Attachment and compassion

As a Buddhist, I am conscious of not forming emotional attachments and the impermanence of things. Still, when people whom I knew died, my emotions get a knocking, especially with so many cases happening one after another, that my compassion for them made me felt like bawling.

I have known most of them only for a short time, HH for 2-3 years, LY about a year, and the rest I have only met them a couple of times, and yet, I felt for them.

Death is one event every living thing, human or animal, or even plants, will experience one day, it's only a matter of time. So, why do I still feel sad at their passing? In fact, for cancer patients, death brings relief, it's an end to their suffering.

I realised that I am sad because I understand what they were going through, I saw their sufferings and their struggles, the frustrations, the hopes rising and fading, and the pain they had to endure not only from cancer but from chemo also. After going through so much and the brave fights they put up, death made everything seemed so futile.

LY was the first group member that I was following. I had not been fully aware of how serious she was and had been optimistic about her recovery. I had felt strongly for her that I cried when I saw her suddenly become immbolized, I cried when I saw her lying in the coffin, and I cried too when she was setting off for cremation.

I had felt strongly for Ja too. When I first saw her, she was cheerful and chirpy despite her illness. She had passed on just before LY.

When HH passed on, I had been more prepared as I had seen her decline. I had been steady through her eulogies, and only teared when her family members cried as her coffin went into the crematorium.

Maybe, it was not attachment, but rather, it was the compassion for them that made me felt in such a manner. But I admit that with LY, there was some attachment as I had missed her but am now coming to terms with it.

The more emotionally attached I am, the more I will feel its absence. I should be able to detach emotionally, only then can I feel peace.

Emotions and dreams

After my relapse, more research and especially after attending Ellen's healing transformations therapy session, I am convinced that suppressing emotions is very harmful to our body, more so than anger, stress, anxiety, and other negative emotions. Suppressed emotions do not disappear, they fester and continually build up, leading to other problems, like an emotional time-bomb.

We suppressed our emotions for various reasons, like not wanting to sour a relationship, or not wanting to blow up an issue.

I realised that I tend to suppress my emotions for the sake of saving relationships, and not wanting to hurt the other party in turn, even though the other party is the aggressor. Yeap, I sacrificed my health and my life for the sake of keeping peace, and not wanting to hurt others' feelings. I am realising now that it is not worth it.

Now, I am psyching myself up for any appropriate challenging situation. No, I am not getting ready for any verbal assault. Rather, I am mentally preparing a list of appropriate phrases that I could use in answer to any uncalled for snide remarks, like 'Ow! That hurts!' or 'I resent that!' This is to let the aggressor know that the remark does not go down well with me, and hopefully it will cause them pause and consider before attempting another verbal sting in future.

This is going to be tough, because I am always caught off-guard when such remarks were thrown at me, as I have never like doing that to others and was always not prepared nor expected it. When that happened, I would feel the sting, but did not retaliate and walked away with my anger suppressed.

I recalled a recent incident that I was caught unprepared. Some close friends gave me a treat on a Friday which happened to be the day when I went for my ayurvedic medicine. After dinner, G, who was driving and some others decided to follow me back to the ayurvedic master's for my medicine before sending me home as we were all heading in the same direction. G's husband is a doctor and I'd warned her not to mention that in the presence of the ayurvedic master as he does not have a good opinion of doctors in general, because a number of his patients who were treated by doctors, not only did not improve but suffered out-of-pocket as well. As expected, the master made some comments that did not go down well with G.

On the way back, she launched into a near tirade about how much time and money were invested before a person is qualified as a doctor. I attempted to explain the master's perspective, but stop when I saw that she was really agitated. I allowed her to vent, but she went further and said "it's okay for you (meaning me), you can 'kowtow' to him". I felt the sting alright but refrained from replying because I realised that more 30 years of friendship was at stake, and she had been fetching me for my chemo sessions when I was under treatment. I have been progresing well under the master's treatment and I appreciate that, but it does not mean that I 'kowtow' to him.

Apparently, my warning had not been sufficient for her, and her reaction was out of respect for her husband's achievements. But she ought not to have taken the master's comments personally as they were not specifically directed at her husband and not all doctors are in the same category where attitude is concerned. On thinking back, I should not have let it pass and I could have settled that by putting it in a nice way to let her know how I felt then.

Even among family members, I'd always control myself and hold my retorts against unwarranted smarting remarks.

For years I have been having 'toilet' dreams. I'd dream of going to toilets and on entering a cubicle, only to find that it is filthy, flooded, instead of a toilet bowl there was just a hole, the walls are transparent, the door is faulty or only half doors, that people can see me when I am inside. Although the dreams are not so frequent now and I haven't had one recently, I really hated this kind of dream. I mentioned this to a friend recently and found out that she too had similar dreams like this. According to her friend, these dreams signified repressed emotions that we wanted to release but could find no opportunity or circumstance to do so.

I have also had dreams of climbing stairs, but after I reached the top, the steps usually become so big, or that there was something wrong with the steps that I did not know how I managed to get up there. These dreams were always set in my secondary school, a girls' school.

Then there were dreams of not being prepared for exams. I am not exactly sure what they meant but I guessed it could be in the area of anxiety.

On reflection, if these dreams are anything to go by, it looks like my life has been one emotional time-bomb.