A Sudden Diagnosis and the News of Death
Before I knew it, the result of blaming myself while neglecting him had erupted all at once in our tenth year together. I never imagined that we would come to our conclusion in such a way, but it burst forth with stunning force.
My husband had always been healthy. Well-built, he had never suffered a serious illness—or even anything one could call a real sickness. Then one day, feeling only a slight change in his condition, he went to the hospital without much concern. The diagnosis was lung cancer. He had never smoked a day in his life. The cancer was already at stage four out of five, and beyond the point where surgery was possible. Suddenly, the two of us were confronted with this harsh reality.
Naturally, everyone around us was shocked and bewildered, and then came the waves of sorrow and despair—crashing in all at once. It was late autumn of 1992. My husband was thirty-nine, and I was thirty-three. From that moment on, things became overwhelming. The feeling that "what was bound to come had finally arrived," along with the fear of death that dwelled within me, completely consumed my heart. I had no room left in me to even care for my husband.
In Search of My Inner Pillar
From then on, I visited my husband—who had been admitted to the Japanese Red Cross Hospital, where my father had long been cared for—twice a day: once during my lunch break, and again after work until visiting hours ended. I lived each day this way.
How much longer did he have to live? What exactly would happen as the cancer reached its final stage? While facing the fear of death and a host of other anxieties, I also had to confront another reality: ever since the doctor had given me my husband's cancer diagnosis, I had felt that I had no foundation to stand on at all. The question of what it means to live for oneself had resurfaced sharply within me through this experience. What was I supposed to do from here, and how was I to go about it? I could not avoid feeling the truth that I had no answer.
When I asked myself what "living for oneself" meant in light of my husband's diagnosis, I realized that I had always believed it was something one carves out with one's own strength, something one can indeed carve out. If you try hard enough, you can make things work—such effort, such wholehearted striving, was something I had considered admirable. The message telling me I was wrong came in the form of the reality that my husband had cancer. I had believed in my physical self, in the power of the physical body, and now I was faced with a situation where the physical body could do nothing. You can do nothing about a person's death. I felt my own helplessness. I felt the fragility of human life. And I realized that I had no central pillar within me. From then on, I had no idea how I was supposed to live.
It wasn't about money. It wasn't about the means to get by in life. The reality I had come up against was that I lacked the essential, vital pillar for how I could exist as myself. Naturally, I wanted to know what that pillar was.
A few months earlier, in the world of consciousness, I had already thought of my husband as gone. When the cancer diagnosis came, I was certain this time he would really die, so I saw no point in praying to God to save his life. But my mother-in-law's thoughts seemed to dwell on nothing else. She even said that my "unlucky year" at age thirty-three had somehow fallen upon my son instead, and perhaps for that reason she secretly believed in supernatural powers. It was truly a case of grasping at straws. She even did unscientific things like having new underwear blessed in prayer, believing that wearing them would heal ailments. Holding onto the faintest shred of hope, she threw herself into such foolish acts. Call it foolishness if you will, but if you understand a parent's feelings for their child, perhaps it is not so hard to nod in sympathy. Without knowing the truth, I suspect most people would be much the same.
As for me, I was, in my own way, desperately searching for something to hold on to while my physical self was in turmoil. Faced with the harsh reality, the greater severity for me was the fact that I had no inner pillar. And that is when something my mother had occasionally mentioned to me came to mind—the "study meetings of the heart." To be honest, I had thought these meetings were just another form of the faith-in-others religion my mother had once practiced, so I had always listened half-heartedly and let her words pass by. But now, with no idea what to do, I decided, at least for the moment, to knock on the door of this "learning" the very next day after the cancer diagnosis.
In this way, the reality of my husband's illness and impending death became the event that led me into the true world. Of course, my motive was not a plea for my husband's life, but rather a wish to save my own heart—myself. By that time, my husband was already gone in my mind. Outwardly, I framed it as a consultation, but what I felt in my heart that day had already given me my answer: "Ah, I was wrong." From that point on, I think my heart already sensed how I should live from here. I had begun to feel faintly that what I had been searching for all along was here.
It was for that reason that, although I did not know how much longer my husband had to live, I truly wanted to care for him as best I could. Day after day, I went back and forth between my workplace and the hospital. At the same time, I began to engage more actively with the world of learning through the study booklets.
The doctors and nurses seemed to show concern for me, the young wife of a man struck by such a serious illness. But to me, such things hardly mattered. In any case, medicine could do nothing more than ease his pain; his death, I believed, would come sooner or later. I had no desire to cling to the doctors, and I asked that they do only the bare minimum of tests. In fact, I looked down on them, thinking that even doctors could only judge by numbers on test results. I disliked being pitied. Above all, I did not want to be looked at with eyes of compassion.
My Husband's Final Moments and a New Beginning
Fearing the onset of the final stage of illness, I thought about how I should care for my husband when that time came. Yet his condition proved far less demanding than I had been told to expect. His weight was unchanged from when he was healthy, and there was little I needed to do in the way of nursing. As a result, I never experienced the exhaustion that comes from long-term caregiving. I did not think much of it at the time, but looking back, it was strange.
There was something else strange as well—something I had dreamed became reality the very next time I went to his hospital room. In the dream, my husband told me that the chemotherapy had cut off blood flow to his extremities, and the toes of one foot had become necrotic. The dream proved to be true. The attending physician told me that, as things stood, the foot would have to be amputated. Even I, hardened as I thought I was, could not bring myself to tell my husband immediately that he might lose a foot.
Just then, before I had decided how to break the news, events took another turn. Three months after being admitted, in February 1993, my husband passed away at the age of thirty-nine. I was honestly relieved that he had gone without the need for an amputation. It was the first time I had ever been present at a person's death. I can still remember the sensation of giving him the final sip of water. At that moment, I felt something within me begin to crumble—not so much out of loneliness or grief, but more as a stirring sense of "what comes next."
From there, the funeral and all subsequent memorial rites were handled entirely by my husband's family. That arrangement seemed to come about naturally. Perhaps my own parents thought it only proper, since their son-in-law had died before them, but to me, it was all very convenient. In its way, it too felt strange. I simply went along with my in-laws' wishes. I was far from any true understanding at that time and had no grasp of ideas such as "why funerals might be unnecessary." At that point, I had no choice but to follow along. Even when I was told to come each week until the forty-ninth day because the temple priest would be visiting, I could not say, "No, I won't go." I even contributed my share toward a new family altar my in-laws had purchased. For me, such things mattered little, but for parents who had lost their only son, they may have been among the few things left they could do as parents.
My mother-in-law in particular poured her heart into these rituals. At the wake, she carefully dressed my husband in his burial robes, telling him earnestly, "May you attain Buddhahood." She questioned the temple priest in detail about the altar, never letting the incense go out, always offering freshly cooked rice first to the altar—she was like that in everything. My father-in-law still had his business to occupy him, but I believe my mother-in-law spent much of every day before the altar, immersed in the grief of losing her son. Whether that grief was the direct cause or not, I cannot say, but two or three years later, she too died of lung cancer—in the very same hospital as her son.
As for me, I had already begun to see the path I was meant to follow. My mind was elsewhere, fixed firmly on what lay ahead. I sorted through my husband's belongings, renovated my home, and steadily made preparations. I had no time to sink into sorrow over losing him. Just two months after his death, in April 1993, I was able—though only for one night—to attend my first seminar in Atami. That marked the true beginning of my life. Placing seminars at the center of my daily life became a natural current within me. Until then, it had been my mother urging me, time and again, to attend; now I was going of my own accord, with real enthusiasm.
From a worldly perspective, a husband dying before forty and the young widow he leaves behind might seem the height of misfortune. But for me, it was quite the opposite. I had put the brakes on my own mistakes. I felt that I had chosen, for myself, the most decisive way to do so. My long-held doubts and worries began to dissolve.
Why had I married? It was to turn around—the "turning" of my physical self. Here I use the word "turning" deliberately. In the pages ahead, you will see unfamiliar terms such as "turning of the heart," "turning of consciousness," and "Albert." I explain them in the latter part of this book. For now, please understand "turning of the heart" and "turning of consciousness" as a shift from believing the world of form to be real, to recognizing the world of consciousness as the true reality. And remember that "Albert" is a key to making that shift.
