Transforming Illness into the Path
A student with stage four cancer told Rinpoche that he felt almost no pain and viewed his illness and treatment as purification of his negative karma. He was grateful and saw each episode of vomiting as a blessing that would help him benefit others in future lives.
My very dear one,
A billion, zillion thanks from my heart. It shows you are becoming happier and happier. It shows that you are a great practitioner, especially of thought transformation, lojong. This is great. It’s how other students who get sick and have pain should feel—rejoicing that the result of past heavy negative karma is finishing.
Kadampa Geshe Khamlungpa mentioned in the thirty- or thirty-seven advices —I’m not sure of the title—but at the end of each stanza there is the letter ang [in Tibetan script]. So, one of the verses for when we are sick is to reflect on our past negative karma:
By experiencing this small suffering
My previous negative karma is purified
And there will be happiness in the future.
Therefore, rejoice in this present suffering.
Then there is ang.
When we are experiencing discomfort or sickness think, “I am receiving all sentient beings’ sufferings including the causes. I am experiencing their suffering so they can be free from the oceans of samsaric sufferings—the suffering of pain, the suffering of change and pervasive compounded suffering—and I let them have dharmakaya.”
When we take the sufferings of others, there is so much infinite [suffering] to be taken from them, even from one sentient being, and then the causes of that. So, can you imagine, this is received in our heart then it destroys the self-cherishing thought. Also, seeing the emptiness of the real I—that which we believed in one hundred percent due to our ignorance—as it is empty from its own side from the beginning. This involves eliminating the ignorance which is the root of samsara as well, so we meditate on that.
With loving kindness we are giving our own happiness and the causes of happiness, the merits, and we are taking the suffering of others. Wow, wow, wow. We collect the most merit from that and it becomes the most powerful purification of negative karmas and obscurations collected from beginningless rebirths, and a way to collect unimaginable, unimaginable, unimaginable merits, extensive merits, even by practicing this just one time.
It is a quick way to be free from samsara, from the oceans of samsaric suffering and a quick way to achieve sang gye [buddhahood]. This is the happiest life, the most enjoyable, most meaningful life. So we are using difficulties and problems on the path in order to free the numberless sentient beings—the hell beings, hungry ghosts, human beings, suras, asuras and intermediate state beings—from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to sang gye.
With much love and prayers ...