Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Land of Medicine Buddha, California, U.S., September 2012. Photo by Dionne Wilson.

New online at MandalaMagazine.org, Lama Zopa Rinpoche discusses “Seeing Problems as Positive,” an excerpt from Rinpoche’s new book How to Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas:

There are many different ways of using the objects of the eight worldly dharmas, depending on the practitioner. Tantric practitioners use them in tantric practice, those following the bodhisattva path use them to generate bodhichitta and those trying to achieve the cessation of samsara use them to destroy their delusions.

For worldly people the confusion caused by suffering only brings more suffering and confusion, but as Dharma practitioners we have the opportunity of making suffering extremely beneficial by using it to cut confusion rather than to create it. In order to achieve enlightenment we have to experience both physical and mental difficulties, but bearing such difficulties is incredibly worthwhile because by doing so we reach a state where all suffering ceases forever. As we progress along the path to enlightenment, problems become fewer and fewer and therefore whatever we experience at this time only helps to bring about the end of the suffering that has no beginning.

You can read this entire excerpt as part of the Mandala January-March 2013 online edition.