How to Make Your Pain Useful for Numberless Beings

How to Make Your Pain Useful for Numberless Beings

Date of Advice:
February 2020
Date Posted:
January 2022

A student was in severe pain after an operation which had been unsuccessful. Rinpoche sent this advice.

My dear one,
It seems the original operation was done on the wrong day and there was spirit interference. Most Secret Hayagriva tsog needs to be done and all the monks of Sera Mey need to do the White Umbrella Deity prayer four times for you. Rinpoche is going to recite some prayers for you also. Rinpoche also said you should continue reciting Entering the Great City of Vaishali Sutra as much as possible until the pain goes down. Others can also recite this for you. The recitation is to force the spirit to leave.

Below is another message from Rinpoche:

My most dear, most precious, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,

I understand the very heavy, critical, very heavy sickness and pain you have. I am so sorry. Yes, I will see if I can take back the pain from you, the unbelievable pain. Yes, I understand. It’s either from this life or even from billions, zillions, trillions, numberless eons ago; from having caused harm like that to human beings or to animals, harm to the lower part of their body. It can happen, because karma never goes away if it’s not purified, even from numberless eons ago, still you experience it at a time when that karma becomes powerful. So you see it is the result of past karma created by oneself.

It is mentioned in the Guru Puja:

[LC 96] Even if the environment and beings are filled with the fruits of negativity,
And unwished for sufferings pour down like rain,
I seek your blessings to take these miserable conditions as a path
By seeing them as causes to exhaust the results of my negative karma.

Even if the world and sentient beings are all filled up with the results of past negative karma—that means wars, sickness, all the terrible things, like viruses, bad things, undesirable sufferings happen like rain falling. Even if it happened like that, for example, everyone doesn’t like you, everyone hates you, everyone in the world complains about you, all the bad things happen, that is causing this negative karma to finish. The result of all the negative karma created by oneself in the past, all this is finishing. By being sick, by experiencing all the sicknesses, the unbelievable negative karma which is the result of past karma is finishing, so it’s good, positive.

It’s like when a poisonous snake bites us, then we cut the part of the body where we were bitten. This is for recovery, for survival, so it’s positive, it’s taken as positive.

Then the last line of the verse is: “Please bless me to take these bad conditions in the path to enlightenment.”

When you experience these problems, the sicknesses, including death, for all the sentient beings—not just one sentient being, but numberless sentient beings, the hell realm beings, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, suras, asuras, intermediate state beings—you experience it for them to be free from the suffering of samsara and for them to achieve enlightenment, so you experience the problems for them. The second one, that way you achieve enlightenment; by experiencing problems you achieve enlightenment, then you are able to free the numberless sentient beings from samsara and bring them to enlightenment. The second advantage is that, so you use the experience, the suffering, the pain, even death, whatever you are experiencing, on behalf of every sentient being. No one is left out, no ant, no mosquito, no one is left out, not one person; for everyone to be free from suffering and to achieve enlightenment, so that’s incredible.

One great, great yogi, Kagyu Lama Choje Gotsangpa, gave this teaching on thought transformation:

By my experiencing this problem,
(Whatever it is, this sickness)
May all the sentient beings be free from sicknesses collected from beginningless rebirth,
(Including this sickness and all the conditions, spirit harm and the causes, delusion and karma)
May they be free from the negative karma and obscurations collected from beginningless rebirths and achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible.
By my experiencing this, may this happen to the sentient beings.

That is so great if you, the one person, use your pain so that it becomes most beneficial for the numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals. Compared to the hell being’s suffering, what you are experiencing now is great peace and happiness. Compared to just one hell being, even their small problem, their small suffering, is great, great, unbelievable. Even if it is small for them, in reality it is unbelievable suffering of pain, so compared to that, these problems that you have are great peace and happiness in reality.

What I am saying is how to make your pain useful for numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless human beings, numberless sura beings and numberless asura beings. It becomes useful for them, to become free from all the sicknesses and spirit harm, all the sufferings of samsara, the negative karma, obscurations and to achieve enlightenment quickly. Using the pain for that, there are skies of benefit, you get skies of benefit. It’s like turning poison into nectar. Poison kills you right away, then you turn it into nectar and it makes your life long and healthy, everything.

Recite these prayers like reciting OM MANI PADME HUM—recite these verses like mantras, on and on, and keep on generating this wish, this prayer, as much as you can, while walking, sitting down, as much as possible. That causes you to achieve enlightenment quickly, to become free from samsara.  I will send more messages, but at the moment this much.

There are pujas, so we will do Most Secret Hayagriva tsog kong. We do this puja every month, one time here (in Sera Je) for many years, so we will do this for you. I will also do other prayers for you, so don’t worry.

Don’t worry, numberless buddhas and bodhisattvas have the most unbelievable compassion for you, even though you are experiencing these things from your past negative karma. They all love you so much and me too.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers ...