A Dharma Perspective on Health Care

by John Corbaley

Two recent tragic events and the public response to them have gotten me thinking about priorities in our society today, and what might be done to move them along. On April 16, a tortured young man named Seung Hui Cho engaged in a fit of rage on the campus of Virginia Technical Institute in Blacksburg, killing 32 people and wounding 24 others before turning the weapons on himself in an act of suicide.

Less than two weeks later and much closer to home, David Logsdon killed two people in the parking lot of the Ward Parkway Shopping Center before being killed by police officers called to the scene. What knits these two events together is they both represent what I think is a failure of the mental health system of the richest country in the world.

The topic I want to talk about today has past its fifteen minutes of fame and has begun to fade from the collective short term memory of the American News Cycle. The headlines have run, the editorials have been published and the blogs have spoken. This allows a bit of perspective and reflection, which we might use to gain some insight.

The stories of these two men represent a failure of our society to help these tragic souls who ended up with lives of such pain that they could no longer stand to go on living. It was clear from both their stories that neither of these men intended to finish that last day of their lives alive. And their hurt and pain was so great that they felt they had to lash out at the end and hurt others as well.

The public response was an outpouring of condolence for the families and friends of the victims. The response also included questions about how such a tragedy could occur. Questions about how persons, especially in Seung Hui Cho’s case, could obtain access to such and array and quantity of deadly automatic weapons when his mental problems were so apparently well documented.

Also in the public response to this tragedy was the criticism of the media for making public Seung Hui Cho’s tragic video taped ravings, mailed by him to NBC on the day of the shooting.

One letter to the editor of the Star criticized publishing his picture on the front page. Why publicize and lend notoriety to such an evil person the letter asked? We don’t need to see or hear anything more from this bad person, the letter concluded.

While sentiments like these might be seen to be natural and an even acceptable outpouring of grief, I think we can learn important lessons by paying attention to these men, and recognize that they do not represent an embodiment of some externalized evil. Rather, they are embodiments of the darker, needier side which resides within each of us.

The hurt and pain in Seung Hui Cho and David Logsdon arose from deeply troubled minds that had been hurting for a long time. It is difficult for us to understand the depth of the illness which plagued them both. But it shouldn’t be difficult for us to recognize it and know that these persons were in urgent need of some pretty heavy duty help.

It seems we are able to separate ourselves from people like these, apparently. We are not like them; we aren’t mentally disturbed, like they are. It is this illusion, of course, which lies at the root of the problem. It is our inability to recognize ourselves in these tragic men and see the importance of making available whatever resources are necessary to secure that help.

It is the kind of help which American society, in the form of our health care system, doesn’t seem capable of providing. In the stories of both these men was a long history of unmet needs. There were reports in both that friends and family of these men had tried multiple times to obtain help, but the safety net of the health care system was full of holes for these two.

Unfortunately, there are no fortunes to be made in mental health care of this type; the inpatient, individual therapy intensive type—unlike the outpatient, pharmacology heavy type now so prevalent and so profitable for the big drug companies. If you’ve seen the documentary Sicko by Michael Moore, you know the system of health care in this country is broken, a cash cow for a big industry that falls so short of what it might be. It makes you wonder about what we could have in this country if we wanted it. You wonder about what health care could look like if we took the billion dollars a week we are spending in Iraq and put it some other, better purpose.

Just something to think about in the coming weeks and months, when drug companies and insurance companies of organized health care start their media campaigns in response to Michael Moore’s excellent film. They set an all-time record in spending when they smeared Hillary Clinton and her single payer plan back in the 90’s. They spent more money than anyone ever had on an advertising campaign featuring Harry and Louise, employed to scare the American public into fearing any change.

You can bet that they will set records again, misleading and lying to us about the dangers of “socialized medicine.” If you work in health care, like I do, you realize that it is a system beyond broken, that only a wise and unwavering people can fix. I hope we have the wisdom and the vision to bring about the changes necessary so hurting people like Heung Hui Cho and David Logsdon and thousands like them can get help instead going on a shooting spree to end their pain.

When we look at people like Seung Hui Cho and David Logsdon, we must see that we share their space, and their pain, and we are as much as part of them as the waves are part of the ocean. We must muster up the great compassion that is embodied in the descriptions of the Bodhisattvas of the scriptures.

I will close now with one such description from the Ashtasaahaszrikaa:

[The Bodhisattva] becomes endowed with that kind of wise insight which allows him to see all beings as on the way to their slaughter. Great compassion thereby takes hold of him. With his heavenly eye he surveys countless beings, and what he sees fills him with great agitation: so many carry the burden of a karma which will soon be punished in the hells, others have acquired unfortunate rebirths, which keep them away from the Buddha and his teachings, others are doomed soon to be killed, or they are enveloped in the net of false views, or fail to find the path, while others who had gained a rebirth favorable to their emancipation have lost it again.

And he radiates great friendliness and compassion over all those beings, and gives his attention to them, thinking…I shall release them from all their sufferings…therefore the Bodhisattva dwells in the work of perfect wisdom…he wants to point out the path to all beings, to shed light over a wide range, to set free from birth-and-death all beings who are subject to it, and to cleanse the organs of vision of all beings.
(Edward Conze, Buddhist Texts Through the Ages p. 128).

---July 29, 2007; John Corbaley