Science of Mind magazine

October, 2013

By Pamela Bloom

What a Buddhist meditation teacher discovered in a coma radically changed not just his life, but also his teaching. Today Lewis Richmond addresses audiences of all faiths about aging as a spiritual tool.

I don’t often break down and cry in the middle of the acknowledgements that precede a book.

But Lewis Richmond’s Healing Lazarus, had me in tears by his second paragraph, so deeply moving is the heart of gratitude he expresses—for his doctors, his family, his friends, his spiritual teachers, in fact, anyone he has encountered through the dramatic ups and downs of his life. An ordained Zen priest and former software entrepreneur, Richmond comes to his present elder stage of life after years of daunting spiritual training, not the least which have been two catastrophic illnesses--cancer and viral encephalitis—both which nearly killed him. Yet Richmond’s life challenges have only ripened him, at the age of 66, into an extraordinary spiritual teacher, capable of speaking not only to people of many faiths, but to all phases of the human life cycle. His first book, Spirituality in the Workplace, was a bestseller; his newest, Aging as Spiritual Practice: A Contemplative Guide to Growing Older and Wiser, takes us into realms that Botox and Viagra never will.

But first about Lewis: I’m simply mesmerized by the circuitous route of his life. A product of the 60s, he discovered Zen meditation in his early 20s under the famed Japanese Zen buddhist teacher Suzuki Roshi, whose book Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind still remains a beloved classic. I’d dropped out of Unitarian Seminary and became a full-time anti-war activist, “ Richmond recalls from his home in Mill Valley, a suburb of San Francisco. “Suzuki felt like the genuine teacher I was looking for, and frankly, when you look back, he was one of the few who have stood the test of time.” Eventually Richmond and his wife became part of the core group developing Tassajara, the first Zen residential monastery outside Japan, and was invited by Suzuki to become ordained as a Zen priest. Shortly afterwards, Suzuki passed away and Richmond continued to co-teach with Suzuki’s dharma heir, Richard Baker. In 1984, personal scandal forced the highly respected Baker to resign, creating a shock wave that affected the entire community.

“I became very disillusioned and took off my robes,” Richmond recalls. “One of the reasons I left teaching was because there was a part of my life that wasn’t integrated with my spiritual life. My instinct was that I needed balance, to go out and become a regular person.” So he got a job with a friend starting a garden tools company, later rising to the position of executive vice-president at Smith & Hawken. “For the first time in my adult life, I was making real money, living on my own, being part of the world.” Though many of his students felt abandoned, Richmond’s decision eventually proved fruitful. Years later, the tension between his retreat life and corporate life became the rich foundation of his 1999 book Spirituality in the Workplace.

But one year after leaving the monastery, Richmond was hit with another left hook: cancer. At the age of 35, with a beloved wife and 9-year-old son, he chose to fight not like a priest, but a warrior; even his doctor commented on his uncommonly upbeat temperament—more rebellious than pious. But did meditation practice have anything to do with his eventual recovery?

“Some people who knew me felt my Zen practice had been intrinsic to my recovery, but I wouldn’t cop to it at the time. You have to understand that I’d just spent 15 years of life in spiritual practice and it had all blown up in my face. I was tired of spiritual practice. I just wanted to live my life. But what I discovered later is that after being a priest full-time for 15 years, it doesn’t go away. Your vows sustain you; it just goes underground. But today, looking back, I’m not sure I would have been able to have gone through all that I did, with that focus and intensity, without all those years of meditation. “

But, 17 years later, at the age of 52, it would be the sudden, catastrophic descent into coma—caused possibly by an encephalitic mosquito bite—that would take Lewis again to the brink of existence. The journey is described in a jaw-dropping, heart-wrenching book titled Healing Lazarus: A Buddhist’s Journey from Near Death to New Life.

Basically, for two weeks, Richmond was befelled by coma, what neurologists call a very extreme case of the locked-in syndrome. His brain stem, which affects the spinal cord and thus low-level functioning, had been damaged. But his brain activity—his conscious mind—remained fully awake—just imprisoned inside a paralyzed body. Unable to communicate and expected to die, Richmond nevertheless became cognizant of hundreds of dream-like visions, some seemingly buddhist inspired, others shamanic, that he clearly remembers to this day. One recurring image was of a bird—half eagle-half dove that was trying to fly—a symbol of his desire to live. He even dreamed of sitting around sipping tea and chanting with friends. Indeed, friends from all over the country were praying on his behalf. One vision reflected a death and rebirth experience. And one, about a South American shaman, mirrored something that actually did happen in his hospital room in real time. Days later he would come out of coma.

The route to recovery, however, was daunting. His physical rehabilitation was procedural; it was his emotional heart that was left reeling. Anxieties and fears over losing his identity and reverting to childlike helplessness left him in frequent tears. But it was also a rich time where he discovered the many flavors of those tears--from grief, anger and frustration to relief, gratitude and love.

But before Richmond could grasp the thread that would lead fully him from grief to gratitude, he had to relearn, he tells me, the First Noble Truth of buddhism: suffering is not a cruel trick of fate; it is simply an unavoidable fact of human life. When, later, he retranslated the Pali term for suffering—dukkha—into “loss,” he would discover his new aging audiences, even the non-buddhists, understood exactly what he was talking about. The greatest suffering in aging IS about loss.