To return to my story—I had chosen an extraordinary set of circumstances. Of course, one single event is not enough on its own, but it was sufficient to change the direction of my inner compass. It would not have worked if my husband had simply been ill and then recovered in time. His death was, for me, an essential event. Seen in that light, even his ardent pursuit of me in marriage makes sense, as does my acceptance of it despite having no particular dreams of marriage.
And so the scenario continued. Remaining forever in grief, wrapped in sorrow as a tragic widow, would have led nowhere. In such darkness, one might drown in drink, in men, in other distractions. Some choose that path. I did not. I faced the reality head-on and resolved to change my direction from there. I determined to use my energy to turn a negative event into something positive. That is how it took the form of attending seminars. I seized the turning point. I am simply grateful now that I was able to guide myself toward the direction of truth.
Lessons Learned from Marriage and Family Relationships
Human beings are weak. We carry lonely hearts. Without knowing the truth, people go on wandering—that is what I believe. No matter how noble a philosophy one might profess, in the end, those who do not know their true essence will, I think, continue down the road of moral decline.
The time from meeting my husband, to marriage, to his death was by no means wasted for me. Marriage equals childbirth—that is the so-called common sense of the world. Within that framework, I spent no small amount of emotional energy. I experienced the shifting thoughts of wanting or not wanting to have children, of being willing or unwilling to bring a child into the world.
I am sorry to say that I never had the pure, earnest feeling of "I want very much to bear this man's child." For me, the sense of heavy responsibility for raising a child far outweighed any such desire. I also believed there could be no greater sin than ending a life—snuffing out the bud of existence—out of sheer selfishness for reasons such as finances, which are merely the consequences of one's own desires. If I were to have a child, I would have to take full responsibility. I could never abandon or neglect a child as one might a dog or cat, nor did I have such a broad or easygoing heart.
It is easy to say, "Children have their own lives," but once they are born into this world in physical form, it is difficult to keep one's heart detached from them. Ideally, a parent would look into their own heart through raising a child, growing alongside them—that would be best. But in reality, I wonder if it is truly that simple. If a mother, at the time she bears a child, knows what is truly important and lives by it, then she can indeed share joy with her child and walk the path of joy together. But if we waited for that to happen, we might end up in a society with not just a declining birthrate, but no births at all. This is, of course, an extreme and unrealistic conclusion, but I say it to show how deeply we are buried in the physical self, and how truly difficult it is for us to turn our consciousness. A half-hearted effort is simply not enough.
I believe that deep down, I had already sensed that I was not born for the purpose of marriage, nor for the purpose of bearing children. And yet, because I did not fully understand this at the time, my physical self continued to struggle and agonize over such matters.
In reality, parents who know nothing give birth to children and raise them, and both parent and child suffer and gasp for breath in the midst of suffering as the parent-child relationship continues. And that is fine, in its way. Fathers and mothers have children in order to look into their own hearts, and children are born to look into theirs as well. If both sides could become aware of this, the relationship would become something wonderful, transcending the framework of parent and child. But without reaching that point, the more the relationship is bound by the physical body and blood, the greater and deeper the suffering tends to be.
Breaking free from the framework of a blood-bound parent-child relationship is extremely difficult, but even more troublesome is marriage between two complete strangers. Unless both see each other as material for looking into their own hearts—unless they grasp each other with the heart—marriage can be nothing but a seed of great suffering. In reality, there is no shortage of marriages that exist only in form. Even if the surface is kept up, the inside remains in turmoil. Couples bound only by desire, wearing the mask of marriage, rarely think about why they married or why they had children—they simply reach the end of their lives that way.
Through taking the form of marriage, I was given relationships with in-laws—father-in-law, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law. Thanks to this, I experienced firsthand the folly of people who live only by taking the world of form as real. From this, there is much that one is meant to learn, but I also came to see that unless each person touches the true world, such relationships bear little fruit. When both sides see each other only as physical beings, it is impossible to live together in true harmony and peace. Trying to force it only produces distorted energy, which in turn makes human relationships all the more complicated. Having seen that foolishness up close, I felt that was enough—that I needed nothing more.
As if unnecessary things were simply disappearing from before me, the year after my first seminar I took part in a seminar in the United States. That became the opportunity to return to my maiden name and leave my husband's family. Since I had no children, the process was simple. In this way, I literally became unburdened, and my life was set in order so that I could focus myself entirely on the seminars.