Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Courageously Defeated
By Charles Atkins
USA
My practice of Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism was put to the test in February 1987. Death loomed all around me as I lay in my bed at the Veteran’s Administration hospital. I had begun to practise in earnest in 1974 as a young men’s division member, participating in every available activity and striving in the three ways of practice. Quite suddenly, in 1987 as my fledging resume writing business began to prosper, I was stricken with Hodgkin’s Disease, or cancer of the lymphatic system.
Looking back at this great personal battle, I am filled with awe by the power of the Gohonzon, by the depth of the Gosho, and by the incredible mercy of President Ikeda’s guidance. I was only 36 years old and had been in excellent health when I began to experience acute back pain. While being treated by our family doctor, my condition deteriorated rapidly. I began to have drenching night sweats and fits of vomiting. Next I was stricken by violent chills, daily fevers, as well as insatiable itching all over my body. I was taking so many different kinds pills for all my symptoms that I needed a schedule to avoid poisoning myself.
After two months of steadily declining health, both sides of my neck and a lymph node behind my ear began to swell. My doctor immediately ordered a biopsy. He called while I was attending a daimoku session but refused to tell my wife the diagnosis. I had been having strange dreams for months warning me of danger. In my heart I knew my illness was very serious because of the feelings and ideas that emerged in my mind while facing the Gohonzon. My doctor came right to the point and told me that I had Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
By the time I learned about my diagnosis, I had already chanted one million daimoku out of fear of the unknown. I began to take great solace in the Gosho On Prolonging Life: "There are two types of illness: minor and serious. Early treatment by a skilled physician can cure even serious illness, not to mention minor ones, Karma also may be divided into two categories: mutable and immutable. Sincere repentance will eradicate even immutable karma, to say nothing of karma which is mutable” (The Major Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, Vol 1, p229).
There wasn’t much time to dwell on our crisis. My wife, Lynn, and I sat down and I explained to her how to run my resume business. I called my senior leaders to inform them of our plight, and the morning before I left my hospital I chanted daimoku with my daughter and then I told her the truth about my condition. Looking into her eyes, I did my best to encourage her that with our belief in the Gohonzon as a family, we would definitely be protected.
After being admitted to the Veteran’s Hospital, I underwent a gruelling battery of diagnostic tests, called staging, to determine the extent of the cancer. One of the tests, the lymphangiogram, was so difficult, uncomfortable and painful I began to doubt whether I could win against the disease when I could barely tolerate the tests. The cancer ward of a large hospital is no place for the faint-hearted.
In the first 48 hours of my stay, two of my roommates died right in front of me, driving home the idea of my own mortality. Rather than languishing in my sick bed feeling sorry for myself, I took it upon myself to wander the vast cancer ward to offer encouragement to the other patients. It was immediately apparent that many patients were far more seriously ill than I was. I used my training in faith to create many new friendships and to tell everyone I could about this Buddhism.
Having very little exposure to the realities of death and the merciless nature of cancer, I had the opportunities to personally comfort many patients in the final stages of life. Many of those people were elderly and had no families to be there for them as their lives slowly expired. I discovered that the simple act of holding someone’s hand in their final time was far more valuable to them than mountains of gold. I learned so many important lessons about life and death, reward and retribution, and love and family that I was overwhelmed at my fortune to have discovered and embraced the Mystic Law.
It took three weeks for a team of doctors to arrive at how far the cancer has spread. The news had been getting worse by the day since being admitted. My doctor gave me the results in a serious voice. He told me that I had Hodgkin’s Disease in the fourth and final stage. The cancer was on both sides of my neck, in my sternum and abdomen; it had affected my spleen and a huge tumor was pressing against my spine.
He didn't mince words. He told me that it was best to face the whole truth explaining that it would be in my best interest to put my affairs in order. He tried to encourage me by acknowledging that the treatment now used for Hodgkin’s Disease had been very successful even for patients with advanced cases like mine. His prognosis was six months to live if the treatment didn't work, or less time if I couldn't tolerate the combination of chemotherapy and radiation.
During this time, my wife took over the business, ran the household and practiced Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism with all her might. The pressure on her was more than enormous. Because of her deep faith in the Gohonzon and the support of her leaders, she was able to fully use her many years of YWD training to face our crisis with strength and hope.
