Sometime around 2017, a friend and I were visiting his father who was convalescing at a hospital in Jaipur, India. Preparing to take my leave, I happened to mention to my friend about a certain stickiness in my right eye. I scarcely expected anything consequential from this offhand remark, but he responded by saying that the ophthalmologist at that hospital was a schoolmate, and I would do well by seeing him. Not normally given to visiting doctors, in this case, however, somehow, I did. I suppose it was the confluence of an expected familiarity with the doctor and the convenience of already being present at the hospital.
The doctor greeted me amiably and, as is the norm these days, put me through a series of tests. At their conclusion he delivered his verdict: glaucoma—a word as opaque to me at that time as the condition renders one’s vision. My query into the matter was met with an explanation that I scarcely knew how to digest: an irreversible loss of vision, he said, brought about by increased pressure within the eyeball. He then pointed to two charts resulting from his tests that represented my field of vision for each eye, and brought my attention to a grey area in each, saying that, together, they represented an overall 11 per cent loss of vision.
This revelation stunned me into silence. The trivial complaint that had brought me there—the mild stickiness—evaporated in the face of this irreversible, reverberating loss. The doctor’s words, reinforced by the camaraderie of having attended the same school and the excellent reputation of the hospital, held sway over me. I trusted him implicitly. I did not think even momentarily of seeking a second opinion, regardless of the counterintuitive logic of it all: that I was a fit, active 61-year-old in good condition, which I had assumed would promise a long and healthy life. I therefore began his regimen of prescribed eye-drops, a free sample of which he pressed into my hands with a sense of urgency and inevitability.
For the next four years I followed his instructions with the diligence of one who believed he had no choice. Initially, the drops he prescribed were mild, but they gradually grew stronger. I was faithful to the routine, but then, in the quietude of a Vipassana retreat in the 2021 COVID period, the calamity I had distantly feared arrived—not as a gradual erosion, but as a sudden, significant and devastating loss of vision in my right eye.
It was only then, in the aftermath of this bewildering jolt, that I sought other counsel in Mumbai, not far from Igatpuri where I was now living. The new doctor reviewed the old charts from my initial 2017 diagnosis, and his conclusion struck me with even greater force than the original pronouncement of glaucoma: there had been no loss of vision at that time! The grey areas indicated in those initial tests were simply the natural blind spots on the retina where the optic nerve starts, and which all humans possess!
As I see it, what happened is as follows. Say, for example, a person with two good legs decides for whatever reason to stop using one of them and instead makes use of crutches. After several years of doing so, his unused leg will surely atrophy and he would of necessity become dependent on the crunches. Similarly, my sight had all along been clear and whole, despite the shadows cast by the earlier diagnosis. The unnecessary drops that I began to use worked as the crutches in the example above, and now, after years of medication, my eye’s ability to maintain its inner pressure had atrophied, and I was clearly saddled with glaucoma. What was this, then, if not a cruel irony, and why! How naïve had I been for not having sought a second opinion years before!
Memories of my youth soon came rushing back with strange and vivid clarity. At St. Xavier’s School I had been a marksman, taking aim and shooting at paper targets with the precision of the Rajasthan state champion that I then was. As a result, the school, in possession of two .22 caliber Czechoslovakian rifles, entrusted me with a bizarre task—to rid the campus of the numerous stray dogs that posed a threat to the younger children. It was a strange duty, but I was excited by the rare opportunity of getting to use the rifles, hitherto employed only for target practice. They now found their target in living creatures. I recall aiming for the dogs’ eyes, with the same unerring focus exhibited by Arjuna, the archer of the Mahabharata, who, when asked by his teacher Drona what lay before him as he took aim at the wooden target of a bird, said that he could see only the bird’s eye.
Obviously, I had been oblivious to the karmic implications of my actions. And now, according to the inscrutable law of nature, my own eyes have suffered. It is a debt, I tell myself, that I owe to nature. An eye for an eye, not as a cry for vengeance but as the inevitable vipāka (result) of my kammā. The doctor, unwittingly or not, had become the instrument of that retribution. By virtue of this reasoning, I no longer generate anger towards him. Instead, I find solace in this holistic understanding of the phenomenon—an acceptance that brings with it a certain peace, a reconciliation with the forces that shape lives.
I was born into a Jain family and, unlike my Rajput friends, not descended from a lineage of warriors, nor had I inherited a tradition of brandishing firearms. But there was something in me, perhaps a vestige of some past life, that drew me to weapons, to the precision of rifles, and to amassing a small collection of sharp knives. The Western films that we watched at school on Saturday nights, with their depictions of American cowboys and “Injuns,” only fanned the flames of that inclination. And yet, now, in the twilight of my vision, I see those youthful fascinations for what they were—an attachment to a world of violence, to tools of harm that I had no business wielding.
Nonetheless, as I navigate through my altered reality, in the partial darkness that accompanies me at every waking moment, I find that it has become a powerful teacher, a constant reminder to accept aniccā and to practice more mettā, and more mindfully. Each day, I send out loving-kindness, not only to the doctor, but to all those who have apparently intruded into my life bringing harm. I see now that they too are only collecting a debt that I owe to the universe, a debt that I’m learning to pay graciously. And, as I do, I find the anger and resentment that once might have consumed me is fading away, replaced by a quiet and profound joy in letting go. If ever I lapse in my attitude, it takes me increasingly less time to steer back to neutrality, and finally rebound with mettā!
What a great gift it is to be able to give mettā to all beings, even to those who have presumably harmed us. It’s as if we have this huge bank account, of which we remain unaware until we begin using it, and then the balance grows with each expenditure. And its only qualifying condition is that we be human, which fortunately we are, at least for now. And while we are, we can shower anyone with an abundance of this wealth, in the hope of making them happy. In return, we invite happiness upon ourselves, now and for the coming future.
My loss of sight has also brought me face to face with the reality of death, a truth that the Buddha often admonished his disciples to contemplate. Maraṇasati, the mindfulness of death, has become for me, not an abstract meditation or an intellectual derivation, not a drum in the distance, but a vivid and palpable reality. When I close my good eye, I see parts of my vision blur into a haze, a reminder that all life is fading in a similar manner. Not just my sight, but my body, my identity, my world—are all flowing towards the same inevitable dissolution. And in that thought I find freedom, as my mind zooms out to a hilltop view of our otherwise ensnared and futile race from birth to death, pursuing trivial concerns from one day to the next. In the wake of which I am left with a wholesome urgency to practise the Dhamma with renewed energy and devotion.
Bikram Dandiya