Dear National College of Natural Medicine (NCNM) students,
Welcome back, beloved NCNMers (CCM, ND and dualing degreers alike), to a place of higher education. Where you have an opportunity to learn of health and of suffering and the balancing pivot point in between the two. This education will enable you to decipher patterns of weaknesses and excessiveness and the methods to recalibrate, thereby restoring health. Whether you are aware or not, embedded within your direct and in-direct education are the life lessons that shape humanity. Ultimately, in order to discern the delicate pieces of the puzzle, the art of presence is an underlying skill that can see you through any circumstance. So I ask of you, are you aware of your own presence of mind?
Being in a medical school can have as much or a little to do with discovering the artfulness of presence, therefore I feel compelled to share this brief excerpt in Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist philosopher, poet, and nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“There is a Zen story about a man riding a horse which is galloping very quickly. Another man, standing alongside the road, yells at him, “Where are you going?” and the man on the horse yells back, “I don’t know. Ask the horse.” I think that is our situation. We are riding many horses that we cannot control. The proliferation of armaments, for instance, is a horse. We have tried our best, but we cannot control these horses. Our lives are so busy.
“In Buddhism, the most important precept of all is to live in awareness, to know what is going on. To know what is going on, not only here, but there. For instance, when you eat a piece of bread, you may choose to be aware that our farmers, in growing the wheat, use chemical poisons a little too much. Eating the bread, we are somehow co-responsible for the destruction of our ecology….
“Every day we do things, we are things, that have to do with peace. If we are aware of our lifestyle, our way of consuming, of looking at things, we will know how to make peace right in the moment we are alive, the present moment…. If we are very aware, we can do something to change the course of things.”
So I ask again, are you aware of your own presence of mind? For some students, NCNM can be a difficult emotional, physical, and/or spiritual challenge. I urge you to embrace all obstacles as supplemental material for your well-structured curriculum. Through your own suffering you have opportunity to establish insight, understanding and compassion for others and for yourself. This is the true art of creating health. In the end, all of it (the good times and the bad) will be worth the effort you are currently undertaking.
Thank you all for dedicating years of your lives to learn about the ancient wisdom of the healing arts. It’s individuals like yourselves that make a true change in the fields of health care. I cannot imagine a world without the community NCNM, nor do I care to do so. The lessons, both in and out of the classroom, are time tested and the bestest that medicine can offer.
Keep up all the lionhearted efforts!
C. Biscuit