Lynn was moved to tears by the support the organization showed in our time of need. Two of our senior leaders who had gone to Japan reported back to us that they had prayed to us before the Dai-Gohonzon. There was an abundance of vital guidance bestowed upon her, but the most beneficial was the guidance to challenge herself as if she was the one who had cancer. During the ordeals that lay ahead, my wife was a pillar of strength because of her strong faith in the power of the Daishonin’s Buddhism.
Words are inadequate to describe the rigors of chemotherapy. I was scheduled for 12 treatments over six months of aggressive combination chemotherapy, immediately followed by 12 cobalt radiation treatments. It is most difficult to chant when you feel sick, but that is precisely the time when you need to do your utmost to strengthen your life force. All told, in the nine months of treatment my wife and I chanted more than 9 million daimoku.
I read volume 1 of The Major Writings of Nichiren Daishonin so many times that it began to come apart at the binding. I went out of bed at sunrise and chanted all day, whether I was sitting, walking or lying down. In the hospital, where I spent nearly two months, I would do gongyo in the shower room, and I struggled to do gongyo during days when I was getting treatments. It was so hard to focus on gongyo while being torn apart by unrelenting waves of nausea. After my wife got me home from a treatment, I would close myself in our bedroom and only emerge late at night for some crackers and soup some seven hours later, when the treatment’s effects had finally passed.
The side effects of chemotherapy were progressively more difficult for me. I was plagued by unspeakable chronic pain, relentless nausea, constant fatigue, intense 24-hour-a-day tingling of my hands and feet and acute panic attacks. My chemically burned blood veins hardened like stone, my weight varied by 20 pounds or more a week, and my brown hair fell out, later growing back completely grey, as if I had seen a ghost.
I was taking as many as 13 different pills a day. My nausea was so terrible that all the conventional treatments of diet, Compazine injections, pills and suppositories proved utterly useless after the third cycle. My doctor suggested, off the record, that I try smoking marijuana, which immediately solved most of my nausea problems. Somehow the Gohonzon protected me. I was not a criminal, I was just a very sick man who required the appropriate medicine.
Despite my problems, I made every effort possible to attend activities. My wife was instrumental in encouraging me to fight my weakness and make a cause for my enlightenment. My daughter, Devin was only 7 years old at the time and began to have problems in school because of the stress. Still, my daughter chanted much daimoku and tried to master gongyo for my sake. I will never be able adequately express my appreciation for their efforts.
Our whole world looked as if it were crumbling down. At those times I would recall the famous Gosho passage from The Opening of the Eyes: “Although I and my disciples may encounter various difficulties, if we do not harbour doubt in our hearts, we will as a matter of course attain Buddhahood. Do not have doubts simply because Heaven does not lend you protection. Do not be discouraged because you do not enjoy an easy and secure existence in this life.
“This is what I have taught my disciples morning and evening, and yet they begin to harbour doubts and abandon their faith. Foolish men are likely to forget the promises they have made when the crucial moment comes”
My turning point in overcoming advanced cancer came abruptly four months after I began chemotherapy. I became very ill from urinary tract infection and had to be hospitalized. Both my wife and I knew that the crucial moment had arrived. As I lay in an isolation room chanting daimoku my temperature elevated to 104F. I called out to the Gohonzon to enable me to overcome this cancer or allow me to die a swift and victorious death.
My prayers was calm, and despite the delirium high fever brings, I was able to use the techniques of guided imagery that I had employed from the beginning of my treatment. I looked inward with the mind’s eye and imagined that my white blood cells were super charged with the brilliant healing light of Buddhahood. These dynamic blood cells would literally explode with healing energy as I imagined them following from the top of my head to the tip of my toes.
I used this guided imagery based on Nam being the treasure tower of my being: myo corresponded to my head; ho to my throat; ren to my chest; ge to my abdomen and kyo to my extremities. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo would rapidly flow through my veins and throughout my body with the pulse of the universe and I would concentrate the healing light of my imagination to my entire body, one section at a time. I repeated this scenario waiting for death and longing for life.
My mind kept repeating the guided imagery and somehow thoughts of my wife and daughter entered my mind, filling me with deep emotion at the sorrow of leaving them and the unhappiness that my illness had brought them. I flashed on whatever evil I had caused in my life with profound regret, and just as quickly my mind was diverted to the beauty of faith and my love for the Daishonin and his teachings. I seemed to be reaching a climax of emotion, heading towards the brink of the unknown.
