Editor’s Note: Here’s a deeply encouraging teaching from Tibetan Buddhist master Zopa Rinpoche on learning to welcome our problems because they are actually the source of our awakening.

In this challenging modern time with many problems and much unhappiness, human beings are especially overwhelmed by suffering, and their minds are not resilient. This is because they are unable to recognize as beneficial the problems and harm they experience and to see these problems as causes of happiness. Human beings who have not encountered the Dharma are unable to recognize this and unable to train their minds in this recognition.

Instead of seeing all the problems you experience–whether caused by living beings or by situations and circumstances–as problems, you need to develop the habit of recognizing them all as beneficial conditions supporting happiness, and in fact being causes of happiness. But you can’t change your perception all at once. You must begin by trying to recognize small problems as beneficial, then gradually, as you become more accustomed to this, you can start to recognize larger, more serious problems as good, even pleasurable, and ultimately necessary for your happiness. You will see everything that disturbs you as essential for achieving happiness.

But make no mistake: The practice of thought transformation is not intended to eliminate problems but rather to enable you to use the problems you experience to train your mind to move step by step along the path to enlightenment and ultimate happiness. It is not that you will no longer receive harm from other people, or from circumstances, or from disease and old age; you will simply not be disturbed by anything that happens. The events that the untrained mind perceives as problems cannot in and of themselves disturb your practice of the Dharma; they cannot prevent your attainment of the realizations of the path to enlightenment. In fact, when you practice thought transformation, not only do problems not disturb you, they actually help you to develop your mind and continue your Dharma practice.

How do you use problems in support of your Dharma practice and your attainment of happiness? You have to train your mind in two ways. First, you stop the thought of complete aversion to suffering, and, second, you generate the thought of welcoming problems. When you have accomplished this and actually feel happy rather than unhappy to have problems, problems no longer become obstacles to generating the path to enlightenment within your mind.

From Transforming Problems into Happiness by Lama Zopa Rinpoche (Wisdom Publications 2001).