Changing Suffering into Happiness: Skye Banning, Australia

Skye Banning lives in Sydney, and is 39 – “the big four-oh next year.” She has had diabetes since childhood. This has resulted in diabetic retinopathy, which is blindness. In 1996 she had breast cancer, which was reversed but which recurred again in 1997. She is now cancer-free.

When you’ve had diabetes like this for about 20 years, especially if you’ve had it in childhood, the body starts destroying itself, and one of three things will start normally happening. The retina will go, hence the blindness; the kidneys will fail, so you will have to go on dialysis, or your nervous system starts to shut down, therefore the risk of gangrene is great. You’ll often find diabetics who’ve had amputations, especially the feet. They’ve found a way to control it, which is the insulin, and a lot of people think that’s wonderful – which is it – but what has come along with that is all these complications that set in later. They’ve given us longer lives, and yet those longer lives are tainted with all these problems. I often sit and think, “Am I defying what was meant to be?”

I also wonder if we’re messing with technology to our disadvantage. To me it doesn’t seem what was intended. And yet I was a terminal care nurse, so I know all about this. I know about the joy extra life brings to people. And yet I’m also in the situation now of paying the price of technology.

It was in 1990 that we discovered I was going blind, and that was only by accident. I used to organize rock tours, and I organized a tour with Keith Richards. I wanted to go on tour around Australia with him, and they said, “Sure, come along, we’ll need you.” I thought, “Oh, vanity being what it is, I’d love to do the tour with brown eyes, because my eyes are blue. Blond hair and brown eyes for a change.”

I went to an optometrist in the city and asked him to tell me about these colored contact lenses that had just come out. He said, “We’ll just give you a basic eye test, measure you up, you pick the color, and away you go.” He told me to read the eye chart, and I said, “What eye chart?” He just said, “Oh, no. Forget the contact lenses – we’ve got a far more serious problem here.”

He sent me around to McQuarry Street (Sydney’s Harley Street). He sent me that day, and that afternoon I was having laser surgery. For the next nine months after work I went in for surgery every Monday. The doctor I went to told me not to worry, that he could save my sight. One week he would do one eye, the next he’d do the other, so it went like that.

One week the left eye just started to die, started to fail. He said we’d just concentrate on the right eye, then. I said, “Oh no you don’t!” The surgery is really painful after about the third time, so I felt like after giving them nine months of believing they could save my sight, I lose the sight anyhow. I stopped going, and I decided I would enjoy whatever time I’ve got left pain-free. If I’m going to go blind anyway, what’s the point in the agony?

So in 1996 – it was a bad year – Michael Bolton was coming out on tour and I happened to get front row seats. I thought it was excellent – my birthday is on February 23, and the show was that night. It was a fabulous birthday present to myself. I went with a friend that night, and on the morning of the 24th I woke up and couldn’t see a thing – nothing. I stayed at home for two weeks thinking it would get better, but it didn’t.

My pussycat would lead me around the house. I’d click my fingers and he’d come running, and I’d say, “Bickies, bickies,” and he knew his bickies were in the kitchen, so I’d follow him into the kitchen. I could figure out things from there. Then I’d say, “Bed, Bubby, bed,” and he’d take me to the bedroom because that’s where his bed is. I thought it was ridiculous, though, and knew I couldn’t stay like this. A friend who was working at Channel Nine told me his mum went to a really good doctor, and that I should visit him.

I called him, and his secretary told me to come late the next afternoon. I didn’t know how I would get there, but she told me they would wait for me no matter how long it took to get there. I got in a taxi the next day, and the taxi driver had to take me to the door – it was so humiliating. The doctor told me to read the eye chart, but all I could see was a glowing light. I asked where the chart was and he said I was looking right at it. I said, “Oh I thought that was a light in a window!” He then told me I had to get to the hospital, that I’d had a massive hemorrhage.

I went to the eye hospital the next day, and the doctor met me there. I was in hospital for a week, in the bed so that everything was still. It was like having thick mud stirred up so that you can’t see anything, and you have to wait for it to settle.

You have what’s called vitreous jelly in the eye, which makes it hold its shape. In diabetic retinopathy, you have lots of little hemorrhages, and the retina throws out anchors onto the vitreous jelly, and those anchors of blood contract and begin to pull the retina off. My retina at the moment looks like Swiss cheese.

I once got a procedure done called a vitrectomy, in which they pulled out the vitreous jelly, and they fill your eye with gas. The gas dissipates over six or seven weeks and eye fills with the fluid from your tears – that sort of fluid. That went well, and I thought next that glasses would help. I was measured up for glasses on a Friday, and picked them up on Saturday. My flatmate asked me on Sunday morning if I’d gotten my glasses, and told me to put them on. I put them on and they didn’t make any difference. I rang my surgeon and told him, and he told me to get to the hospital right away. We found out when I got there that the retina was detaching because the fluid wasn’t strong enough to hold the retina in place. I had to have another operation, and they put silicon belts, buckles and clips to hold the retina on, and they filled the eye with silicon oil. It’s remained like that ever since.

Now, I’ve got about three percent eyesight, and I can make out very strong contrasts and movement. It’s pretty limited, but I recently got my guide dog Jai, and she’s brilliant. I got Jai in December and she’s perfect. She’s so steady and calm and focused – to me she’s hope in a fur coat. She’s great, and she loves me!