At the very apex of the experience I was filled with the protective power and mercy of the Gohonzon, and I felt like I was being carried up into the air. At that moment I felt the brilliant light of happiness overtake my senses that immediately erased my fears and anxiety. With the Gohonzon in my heart, I vowedto fight to the end and fulfill my mission for kosen-rufu and protect my family.
When I had made my choice, my fever broke and I sat up in bed marvelling at what I had felt and realized in the depths of my life. Pouring a glass of cool water I toasted life. Two days later I had a CAT scan that revealed what I already knew. There was no cancer left in my body.
Despite that fact, my treatments continued. I was told that cancer is a cellular disease and that I must receive all my remaining treatments to ensure every last cancer cell was destroyed. My doctors were mighty impressed with Buddhism as seen by my behaviour, spirit, my conscious ability to raise my blood counts, and the fact that my disease had seemed to disappear.
Cancer is like a multi-header monster affecting every area of daily life. But the further devastation of treatment, bankruptcy and having to face the IRS for back taxes were obstacles that I knew I could overcome.
It has now been five years of perfect health for me. In that time I have rebuilt my business from the ruins of bankruptcy and now live on a beautiful five-acre farm. My wife and I are very happy, and my daughter is athletic, talented, healthy and getting excellent grades in school. Overcoming advanced cancer was very difficult, but with proper medical treatment and faith in the Gohonzon, my family was able to show actual proof, enabling us to meet all future obstacles with hope, courage and confidence.
The greatest lesson I learned from my experience is that the Gosho and President Ikeda’s guidance on confronting impossible obstacles and facing the fears of death are absolutely correct. I was struck to the core of my being by the many guidance of President Ikeda, which acted like a lantern in the dark on a lonely and frightening road. It would be impossible to repay my debt of gratitude to him and the Daishonin. Before, I thought kosen-rufu was some kind of theoretical dream. I am now aware that our mission is true and our master is the greatest living human being in the world.
[World Tribune, July 1993]
By Charles Atkins
USA
My practice of Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism was put to the test in February 1987. Death loomed all around me as I lay in my bed at the Veteran’s Administration hospital. I had begun to practise in earnest in 1974 as a young men’s division member, participating in every available activity and striving in the three ways of practice. Quite suddenly, in 1987 as my fledging resume writing business began to prosper, I was stricken with Hodgkin’s Disease, or cancer of the lymphatic system.
Looking back at this great personal battle, I am filled with awe by the power of the Gohonzon, by the depth of the Gosho, and by the incredible mercy of President Ikeda’s guidance. I was only 36 years old and had been in excellent health when I began to experience acute back pain. While being treated by our family doctor, my condition deteriorated rapidly. I began to have drenching night sweats and fits of vomiting. Next I was stricken by violent chills, daily fevers, as well as insatiable itching all over my body. I was taking so many different kinds pills for all my symptoms that I needed a schedule to avoid poisoning myself.
After two months of steadily declining health, both sides of my neck and a lymph node behind my ear began to swell. My doctor immediately ordered a biopsy. He called while I was attending a daimoku session but refused to tell my wife the diagnosis. I had been having strange dreams for months warning me of danger. In my heart I knew my illness was very serious because of the feelings and ideas that emerged in my mind while facing the Gohonzon. My doctor came right to the point and told me that I had Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
By the time I learned about my diagnosis, I had already chanted one million daimoku out of fear of the unknown. I began to take great solace in the Gosho On Prolonging Life: "There are two types of illness: minor and serious. Early treatment by a skilled physician can cure even serious illness, not to mention minor ones, Karma also may be divided into two categories: mutable and immutable. Sincere repentance will eradicate even immutable karma, to say nothing of karma which is mutable” (The Major Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, Vol 1, p229).
There wasn’t much time to dwell on our crisis. My wife, Lynn, and I sat down and I explained to her how to run my resume business. I called my senior leaders to inform them of our plight, and the morning before I left my hospital I chanted daimoku with my daughter and then I told her the truth about my condition. Looking into her eyes, I did my best to encourage her that with our belief in the Gohonzon as a family, we would definitely be protected.
