Pain as a Blessing

This morning listening to Pema talk about compassion and pain, I realized that we can shift our thinking to see pain as a blessing. Pain, regardless of whether it's mental, physical or other, is the root of compassion for our fellow man. She was talking about using Tonglen for Leprosy or Aids patients and how the pain of their disease can be their salvation at the same time.

If you can use your pain as a means to feel, see and appreciate the pain of all humans, you are able to open with love and compassion to all beings who have at one point or another experienced pain too. If you never knew pain, you could not find this same love and compassion.

It turns things around by seeing our pain (all of it, the big lifelong aches or the minor inconveniences) as a means to open and get in touch with compassion and love for everyone and their pain.

I know that the things in my life that have caused me pain have really been blessings and the reason I pursue spiritual teachings and have brought me to where I am today. If I can only see these pains as means to enlighten and means to find compassion, using it for good rather than dwelling in it.

I can find compassion for all people with mentally ill relatives (which according to statistics is 1 in 3 people) and people who have lost someone they love. I can find compassion for people with chronic illness that impedes them from living a normal life.

Truly when I look at my pains in this light, I can find compassion for everyone. For every human has experienced some of the pains I too have experienced. Using pain to cultivate compassion, now that's a good use of the rest of my life.