Dear Sifu Gardner,
“Build yourself an Ark,”
Floods rush on our valley home
Still, Mount Fuji waits.
“Build yourself an Ark,” is a quote from Rabbi Simon Jacobson, a teacher of Jewish mysticism. His advice to his students is to study and practice spirituality during the stable and good times in our life in order to prepare us for our inevitable struggles. When we concentrate on the higher aspects of ourselves, we gain easier access to those thoughts and feelings in our day-to-day. Over time we end up with a massive structure of truth and habits which we can lean on when the world gets dark.
In an attempt to build up my personal Ark, I decided to sign up for your Zen and Eastern Theatre class during the Fall 2020 semester. It became quite clear I had made the correct choice. The Zen portion of the class, and your recommendation that I read Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, taught me a meditation practice I’ve come to highly value. Coming into class and tuning into the foundational levels of my consciousness brought a calm, restful, habit to my intense weeks of full-time studies and full-time work. The Noh theatre aspect of the class, something I was more trepidacious about, ended up being equally valuable. I remember the first time we rehearsed our entire play: standing in the traditional posture with feet close together and weight on my heels, becoming a ghost seeking redemption, seeing Mount Fuji and the temple, and opening out my arms as our character received release from his past. Because of how deliberate the process was, I remember feeling totally attuned to the entire class as I experienced the same emotional freedom that our ghost did. An excellent addition to my Ark.
It was in the middle of the semester when trouble struck and my Ark was needed. Towards the end of October I fell quite ill; I was confident I was experiencing a rather intense flu, and I confirmed it with a doctor. However, three days into my illness I noticed I had lost feeling in my limbs and that sensation didn’t seem to be returning. I looked at my hands and feet and saw that they had turned blue. I was unable to stand and was experiencing pain through my whole body. My fiancée decided to get me to the hospital, but she wasn’t able to help me up. We called an ambulance, and one of the most vivid memories I have of that evening is the EMT asking me, “How are you still conscious?” as they took my blood pressure and saw how low it was.
If that wasn’t a sign of how much trouble I was in, getting to the emergency room made it clear. The team working to stabilize me was three to four times bigger than the teams I saw with other patients. They poked and prodded and injected and rubbed and definitely tried to soothe. The most intense moment came when they realized they had to do a special operation to give me an important medication: the chemical they were using would be safe for my organs but dangerous to bring into direct contact with my veins. Instead of giving me an IV through my arm they were going to cut into my neck, right at my jugular, and insert a thin, half foot long, hose past my artery and straight to my heart.
To do the procedure they had to cover my face with a plastic sheet; a tube was provided so I could still breathe. The experience, as intended, was rather distressing on its own; a dangerous incision combined with the oppression of not being able to see or move. This amplified when my breathing tube fell out; they were in the middle of the process of insertion and there was no way for them to help me adjust. Covered in plastic, with a lack of access to new oxygen, being stuck having to make shallow breaths, I felt panic start to come on. When I was a kid I didn’t even let my blanket cover my face out of fear that I would suffocate; all the stress and worry I had been trying to contain the last three days torrented on me in an anxious dread.
There was something that clicked for me, though, right in that moment: “I have no control here.” It’s something that came to me as we pondered the Kōan, “Who am I?” I am many things, including, “A drop in an ocean of humanity, matter, and energy. No matter what I do, control of the world can always be taken from me, if I ever even had it.” The solution, when power is taken from us, is to grab onto the one thing we can still control: how we react. I knew I needed to react in a calm, still, manner. If my panicked breaths continued I would lose access to the little air I had. If I moved or shifted to find relief my artery could end up cut and I would die. I began to meditate. Slow, relaxed, breathing. Focusing inward on my hara.
I calmed down, I survived, and I was moved to the Intensive Care Unit for further treatment. Meditation works.
My time in the ICU had its own challenges. I was given my diagnosis: septic shock of unknown origins. Somehow, more than a month later we still don’t know, an infection had gotten into my bloodstream. My body had started to shut itself down in order to dedicate more resources to fighting it. I had taken severe damage to my liver and kidneys, my muscles had atrophied to power the fight, and several layers of skin on my extremities had died as blood flow had been cut off. Septic shock has a mortality rate of around 40%, it was a close call.
