Life As We Want It
Last night I had a dinner with the man I worked for more than 30 years ago. Mr. K. was a renowned Japanese journalist who was running a small production company in Little Tokyo to cater to the local Japanese community and the Japanese news outlets in Japan. I was still a student at UCLA anxious to finish up my undergrad degree. Except for a short period that I was co-anchoring his weekly news magazine show, I mainly worked as a researcher and production coordinator to help the Japanese news crews gathering stories in the U.S. This was a beginning of my career in documentary production.
Back then, Mr. K was quite intimidating, sometimes very mean, because he expected more of me and others who worked for him. Yet in retrospect, he saw something in me that I didn’t because even after I left the position, he continued to hire me on project to project basis and referred me to other high caliber colleagues from Japan even after he moved back to Japan several years ago. This was his unexpected visit to Los Angeles after declaring he wouldn’t come back here again.
About 2 years ago I got the news that he was diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer and that he started an aggressive treatment. As I read his blog about his journey with his cancer, I am inspired by his perspective as an objective observer. Over dinner told me how he lost appetite and therefore some weight and vitality as the side effect from his chemo therapy. One day he decided to ask his doctor to give him a break from all the medications, which his doctor granted. He started being able to eat what he wants and even having a glass of wine over dinner. As a result he felt better, stronger with healthier appetite, and remarkably his marker also went down. He told me as we gabble the Dungeness crab at the Chinese restaurant, “We’re all going to die. We just don’t know when. I just have a higher chance that I would die sooner than later. I just want to live the way I want.”
I’ve had many friends and families, who had cancers, and lost some of them including my father and grandparents. A few are currently fighting. Talking to him with his soothingly objective perspective was almost like listening to a Dharma talk. Ilness or not, we get to live our life as we want because this moment is all we got. It sounds cliché, but this is where my mind was all day today.
Deeper, Still Deeper
No word can speak
the heart’s emptiness,
or its fullness.
No thought can think
its vast mystery.
Yet, listen!
this very moment
whispers its presence.
Eternally awake,
we appear asleep,
until a birdsong,
a temple bell, a baby’s cry,
a falling leaf, a candle flame,
or a single wordless gaze
from Silence awakens
sweet remembrance.
Suddenly, time and the timeless,
space and no space,
presence and absence collapse
into a single flowing
called Now,
where there are no distinctions
yet the uniqueness of each thing
reveals its mysterious Source.
Strangely, there is no fear
but no sense of safety, either;
no doubt, yet no one
who is certain.
Direct experience
arises without interpretation,
and returns without grasping,
falling back to zero.
You long to know the heart’s mystery.
The Mystery moves your longing.
Enough words.
Let Silence take you
where the mind cannot tread,
deeper, still deeper,
until nothing is left
but Mystery.
© Dorothy Hunt