Images:

• Gerbera daisies, horizontal by A.C.

• Gerbera daisies, vertical by Eduardo Ramos