The Cries of the World - Did Terri have a Mind Stream or Not?

By True Dharma Frank Tedesco

T he Woodside Hospice House in Pinellas Park, Florida, where Terri Schiavo spent the last five years of her life is about five minutes from my home and about fifteen minutes from UU Clearwater where I lead weekly sangha gatherings of True Dharma International- a UUBF chapter.

Woodside is a 72-bed residential facility run by the non-profit Hos-pice of the Florida Suncoast. It is a quiet, clean and efficient place that is open and active 24/7, with well-manicured lawns and hedges, a labyrinth, an outdoor chapel in a grove of oaks through which you can see into the backyards and screened-in swimming pool rooms of  suburban neighbors. An elementary school is down the street, with banks and convenience stores within short walking distance.

When the sad and contentious Terri Schiavo brouhaha grabbed national headlines in the spring of 2005, I was taken up by the ethical and religious debate and the warring passions virtually exploding on my doorstep. I felt thoroughly frustrated by my inability to resolve to my own satisfaction what was going on with her. I had no chance to observe her or have any personal interaction with her even though she resided nearby. (This was a year before I became an authorized hospice volunteer)

Was she or was she not "here"? (whatever that means) I asked myself continually as if it were a "kong-an" or Seon (Zen) conundrum. Had Terri‟s "consciousness," "spirit," or karmically-determined mental continuum already left her body? Could she or would she ever regain consciousness and return to social functioning as a wife and daughter? It was mind-boggling to sort out the "facts" from the hype and intense emotions surrounding her state. It was appalling, too, that her family‟s intensely private and sensitive concerns had become a public spectacle for politicians at all levels and all stripes to score public support.

Was Terri diagnosed accurately as in a "permanent vegetative state," or was she "minimally conscious" as certain doctors, her parents and the crowd outside the hospice contended?" And if she was PVS, would it be considered murder or euthanasia or, for a Buddhist, a violation of the first precept to allow her to die by ending medical intervention? Was there a vestige of rare and precious human consciousness clinging, as it were, to her "name and form?" Were her husband and the courts depriving her of her chance for Buddhahood or "awakening"? How would a Buddhist meditation master have assessed her condition? Or a master of the subtle pulses and channels like the Dalai Lama‟s physician?

What could I do as a "socially engaged" Buddhist do-gooder? I didn‟t know either side of her family personally so couldn‟t easily plant a seed of hope or curiosity about a  Buddhist perspective (not that the good Florida Catholics would have cared to listen to a believer in metempsychosis!). I did have some indirect contact with her attending support staff and medical and legal eagles embroiled in her case, though. The people I met who worked with her were very guarded and sworn to confidentiality before and even after her death. I knew her husband's lawyer from a Reiki-like spiritual healing association called Pilgrimage but he had little light to shed about her state of consciousness. He strictly supported her "right to die" and her husband's right to allow her to die by removing feeding tubes. He was extremely cautious about saying anything extraneous to the legal arguments his opponents might jump on. George also had a legitimate personal concern. His life as well as his young son's were threatened by "pro-life" extremists. For some, so-called "compassion" for Terri's troubled life did not extend to those who thought differently. A few wished husband Michael and his supporters damnation and even death!

I could not feel the impact of the venom the pro-life protesters expressed until I visited the street outside the hospice and walked among the "righteous." It was a bizarre adventure to pad back and forth among the protestors, sometimes sharing water and snacks. I imagined myself a kind of a "bodhi-scout" descending into hell, a peaceful guerrilla penetrating behind the line of the "enemy camp of Mara" murmuring Sanskrit and Sino-Korean mantras with my mala (rosary) in order to pacify bellicose aggressors. In the recesses of my memory I recalled the great Venerable Mahaghosananda who led lines of monks and laypeople on annual dhammyietra ("pilgrimages of truth") between the warring factions on the minefields of Cambodia beginning in 1992. Only here in Florida there was only one warring faction. They tried at times to charge the doors of Woodside to "liberate" Terri before her husband and a "activist" judge condemned her to slow and painful starvation (yet under meticulous care and nary a bedsore in five years!). It mattered little to the "righteous" on the street that dozens of other patients were approaching death in the hospice residence and that their families, too, were sorely aggrieved and disturbed by the shouts and bull-horns of the demonstrators.

"Dae-ja dae-bi kwan-se-um bosal, dae-ja dae-bi kwan-se-um bosal, dae-ja dae-bi kwan-se-um bosal" —Great Love, Great Compassion O Revered Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva Who Sees and Hears the Sufferings of the World— I call upon you to ease the pain of the discomforted beings among this noisy crowd and within the walls of the hospice. Many rounds of 108 beads on my Korean mala I recited in a whisper, passing among the placards and demonstrators, hearing the Catholic rosary, the pseudo-Christian brothers, hateful signs, jubilant with the progressive announcements that Florida Governor Bush, senators, even President Dubya Bush would intercede on behalf of their beloved Terri's cause (or so they protested) and angry and wailing when decisions did not support them. Dae-ja dae-bi kwan se-um bosal, dae-ja dae-bi kwan se-um bosal, om mani pema hum, om mani pema hum… Oh Precious Dharma Jewel the Buddha in the Perfect Lotus born of the rich black soil of samsara, our ignorance of how things actually are in Emptiness, om mani pema hum, om mani pema hum, om mani pema hum. Let the peace of the Cloud of Unknowing embrace the elders and children in this crowd, this multitude of pro-life pilgrims, advocates, media personnel and their manipulators….om mani pema hum, om mani pema hum, om mani pema hum…one breath at a time, breathing in slowly and stepping up, stepping down lightly on the asphalt, breathing out slowly, slowly, stepping lightly on the asphalt….a postcard with Terri‟s image superimposed on Jesus' crown of thorns thrust into my hand by a pre-pubescent teenager….om mani pema hum…

om mani pema hum..evoking the equanimity of the Dalai Lama.

Did Terri have Buddha nature or not?