After being admitted to the Veteran’s Hospital, I underwent a gruelling battery of diagnostic tests, called staging, to determine the extent of the cancer. One of the tests, the lymphangiogram, was so difficult, uncomfortable and painful I began to doubt whether I could win against the disease when I could barely tolerate the tests. The cancer ward of a large hospital is no place for the faint-hearted.
In the first 48 hours of my stay, two of my roommates died right in front of me, driving home the idea of my own mortality. Rather than languishing in my sick bed feeling sorry for myself, I took it upon myself to wander the vast cancer ward to offer encouragement to the other patients. It was immediately apparent that many patients were far more seriously ill than I was. I used my training in faith to create many new friendships and to tell everyone I could about this Buddhism.
Having very little exposure to the realities of death and the merciless nature of cancer, I had the opportunities to personally comfort many patients in the final stages of life. Many of those people were elderly and had no families to be there for them as their lives slowly expired. I discovered that the simple act of holding someone’s hand in their final time was far more valuable to them than mountains of gold. I learned so many important lessons about life and death, reward and retribution, and love and family that I was overwhelmed at my fortune to have discovered and embraced the Mystic Law.
It took three weeks for a team of doctors to arrive at how far the cancer has spread. The news had been getting worse by the day since being admitted. My doctor gave me the results in a serious voice. He told me that I had Hodgkin’s Disease in the fourth and final stage. The cancer was on both sides of my neck, in my sternum and abdomen; it had affected my spleen and a huge tumor was pressing against my spine.
He didn't mince words. He told me that it was best to face the whole truth explaining that it would be in my best interest to put my affairs in order. He tried to encourage me by acknowledging that the treatment now used for Hodgkin’s Disease had been very successful even for patients with advanced cases like mine. His prognosis was six months to live if the treatment didn't work, or less time if I couldn't tolerate the combination of chemotherapy and radiation.
During this time, my wife took over the business, ran the household and practiced Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism with all her might. The pressure on her was more than enormous. Because of her deep faith in the Gohonzon and the support of her leaders, she was able to fully use her many years of YWD training to face our crisis with strength and hope.
Lynn was moved to tears by the support the organization showed in our time of need. Two of our senior leaders who had gone to Japan reported back to us that they had prayed to us before the Dai-Gohonzon. There was an abundance of vital guidance bestowed upon her, but the most beneficial was the guidance to challenge herself as if she was the one who had cancer. During the ordeals that lay ahead, my wife was a pillar of strength because of her strong faith in the power of the Daishonin’s Buddhism.
Words are inadequate to describe the rigors of chemotherapy. I was scheduled for 12 treatments over six months of aggressive combination chemotherapy, immediately followed by 12 cobalt radiation treatments. It is most difficult to chant when you feel sick, but that is precisely the time when you need to do your utmost to strengthen your life force. All told, in the nine months of treatment my wife and I chanted more than 9 million daimoku.
I read volume 1 of The Major Writings of Nichiren Daishonin so many times that it began to come apart at the binding. I went out of bed at sunrise and chanted all day, whether I was sitting, walking or lying down. In the hospital, where I spent nearly two months, I would do gongyo in the shower room, and I struggled to do gongyo during days when I was getting treatments. It was so hard to focus on gongyo while being torn apart by unrelenting waves of nausea. After my wife got me home from a treatment, I would close myself in our bedroom and only emerge late at night for some crackers and soup some seven hours later, when the treatment’s effects had finally passed.
The side effects of chemotherapy were progressively more difficult for me. I was plagued by unspeakable chronic pain, relentless nausea, constant fatigue, intense 24-hour-a-day tingling of my hands and feet and acute panic attacks. My chemically burned blood veins hardened like stone, my weight varied by 20 pounds or more a week, and my brown hair fell out, later growing back completely grey, as if I had seen a ghost.
I was taking as many as 13 different pills a day. My nausea was so terrible that all the conventional treatments of diet, Compazine injections, pills and suppositories proved utterly useless after the third cycle. My doctor suggested, off the record, that I try smoking marijuana, which immediately solved most of my nausea problems. Somehow the Gohonzon protected me. I was not a criminal, I was just a very sick man who required the appropriate medicine.
