Rinpoche's Online Advice Book: Cancer Is Nothing New
Rinpoche gave this short talk to a group of women who were newly diagnosed, recovering from or coping with the effects of cancer or other chronic illnesses.
Cancer is nothing new. This experience is nothing new. It’s an old experience that we have gone through numberless times. We don’t remember it, but we’ve gone through it so many times, numberless times in the past, so it’s nothing new, nothing to be surprised at.
It’s just one of the old experiences we’ve had; it’s nothing new. So we shouldn’t think, “Oh, I have this problem, but no one else in the world has this problem.” Don’t think like that. It’s nothing new; it’s an old experience. We have already gone through it so many times in our past lives, so it is nothing new.
Why do we experience this? It’s because it is the nature of our mind. It’s the nature of our body and the nature of our mind. So it’s like that; it’s planned. You know there are different shapes [in the world], like flowers. Plants have many different shapes, for example, there are many different flowers. In the same way, each person has a different body, a different shape and a different way of thinking.
Cancer is not something frightening. We think it’s something new that we have never experienced before, but it’s not a new thing. Thinking like that is wrong. It is one of the old experiences we have gone through before in the past, numberless times. So it’s not something to be scared of or frightened of; we do not have to think like that. It’s not something very new or very frightening. It’s not like that.
Actually, fear is made by our mind. Fear is made up by our concepts. Our concepts label it as frightening and put negative labels on it and then believe in those labels. Putting a negative label on something and then believing in it causes fear to arise.
So instead of putting a negative label on the cancer, you can put a positive label on it. You can put a positive label and think in that way, and that brings happiness into your life. That is how you can bring happiness into your life, moment by moment and day by day. It’s like that if you can change your concepts.
When we generate a positive concept, a positive label, then we have a positive appearance and a positive outlook, seeing things positively. So, we have a positive label, a positive appearance and then positive seeing. Positive label, positive appearance and then positive seeing—these three things. This is how to generate happiness in our life, even from moment to moment.
So it’s like that, basically it’s like that. Fear is created by our concepts; there is no fear coming from outside. We made the fear, our mind made it. Our concepts built it, we put all the negative labels and then [the illness] appears negative and we see it as negative, just like a balloon that we blow up. So if we put a positive label, a positive appearance, a happy appearance, then we have positive seeing. Then we can make everything happy—we are happy, the environment is happy, the family is happy, other people are happy. So we can make everything, even the world, happy in that way, through our mind, through our concepts.
So that’s it, just in brief. We really have to learn like that—of course, including myself. We have to learn through our daily life experience; we have the daily life experience and we can do our own research. So you are the scientist, you are the meditator, you are the doctor, you are everything. Do you understand? Don’t let the mind create fear; it does not help.
You can read my book Transforming Problems into Happiness and choose from there, whatever you understand. If you don’t understand, then don’t bother. If there’s something you understand, then you can practice it. You’re welcome. That is in brief all I can say; that is the essence.
Our life, our happiness and suffering come from the mind, they’re made up by our mind, our concepts. The whole world’s sufferings come from the mind. Therefore, we have total freedom to be free from suffering, because it comes from our mind. It didn’t come from outside; first it came from our mind, so we can eliminate it.
It is very important to always have a positive label, to look at things as positive, then we have positive appearance, then we see everything positively and we are happy. OK? So it’s like this.
Then, even if physically there is pain, the mind is happy. Do you understand? For example, the pain in the world, there are so many people suffering. It’s amazing, amazing. So you dedicate your pain. You dedicate your pain for the world. Even human beings, those who have a better life as human beings, have so many problems, so much suffering, mental and physical—wow, wow, wow—so dedicate your pain, dedicate for them, give it to them, dedicate it for them. I don’t mean give your pain to others, not that.
“Dedicate” means you use the pain, you use the pain for all the human beings—not only for human beings, but for all the animals and non-human beings, so many other different types of beings—so that all their sufferings, their mental and physical sufferings finish by you experiencing this pain. You, who experience pain, are just one person but those others who are suffering are numberless.
Think, “All their suffering finishes by my experiencing this pain.” So you take their suffering and then it finishes, they are free from the sufferings because you are experiencing the pain. It’s not just for their temporary peace and happiness, but for the ultimate peace and happiness that never changes into suffering, that always stays that way.
[Dedicate for their] ultimate peace, total liberation from suffering and the causes of suffering, total liberation from that, ultimate happiness. Then there also is peerless happiness, the elimination of all the obscurations of the mind and completion of all the realizations, peerless happiness. Dedicate for others to achieve all that.
When you are feeling pain or whatever problem, dedicate for numberless others to finish their suffering and to achieve not only temporary but also ultimate happiness, a blissful peaceful state of mind. Dedicate for others to achieve peerless happiness, the total elimination of the obscurations of the mind and completion of all the realizations.
Like this, you make use of your life and even your pain becomes most beneficial, most useful, for your family, for the country, for the whole world, and for the numberless universes, as the scientists mention, as Buddha mentioned. So all those.
Dedicate for all beings to achieve all this happiness and peace, and freedom from all their suffering. This is how to make the best use of the experience; this is what is most beneficial, and this is the way to enjoy your life.