I was stuck in my ICU bed in a blur of time and new nurses. I was given excellent care and I was given a chance to lean on my Ark again as one of my caregivers was an interesting and wise Christian. We had some great talks about spirituality and religion.
Did you know that half of ICU patients experience delusions and hallucinations while they are in care? I didn’t, until I started to experience them. Some say it is because ICU patients are so close to the veil that they begin to see the spirit world. It didn’t feel like that to me. I was trapped in this bed, my body had become so weak that I could barely move my arms and I didn’t have the strength to sit up or turn around. This means that for hours upon hours I was stuck, staring at the same three walls. I knew that behind me there was an open window to the outside, and I desperately wanted to see it, but all I had was these three walls. To me, the ICU delusions started because my brain was so sick of the same imagery that it started to make new sensations. I saw strange patterns of light on the ceiling, I saw bizarre people out of the corner of my eye (that was rather spooky), and I heard music that my nurses and visitors couldn’t hear themselves. A new sort of distress started to take me: what if my mind had been affected by what had happened to me? What if I’d always see and hear strange things? I’d never been in a situation before where I couldn’t trust my own perceptions and I wasn’t sure if I could handle it.
It was with these frustrations, of my body and mind, that physical therapy began two days into my hospital stay. The physical therapist established trust with me quickly, he came off as intelligent and caring, and he told me he thought I was ready to try to move around. With his support I sat up. He challenged me to try to stand as well. I love a challenge, and desperately wanted to get moving again, and so I took him on.
As I got to the edge of the bed he stood there, ready to catch me. My feet touched ground for the first time since the ambulance had picked me up. It took all my strength, but I began standing. I noticed, as he instructed me, that with my feet so close together the stance he wanted me to take was reminiscent of our Noh theatre standing position. I put my weight back on my heels to tune more into that headspace, it actually made the standing more comfortable, and I took smalls steps to turn so that I could finally see my window.
The view had me awe struck. The hospital was in an elevated area on the northeast part of Salt Lake City. I looked out to a perfect view of Ensign Peak and City Creek Canyon, more green than I possibly could have expected, and the Utah State Capitol standing as one of the only discernible buildings in a sea of trees. In my mind I heard your voice, “I am a ghost,” and in what some would call my imagination and what some would call my third eye I saw Mount Fuji in the beautiful mountain range and the temple in our capitol building. I found myself struck with the exact same feeling I had felt in our performances: warmth, redemption, knowing the past cannot hold me, and attunement to humanity. I knew in that moment that I would find healing, both mentally and physically, and peace came to me.
Once my doctors were confident that I was safe I was transferred to the Internal Medicine department to make more room for Coronavirus patients (I was only one of two patients in the ICU not there due to complication connected to the pandemic), my hallucinations faded, and after a week in the hospital I was released. It was during this time that you called me to express your prayers and well-wishes, and I will always be appreciative of your support.
Back in the real-world things didn’t immediately turn to normal. Recovery has been long, and I’m still not at 100%. Foundationally speaking, though, I am stronger than ever. It isn’t often that I’ve had to grapple with my mortality, but I’m glad that it happened when it did. The work I’ve done to build my Ark by studying Zen, other religious schools, and by practicing meditation every day got me from the lowest low I’ve had in the back on an ambulance, to the incredible heights of feeling in harmony with the universe and confident in myself and my resilience going forward, especially as I continue my practice of meditation and my studies on the matters of spirit.
I don’t usually end my writings on, “I think the biggest lesson I learned from this experience is…” but this time it seems appropriate. I have no idea what the future looks like. An infinite number of random occurrences could give me fortune or take away what I care about. My task, as a person determined to live a good life, is to prepare myself now so when good things come I can enjoy them to the fullest and so when bad things come I am as prepared as possible to think clearly and calmly to handle them as effectively as possible. What my time has shown is that while controlling the world around us is sometimes impossible, if we don’t let events dictate our thoughts and behavior, we can have redemption in the moment and from the past.
I will see you at Mount Fuji,
Scott Ryan Udall
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