To tell you the truth, I stumbled across Richmond’s Aging as a Spiritual Practice just as I’ve been facing a major milestone (hint: that AARP hurdle is long gone!). Whenever I give myself a moment to rest, concerns like what have I accomplished, , how long do I have left, is my skin really sagging this much, and the most pressing, will I die alone, poor and in pain, flit across my brain. We always think we’re the only ones with such thoughts, but Richmond’s book tells us not only are these thoughts normal, there is also a cure. Well, perhaps not exactly a CURE, but at the very least, a powerful process of adaptation that can bring us closer to our core being and perhaps relieve the rigidities that come with aging.

So, what IS that cure?

Richmond believes that once we accept the impermanence of life—“it’s not just us, it’s weaved into the fabric of the universe”—there begins the possibility of discovering the actual gifts of aging. He even offers a four-step plan to awareness of our own aging. Instead of “raging against the dying of the light,” we can embrace the inevitable with compassion and stop comparing ourselves not only to others, but to who we ourselves once were. This gives more room to embrace who we uniquely are today. And Buddhist meditation practice, as taught by Richmond, is a powerful vehicle to bring oneself into the fullness of this present moment.

But what about those gifts of aging? Between aching joints, failed relationships, chronic illness and depleting resources, what’s there to be joyful about?

One of the gifts Richmond talks about is gratitude. “Every time there is a loss,” he says,” there is a chance to be grateful.”  He cites one of his favorite phrases of Suzuki Roshi who, when asked to define gratitude, would reply: “Gratitude is this present moment.” At the time, Richmond recalls, Roshi’s young students thought the phrase sounded funny, that perhaps Roshi’s English was somehow off.  It’s taken Richmond more than forty years to realize that Suzuki had been absolutely correct, that indeed, the present moment is all we have, and the finest, most elevated response we can have is gratitude.

Another reinvention of Richmond’s has been to rewrite the traditional Buddhist Metta prayer that begins “May I be well.” Simply by adding on the phrase “as we age” to the end of each line (May I be well as I age, may all being be well as we age),  one can significantly shift focus from self-obsession to a shared dimension of change.  When I recited the familiar chant this way, I noticed some of my own fears about aging dissolving. I also noticed more compassion arising for others—from those with walkers to even those with facelifts!

An important gift of aging, says Richmond, is the enriched opportunity to give back. Service to others brings gifts to ourselves, he says. Often asked for advice by people with chronic or intractable conditions, Richmond replies that one positive about being sick is that it can actually be a gift to others.  That’s a startling idea, but we who pray for others can intimately relate. Richmond also urges those who can to step into their own elderhood—to teach, support, share one’s life-earned wisdom. It’s a habit native traditions long cherished but one that we in this culture have sadly lost track of.

Increasing one’s powers of visualization as we age, says Richmond, is perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can nourish, and his eminently practical book is filled with such techniques. One has to do with envisioning the difference between horizontal time—the long arc of a life filled with detail—versus vertical time—the expanse of space that arises when we settle into the present moment. Horizontal time, Richmond writes, is always moving, with no opportunity to enjoy that cup of tea. In contrast, in vertical time, “everything is accessible, every possibility is restful and free.” And it is in vertical time, says Richmond, that we might very well discover that part of us that will never age and is never depleted—our one true divine essence. 

A keyboardist and composer whose series of CDs titled “Music to Age By” are a wash of lush, soothing but poignant jazz impressionism, Richmond today is refocusing his teaching to his local area, also presenting aging workshops at churches and community gatherings. He is a frequent blogger on the Huffington Post and the Times of India. At the Vimala Zen Center, the contemplative community he started, he has already ordained two Zen priests and preparing others. The word “vimala,” he tells me, comes from the word, Vimalakirti, a disciple of the Buddha who lived as a householder and was wiser than all the other monks because he was not attached to being a monk . Richmond says: “His teachings are very important to me in how I see the dharma now. I am a big believer in living in the world in an ordinary way.”

As we conclude our rich encounter, I’m still wondering about the lingering affects of his last near-death experience.

“For sure, my brain got rewired,” he says. “Something happened that changed me and now I can feel what others feel more directly. I cry more. I laugh more. I am more fully grounded in my emotional being. And I am more empathetic. I pick up things that others don’t. But I don’t want to puff this up into some big deal.”

Instead, like a good Zen master, he tells me a story. “When I was writing Healing Lazarus after my coma, I had to realize my old-style brain was self-healing. I called my editors to say the book was too emotional, that I was humiliated by all the things that I had said. I wanted to edit it more. I felt naked. But my editor said, no, we like you naked. That’s what’s good about it. Afterwards, I got a lot of emails from readers. Women whose husbands are in coma, who came out but can’t talk, etc. They tell me, you are the only one who knows what I am going through. Even my neurologist told me had had never read anything like it—because, essentially, nobody comes back.”

Richmond takes a deep breath and one can hear the chord of humbleness in his voice. “I shouldn’t be here—twice. Nobody gave me even one percent chance to survive, let alone recover. But I am here. I’m really happy to be alive. And I am a living embodiment of gratitude.”