Despite my problems, I made every effort possible to attend activities. My wife was instrumental in encouraging me to fight my weakness and make a cause for my enlightenment. My daughter, Devin was only 7 years old at the time and began to have problems in school because of the stress. Still, my daughter chanted much daimoku and tried to master gongyo for my sake. I will never be able adequately express my appreciation for their efforts.
Our whole world looked as if it were crumbling down. At those times I would recall the famous Gosho passage from The Opening of the Eyes: “Although I and my disciples may encounter various difficulties, if we do not harbour doubt in our hearts, we will as a matter of course attain Buddhahood. Do not have doubts simply because Heaven does not lend you protection. Do not be discouraged because you do not enjoy an easy and secure existence in this life.
“This is what I have taught my disciples morning and evening, and yet they begin to harbour doubts and abandon their faith. Foolish men are likely to forget the promises they have made when the crucial moment comes”
My turning point in overcoming advanced cancer came abruptly four months after I began chemotherapy. I became very ill from urinary tract infection and had to be hospitalized. Both my wife and I knew that the crucial moment had arrived. As I lay in an isolation room chanting daimoku my temperature elevated to 104F. I called out to the Gohonzon to enable me to overcome this cancer or allow me to die a swift and victorious death.
My prayers was calm, and despite the delirium high fever brings, I was able to use the techniques of guided imagery that I had employed from the beginning of my treatment. I looked inward with the mind’s eye and imagined that my white blood cells were super charged with the brilliant healing light of Buddhahood. These dynamic blood cells would literally explode with healing energy as I imagined them following from the top of my head to the tip of my toes.
I used this guided imagery based on Nam being the treasure tower of my being: myo corresponded to my head; ho to my throat; ren to my chest; ge to my abdomen and kyo to my extremities. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo would rapidly flow through my veins and throughout my body with the pulse of the universe and I would concentrate the healing light of my imagination to my entire body, one section at a time. I repeated this scenario waiting for death and longing for life.
My mind kept repeating the guided imagery and somehow thoughts of my wife and daughter entered my mind, filling me with deep emotion at the sorrow of leaving them and the unhappiness that my illness had brought them. I flashed on whatever evil I had caused in my life with profound regret, and just as quickly my mind was diverted to the beauty of faith and my love for the Daishonin and his teachings. I seemed to be reaching a climax of emotion, heading towards the brink of the unknown.
At the very apex of the experience I was filled with the protective power and mercy of the Gohonzon, and I felt like I was being carried up into the air. At that moment I felt the brilliant light of happiness overtake my senses that immediately erased my fears and anxiety. With the Gohonzon in my heart, I vowedto fight to the end and fulfill my mission for kosen-rufu and protect my family.
When I had made my choice, my fever broke and I sat up in bed marvelling at what I had felt and realized in the depths of my life. Pouring a glass of cool water I toasted life. Two days later I had a CAT scan that revealed what I already knew. There was no cancer left in my body.
Despite that fact, my treatments continued. I was told that cancer is a cellular disease and that I must receive all my remaining treatments to ensure every last cancer cell was destroyed. My doctors were mighty impressed with Buddhism as seen by my behaviour, spirit, my conscious ability to raise my blood counts, and the fact that my disease had seemed to disappear.
Cancer is like a multi-header monster affecting every area of daily life. But the further devastation of treatment, bankruptcy and having to face the IRS for back taxes were obstacles that I knew I could overcome.
It has now been five years of perfect health for me. In that time I have rebuilt my business from the ruins of bankruptcy and now live on a beautiful five-acre farm. My wife and I are very happy, and my daughter is athletic, talented, healthy and getting excellent grades in school. Overcoming advanced cancer was very difficult, but with proper medical treatment and faith in the Gohonzon, my family was able to show actual proof, enabling us to meet all future obstacles with hope, courage and confidence.
The greatest lesson I learned from my experience is that the Gosho and President Ikeda’s guidance on confronting impossible obstacles and facing the fears of death are absolutely correct. I was struck to the core of my being by the many guidance of President Ikeda, which acted like a lantern in the dark on a lonely and frightening road. It would be impossible to repay my debt of gratitude to him and the Daishonin. Before, I thought kosen-rufu was some kind of theoretical dream. I am now aware that our mission is true and our master is the greatest living human being in the world.
[World Tribune, July 1993]