Tholakele Buthelezi wasn’t always so hopeful. Unemployed with two fatherless children and no parents to support her, she considered killing herself when she was diagnosed with HIV and tuberculosis last December. But after learning about the power of meditation from a Buddhist friend, the 34-year-old from Eshowe in KwaZulu-Natal has regained her will to live.
“I can say that Buddhism has helped me a lot because of its spiritual focus on the mind and soul,” says Buthelezi, who also uses herbal remedies and aromatherapy to ease her symptoms. “Sometimes, when you’ve got [HIV], you take on the problems of the sickness when you are trying to just feel well. When I meditate, I really feel my soul becoming free.”
Buthelezi used to need to meditate twice a day to cope with the physical and emotional pain she felt. Now she meditates just twice a week. She sits in a darkened room, switches on some calming music, and relaxes her body in a chair for 10 minutes. Little by little, Buthelezi’s worries diminish as she concentrates on the sound and quality of each exhalation. “As you breathe in and breathe out, it’s like you’re letting the birds fly,” she says. “The most important thing is to get peace in your mind.”
Teaching people how to meditate is just one of the ways that Buddhists in South Africa are assisting people living with HIV.
Buddhists, who comprise less than 1% of the country’s population, have developed a unique outreach method that deals not just with the physical symptoms of the disease, but also with the spiritual and psychological burdens it creates.
“If people understand meditation, then they understand themselves and they won’t feel bad … or despair for having Aids,” says Abby Nyakunga, outreach coordinator for the Nan Hua Buddhist Temple. Located in Bronkhorstspruit, 40km east of Pretoria, the temple is the largest Buddhist facility in Africa.Nyakunga recognises HIV/Aids as one of the most serious problems affecting the temple’s neighbouring communities. Since 2002, he has joined forces with several home-based care centres in Zithobeni, Rethabiseng, Ekangala, Cullinan and Kwamhlanga to organise food and clothing drives, run monthly soup kitchens and collect medical supplies such as wheelchairs and crutches.
The temple hosts regular workshops to teach people of all faiths about nutrition as a necessary complement to any form of HIV medication. Nyakunga brings in specialists from home-based care centres to talk about following a healthy vegetarian diet.
In May, the temple is planning a free two-day “upliftment retreat” for people with HIV. The retreat will focus on how to ease people’s minds through meditation and physical exercises. Meditation is not taught as an alternative to medication, but as an additional tool for coping with HIV.
According to Buddhist beliefs, meditation and physical exercise are only the first steps toward alleviating the psychological burden of living with HIV. “You have to accept that the body is impermanent,” says Nyakunga. “Whether through HIV/Aids or old age or a fatal accident, your body will perish. The only thing that will continue is your spirit.”
Buddhist teaching advises abstinence or the use of condoms in order to prevent the spread of HIV. Some temples deliver free condoms to taverns, shebeens and home-based care centres.
Nyakunga says it is vital to care for one’s body and avoid disease by any means necessary.
Buddhists believe in cultivating their spirit through multiple lifetimes to eventually achieve enlightenment. The quality of each life is determined by the behaviour of the previous life, according to the concept of karma.
But Nyakunga stresses that contracting HIV is not punishment for the acts of a previous life. Instead, it is a direct result of a person’s current circumstances. Even if a person lives a disciplined life following the five basic precepts of Buddhism, one of which is monogamy, Nyakunga understands that a person can still get HIV. What matters then is how the person accepts the disease and its effect on the body.
Acknowledging that HIV affects more than just those infected, some Buddhist priests, such as Heila Downey in the Western Cape, find themselves advising other religious leaders in rural areas on how to formulate an appropriate strategy. Downey, who represents the Dharma Centre in Robertson, meets with nurses from a nearby hospice who witness people dying from Aids every day.
“It’s very interesting to me. Some days there’s actually very little to be said,” explains Downey. “It appears to me that they have this incredible capability to say, ‘This is the way it is. This is my job. I just do the best I can.’”
While the stigma surrounding HIV/Aids is still high in South Africa, Downey says Buddhists make no distinction between caring for someone who is HIV-positive and someone who is not.
“We embrace people, we hold people,” says Downey. “HIV/Aids, for us, is just another illness. It’s not something special. We would deal with someone who is HIV-positive exactly the same way as someone who has pneumonia or who has been in a motorcycle accident.”