Don´t worry; chemotherapy is not necessary. Sometimes it may work, but it draws on your energy and affects your whole body. What you should do is take on all the sufferings of numberless hell beings, who are experiencing unimaginable sufferings continuously without interruption. They have been very kind to you in many different ways, for example, when they were your mother giving you a body, education, protecting your life, and facing many hardships for you.
Take the sufferings of numberless hungry ghosts.
Take the sufferings of numberless animals.
Take the sufferings of numberless humans, asuras, suras, and intermediate state beings.
Take all their suffering and give it back to your self-cherishing thought, from where all your suffering comes. Due to your self-cherishing thought, you created the causes to experience the result of your cancer now, so take on all the sufferings of all sentient beings and think that now you will experience the sufferings of all sentient beings and they will become free of their sufferings. That way you purify your negative karma, from where the sickness arises.
Self-cherishing is the real enemy and all your problems, sicknesses, and sufferings come from self-cherishing.
Also, offer all your happiness, body, merits and possessions to all the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, asuras, suras and intermediate state beings.
By practicing in this way, cancer is bringing you to enlightenment, so you are the luckiest person in the world. Cancer is giving you the happiness of future lives, liberation and enlightenment because you are purifying all your negative karma and accumulating merits. So, you are the luckiest person in the world. Not only is the cancer giving you all the happiness of future lives, liberation and enlightenment, but also all the happiness of sentient beings, because when you reach enlightenment you bring all sentient beings to the ultimate happiness of liberation and enlightenment. The cancer is giving you all that happiness.
As His Holiness Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche advised, and according to the teachings of thought transformation, when we encounter problems, we should think: “This prayer that I made has been accomplished and it's my greatest success in life.” When the doctor says you have cancer, think you have completed your prayer and have the greatest success in your life, that what you have been praying for has been accomplished. Otherwise, you might become lazy and not remember the Dharma. Cancer reminds you of the impermanent nature of life, and it reminds you of what happens after death—a lower rebirth. It reminds you of Dharma and what makes you be reborn in a higher realm is only Dharma. You cannot achieve this through a machine or taking tablets—there are no tablets to get a higher rebirth, no special food in the supermarket. This makes you practice Dharma very seriously, especially bodhicitta and tong-len practice.
Take all sentient beings’ suffering and cause of suffering upon yourself, in your heart, and destroy the self-cherishing thought and ego, which does not allow you to achieve enlightenment and brings all the sufferings, problems and obstacles to achieving enlightenment. Then, generate compassion and take the cause of karma and delusions upon yourself, and give away your merits and your past, present, and future happiness, all your wealth, possessions, surrounding family and children. Give not only your body and possessions, but also think about some of the people who are helping you make charity to sentient beings—imagine all your family and your wife or husband. You make charity to sentient beings by taking on their suffering and you collect limitless skies of merit. Each time you do that, think you are experiencing the suffering of all sentient beings. Each time, dedicate your body to each realm, not just to each sentient being, but to numberless hell beings and you will collect limitless skies of merit.
When you offer to the hungry ghosts, you can offer material possessions. I explained this before in an interview with our friend from Tushita, Dharamsala. For example, if you have many hats or shoes, you can offer them to numberless sentient beings in each realm. With each hat and shoe you collect limitless skies of merit, seven times numberless merits, because there are also intermediate state beings with these material possessions. Can you imagine the merits and result, up to enlightenment? You collect limitless skies of merit so many times.
Each time you do this, because of the cancer, you purify negative karma collected from beginningless rebirths so many times, and you collect limitless skies of merit so many times—within two or three minutes or even one minute of tong-len meditation. The cancer brings you to enlightenment that much quicker; it liberates you from samsara quicker. Therefore, the cancer becomes the most precious thing, all wish-fulfilling. Not only that, you liberate numberless sentient beings from oceans of samsaric sufferings, from each realm, and bring them to enlightenment. That is amazing. You become capable of doing this. All of this comes from the cancer or relationship problems or whatever problem you have—whatever your mind labels as a problem. By using that for Dharma, there is unbelievable benefit and it becomes the most wish-fulfilling gem or jewel. The most precious thing in your life is having cancer. Before it was something to abandon, but now it becomes the most important thing, most precious and wish-fulfilling. Transform problems into happiness like this.
