“When we’re in any kind of pain, we can use it to open our hearts to the reality that people are always suffering.  Pain is something everyone experiences.  We can use it to ground us in the fundamental truth of our being.  Pain gives us firsthand experience by which to be kind and generous to others.  It gives us direct access through our empathy to helping others.  We can use pain to activate compassion.  We’d like others not to experience pain, and we can extend ourselves to them.  We can contemplate the words, ‘May all beings be free of pain.’  Our direct experience of pain only makes our wish more potent.  It may even decrease our pain, because it increases our joy.  This becomes a wonderful meditation, to sit there and contemplate the relief of pain and suffering of everyone, of the whole world—not only because it changes our attitude toward our own pain, but also because it’s opening our mind of enlightenment.  This kind of prayer is always healing.” ~ Sakyong Mipham, Turning the Mind Into An Ally (Page 144)