According to Lord Buddha’s teachings, our experiences of happiness are necessarily the fruit of our past virtuous actions. Likewise, our experiences of suffering are the fruit of our past non-virtuous actions. They are not acts of God or Buddha (punishment and reward); they are not the fault of our parents or someone else, and nor are they random. “Everything is our own karmic appearance,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche says.

A person using the Buddhadharma in their life attempts to live according to this natural law of karma. They learn to experience their suffering, for example, with a happy mind because they know that the ripening of past karma is necessarily the finishing of it. For a practitioner, the question “Why me?” does not arise.

And not only that. As an aspiring bodhisattva, they hold in their heart the wish to take on the suffering of others: they attempt to experience their own illness not as a burden but as a gift, courageously bearing it for the sake of others.

Here, four Buddhists speak about their experiences of using their “disease as a path to happiness,” as Lama Zopa says: “Like using poison as medicine.” Andrew Vahldieck, from the USA, has been quadriplegic for thirty years; Brazilian Isabel Amorim suffered from panic syndrome; Skye Banning of Australia, a diabetic since childhood, has been going blind since 1990 and Frenchwoman Elea Redel has had rheumatoid arthritis since 1982.

Englishman Alan Joyce has run Fundación Dharma in Bogotá, Colombia for eight years, where children aged 5-18 with cancer come to die. He talks with a heart full of love, inspired by these children’s courage and honesty. “When people come here they have to face death. There’s no way to pretend.”

Lama Zopa Rinpoche visited the foundation in November. Experience death for others, “just like Jesus Christ took on the sufferings of others when they crucified him,” he advised the children, all Christian.

In “Healing Disease through Meditation and Prayer”, Lama Zopa tells the stories of five people who have healed themselves using Buddhist techniques. “In my experience, those who sincerely try to practice meditation definitely have some result.”

In “The Power of the Medicine Buddha” he explains how to use this practice to help sick, dying or dead people and animals. Listed also are the mantras of eleven other Buddhas that are used to heal disease, prolong life and remove interferences from spirits and nagas (disembodied beings who are said to be a cooperative cause of many illnesses).

Finally, there is a list of the FPMT centers that work with the sick and the dying, as well as a bibliography of various books on how to transform the mind, the heart practice of the bodhisattva.