The-Tibetan-Book-of-Living-and-Dying

320 THE TIBETAN BOOK OF LIVING AND DYINGYou may even come to feel mysteriously grateful towardyour suffering, because it gives you such an opportunity ofworking through it and transforming it. Without it you wouldnever have been able to discover that hidden in the nature anddepths of suffering is a treasure of bliss. The times when youare suffering can be those when you are most open, andwhere you are extremely vulnerable can be where your greateststrength really lies.Say to yourself then: "I am not going to run away from thissuffering. I want to use it in the best and richest way I can, sothat I can become more compassionate and more helpful toothers." Suffering, after all, can teach us about compassion. Ifyou suffer you will know how it is when others suffer. And ifyou are in a position to help others, it is through your sufferingthat you will find the understanding and compassion to do so.So whatever you do, don't shut off your pain; accept yourpain and remain vulnerable. However desperate you become,accept your pain as it is, because it is in fact trying to handyou a priceless gift: the chance of discovering, through spiritualpractice, what lies behind sorrow. "Grief," Rumi wrote, "canbe the garden of compassion." If you keep your heart openthrough everything, your pain can become your greatest allyin your life's search for love and wisdom.And don't we know, only too well, that protection frompain doesn't work, and that when we try to defend ourselvesfrom suffering, we only suffer more and don't learn what wecan from the experience? As Rilke wrote, the protected heartthat is "never exposed to loss, innocent and secure, cannotknow tenderness; only the won-back heart can ever be satisfied:free, through all it has given up, to rejoice in itsmastery." 8ENDING GRIEF AND LEARNING THROUGH GRIEFWhen you are overwhelmed by your suffering, try toinspire yourself in one of those many ways I mentioned whenI spoke of meditation practice in Chapter 5, "Bringing theMind Home." One of the most powerful methods I havefound to soothe and dissolve sorrow is to go into nature, andespecially to stand and contemplate by a waterfall, and letyour tears and grief pour out of you and purify you, like thewater flowing down. Or you could read a moving text onimpermanence or sorrow, and let its wisdom bring you solace.To accept and end grief is possible. One way that many