The nurse looked at me, and intoned, your blood pressure is 1xx, which startled me. It had been borderline high before, and I had gained a few middle age pounds. I did run regularly, though even in hot weather, even to the point of temporary heat exhaustion once. The doctor didn't want to make a quick diagnosis; he sent me home for a week or two, to return for a new look at things to verify the results.

High blood pressure, pretty damned high, ended up spooking me out. It was that first major crack in the physical foundation that reminded me emphatically that I was mortal, my days uncertain both in content and duration.

I did the right thing the next few days. I basically cut out salt, watched my weight, meditated, etc. but to no avail. Nothing budged. Nothing changed. To make matters worse my mind went bananas on me. It was totally filled with anxiety about dying, unfinished business, religious fears left over from childhood, etc. I couldn't sleep. I wasn't hungry. Life was tasteless and meaningless. I was a basket case.

I did continue to function as a dead man walking. I doubt most who knew me noticed a change in my behavior. But it was a crust of normality pastried over some forlorn grief and gelatinous doom. It was misery itself.

Now you think the Buddha Dharma would have come to the rescue, or meditation, or some insight, but none of that fazed that dazed hopelessness at all. I found that all my theories, all my ideas, all my concepts folded in the winds of turmoil. This was a storm to endure, not to be challenged, brushed aside, or avoided by anything I thought. I suddenly saw how powerless my ideas were in that sea of despair. The ideas could still affect my actions, but they couldn't budge my feelings or anxieties at all. It was only of ironic comfort to remember I was in samsara -- a bitter smile forced as token acknowledgment of my reason. In fact, the impotence of my thinking and ideas just added to anxiety. If this last anchor were ineffective, what was left to hold to? One experiencing this hell does not need to imagine any literal place so named to be convinced of the possibility of unending misery.

I could go through the issues that came to mind, but they are personal and they contribute nothing of substance. I understood those issues, what lay behind them, and the intellectual solution to them. But it simply didn't matter at all in terms of bringing relief. Insight was worthless. Buddhist teaching was worthless. Christian ideas were worthless. Sympathy from friends was worthless. This morass just wasn't going to budge based on anything anybody did.

 I spend some time on this mental agony to illustrate how little my practice had resolved questions of life and death, meaning and purpose when faced with other parts of my mind that seemingly with a mind of their own had gone off the deep end.

Without more details, the most intense part was over in about 4 or 5 days, followed by weeks of fitful recurrence, followed by a general return to a new "normal" state of mind.

So what did I get out of this? (I had decided that if I had to be drug through this hell, at least I was going to get something out of it.) Ten months later, this seems to be what I've found.

One relationship which generated considerable frustration has been mostly transformed. The circumstances haven't changed. But frustration has mostly given way to compassion, and the simmering anger is mostly gone. That period of virtual death seemingly allowed me to put that in a much different context than I used before -- the context in which I was mapping out a future and frustrated because this future was being blocked and impeded. I'm a lot less certain about that future, and my ability to get there. Though I knew future things were uncertain intellectually before, it seems now to be a more visceral knowledge that my control is limited, that in the end relationships will matter more than a list of personal achievements to be recalled just before one dies.

The mind can be heaven or hell. I've experienced a little heaven from time to time. But this episode reminds me vividly of the pain the mind can inflict upon itself -- a hell of your own mind devouring itself. The terrible irony is that we believe in the world "out there" so much more than the one we create inside where we exist. I suppose this is a good insight to have though I wish I could have understood it without this hammer.

Meditation did not alleviate the pain or suffering. But meditation did help to endure it, without being totally disoriented by it. The story of Mara's temptations the night of the Buddha's enlightenment come to mind. I seem to remember a line that had the Buddha picking up some earth in his hand, dropping it, and declaring "Here I sit." I could sit. Perhaps that was enough.

Concepts and reason were pretty powerless in the jetstream of fear and other emotions  coursing through my mind. They just didn't hold sway, though I'm very much persuaded by them in my normal frame of mind. This impotence of ideas was disquieting, because it dislodged my last anchor of comfort. Equanimity needs to have a much deeper root than just ideas.

The crack in the physical foundation of my  body meant the whole structure was inevitably becoming unsound. It was no longer the reliable thing I had imagined mine to be. It needs to be treated with respect and care, but not indulgence. Trying to find that middle ground has been instructive in itself as I've attempted to make it part of the path.

A few resolutions have also grown out of that, though I may not discuss all of them in subsequent articles. Among them are:

I do not intend to die with ill will toward anyone for any reason.

It is my intention to die without fear (even knowing, as I do now, that mere concepts will an insufficient basis for reaching this goal.) Equanimity is not purchased with ideas and theories.

It is my intention to do what I can reasonably do to take care of this body without indulging it or despairing as it wends it way toward dissolution. That is tricky -- even for Buddhists who sometimes contemplate the body as a disgusting thing made up of even more disgusting constituents. Perhaps if I loved my body more, I'd need that antidote. But in America I've never been that satisfied with the way it turned out. It's functional but far from the ideals that rain on me each day from commercials, and even others that are stronger, taller, and so on. I've never thought mine all that perfect. My more serious error has been to cling to indulgent habits that are pervasively encouraged throughout modern American culture. So taking care is an intention to not let pleasure dominate health, to not let ease prevail over healthful exercise, which though somewhat tedious, is also essential. To walk the middle ground between indulgence and dislike is my intent.