It’s time for the Om Doctors to visit, the medical students from MCV who come as part of their geriatrics class to study a geriatric. I give them tongue depressors with OM on it, and we have a great time. Succinctly put, an Om Doctor is a doctor who is both outside of the patient and is the patient at the same time. An Om Doctor is in empathy with the patient as him/herself and outside of the patient. 

Connecting this to geriatrics, how can you as you grow old and suffer sickness, old age and loss keep your mind fresh. How can you age and stay young at the same time? How can you see your old world as a new world while still living in the old world?

Or to flip to religious language, how can you have the Old Testament and the New Testament as the same book? We cannot stop getting old but we can stop getting old. If we identify with the objective view of the world as me being outside of the world, operating on the world as a doctor on the patient, then I suffer sickness, old age, and death. 

But if at the same time, I discover, I realize through and through that I am the world and the world is me, the You are the Center of the world while at the same time being outside of the world operating on it to make it better. When you are outside of the world we must try to make it better because something needs fixing. 

But when you are the world and the world is you, there is nothing to fix because you and the world are One, and there is nothing to fix. You and the world as OK because you are One. 

So there you have it. The Om Doctor is a doctor (you) who is both outside of the body (world) and is the body (world) at the same time. But the primary viewpoint is that of OM, of unity, and from that unity, the idea of how to fix the world (which is you) rises. 

Today’s Zen Fit asks the question: Can doctors fix sickness, old age, and death (loss)? Is there the cessation of OSD? Buddha said there is. But we know from experience that there is no cure for life. OSD is a fact and relief is always temporary. Yet, the Buddha says there is the end of it. What does that mean? We should be curious, don’t you think?

Whether we suffering from OSD depends upon our viewpoint, our way of being in the world. And it is also what we mean by suffering. Buddha called it Dukkha, or psychological pain of separation from the world, our own experience and a divided self, a wound that cannot heal.

Well, as an old person of 83 I do have a dog in this show. How do I stay fresh? How do I keep doing these Zen Fits every morning where I speak from the heart, from the spontaneous mind and share insights that I don’t even know what I’m going to say. What you see in these Zen Fits is real-time spontaneous talk. In Buddhism, these are called Dharma talks. In Christianity, if I were a Christin, it would be speaking in the Spirit.

I have discovered through years of seeking and practice that there are two viewpoints of reality, but only one is on our cultural map, so we are locked into a viewpoint of being outside of the world, myself, and life. We get a few breaks, miracles we call them, but they cannot be sustained. So life becomes just more trips to the doctor’s office, or therapist, or yoga class, to get fixed. We need an OM Doctor. We cannot get off the cross of OSD (old age, sickness, and loss) .