Signs of Waning Health
Wherever he went, no matter how frail he was, he always promulgated Humanistic Buddhism. In November 1954, a checkup revealed that the master had long been inflicted with pulmonary tuberculosis. His lungs were calcified and the tracheae were abnormal. He needed to receive immediate medical treatment and get adequate rest. Still, he had to fly to the Philippines to give a series of lectures. When he finally returned to Taiwan, five months had passed. The trip took a heavy toll on his health. He barely had the strength to eat or talk. However, when people came to him with questions on Buddhism, he would summon his strength and answer spiritedly.
In 1999, another life-threatening illness befell him. Because of months of incessant diarrhea, the signs of life were fading from the 94-year-old Mentor of Buddhism. Such pain and fatigue would be unbearable to any robust youth, let alone a man of his age. Yet never once did Yin Shun panic or complain. Whenever guests came to visit the venerable master, he summoned up his spirit to speak to them.
Read more about this topic: Yin Shun
Famous quotes containing the words signs of, signs, waning and/or health:
“Cows wandered through the streets.... Vegetables grew chiefly in cans, and stream-beds and cañons glittered with these omnipresent signs of civilization.”
—Administration in the State of Colo, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Surrealism is a bourgeois disaffection; that its militants thought it universal is only one of the signs that it is typically bourgeois.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“And let Reform her columns roll.
With thunder peal, and lightening flash.
We’ll preach deliverance to the soul.
‘Mid proud Oppression’s waning crash.”
—Ignis, U.S. women’s magazine contributor. The Genius of Liberty, pp. 9-10 (November 1853)
“To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or from that grain of health which he has left.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)