Nineteen-ninety-six was a bad year! In February I was diagnosed with breast cancer, so on the 22nd, the day before my birthday, they did the operation, and did the chemotherapy and the radiotherapy and all that. I went on for about six months doing that and finally got a clean bill of health.

Every three months you get a regular check-up, so that October in 1997 I got it again. I went through it again, but I’ve been cancer-free for about a year!

I’d been interested in Buddhism for a long time, but I didn’t know much about it, and there wasn’t anywhere in my condition I could really find out about it. I need people to take me new places – I can’t just find the place. I can’t look in the phone book.

One day I was sitting at home watching good old Oprah [Winfrey Show] and she had Richard Gere on. Red Corner was the movie he was talking about, and I loved his passion, and how he didn’t care what the rest of Hollywood was doing. He had a story to tell and he would tell it his way. The story was right to be told, and I thought, “I like him.”

She asked him about Buddhism, and all of a sudden my ears pricked up! She said to him, “What’s the greatest thing you’ve learned?” and the answer just got me – he said, “The older I get the less I know.” This was really humble, and I thought I really liked this. After the show I rang a friend and asked them to look in the phone book under B for Buddhist. I first got in touch with a Buddhist library and information center, and then told them I’m interested in the philosophy of Buddhism. After about 45 minutes, the guy said, “I think you want the Tibetans. They’re more into the philosophy – we’re Zen.”

I rang Vajrayana Institute and spoke with Jan Pethar in the office, and she told me about a Wednesday morning meeting they have – the others are in the evenings. She even told me she would come and get me!

Since then, one of the things Buddhism has taught me is that it starts with me, it starts inside. I’ve had to turn not only my sight but also my thinking inside. In a way, losing my sight was the best thing that ever happened because it cut down on this tendency I’ve always had to go outside of myself. I’ve done everything else but look at me. When you can’t see, you have to look inside. That was one huge thing.

Another major, major thing is that my mum died in childbirth when I was one. I never got over it – nobody would explain it to me or talk about it. We got horrendous child abuse from my stepmother – now I understand why she behaved that way. My father never stopped loving my mother, and the older I got, the more I became like my mother, so my stepmother felt it was like living with a memory. Up until I met Geshe Dawa, I was so angry that my mum wasn’t there. Other religions said she’s in paradise, that she’s waiting for me. Well bugger paradise! I want to know now – Where is she? Is she all right? Does she miss me? If you lose your mother that young, you’re always looking for her. You grow up, but part of you doesn’t – part of you is still lost in that way.

I said to Geshe Dawa, what does Buddhism say? He said two words to me, and my life changed – “Let go.” That’s all he said – let go. Ven Michael Lobsang Yeshe, his interpreter, said to me, “She’s gone. She’s moved on – she’s in her next incarnation, or the incarnation after that.”

The saving grace for me was when Geshe Dawa said let go. When he explained that she’s moved on, it laid to rest the anger I felt when people told me she was waiting for me in paradise. Waiting? Where?

Buddhism and Geshe Dawa gave me the biggest and most beautiful lesson, and I’ve only been going for about a year! Geshe Dawa is the most incredible human being I’ve ever met. He’s one in a billion. He has given me more through his gentleness and his totally unassuming manner than anyone else.

Before I became blind, I’d always be looking after others, so I didn’t have to think about me and I didn’t have to look at my own pain. I was so busy healing others that I didn’t have time to think of myself, and that was just fine.

When I lost my sight, I couldn’t do it anymore and I was trapped with me. It was like now the time has come where I have to face my demons. I have to go through my agonies. There were three days when I was in hospital when I thought, “I’m going to go walk off the Gaps – (which is a famous suicide spot in Sydney) – I don’t want to do this. I can’t do this, it’s too big.” Also, I had that loss of my mother that nobody could comfort, and I had all the bashings, cigarette burns, all the being locked out at midnight when you’re 5 – all the trauma to deal with, and I had to go back through that and work through it.

That was tough because I had just kept putting Band-Aids on it, and in one big pull all the bandages came off. There was this one big, bleeding sore which was me. I had to go through everything and heal that.

I won’t say I’m healed, but I’m very much on the way. I think that strength that has come from the healing has been like a beacon to some of my friends. They don’t know what it is, but they’ll say, “Oh Skye, you’re so happy! You’re so calm! What’s going on with you!” A lot of my friends are asking about Buddhism now. I don’t necessarily tell them what Buddhism is, because if they choose to look into it, it will be their own journey, it will be different to them. What Buddhism means to me isn’t necessarily what it means to others. What aspect of Dharma has been the most powerful to you?

I think karma and compassion have been the most powerful for me. They are the two focal points. Karma helped me with my mother, putting it in its proper perspective.

The other thing I really loved was when I first went to Vajrayana Institute, I was sitting in the library with April, and Geshe Dawa was walking around the stupa, and he was kind of talking into his hands. I asked, “What’s he doing? Is he praying?” April said, “Kind of – he’s blessing a bug.” That did it for me!

That totally sold me because my greatest passion in life is animals. I adore them.  So I looked into the garden, and here is this little Tibetan man with a bug in his hands, and he’d lost not only his country, but also his whole civilization, and he can still have compassion for a little bug? How much more obvious does it have to be to me? To have respect and compassion for all living things – from that second on I was in. In that moment he demonstrated what I’d always believed and been searching for. It taught me everything – by one little glimpse into Buddhism I’d found the answer. I saw it through his example, too – it’s a living faith. Every minute of every day you teach and you are taught.

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