Try to bring all your experience into the context of devotion to the teacher. If you can grasp this vital point of the practice, you will have no obstacles. If your situation is pleasant and easy, see your happiness, without any attachment, as the blessings of the teacher, and as a dream, an illusion. And if you go through difficulties and suffering, see that, too, as the blessings of the teacher. If you fall ill, visualize your spiritual teacher wherever it is in your body that you feel pain or that is the site of the disease. Recognize that illness and pain offer you an opportunity to purify yourself of harmful past actions and of ignorance – the sources of suffering. Keep in mind the many other beings who are suffering in the same way as you are, and pray that your suffering may absorb theirs, and that they may be liberated from all suffering. In this way, illness can teach us compassion.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

from the book The Hundred Verses of Advice: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on What Matters Most

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Further quotes from the book The Hundred Verses of Advice:

• Putting down the heavy burden once and for all
• The freedom to practice the Dharma
• Free of being caught by anything at all
• Abandon negative friendships
• Being near a spiritual teacher
• Three essential points
• Flying off into the bardo
• Happiness and suffering
• Rather than being trapped by your perceptions
• Contemplating the defects of samsara
• Dwell in the simplicity of the present moment
• Love and compassion for all
• Nothing to be gained or lost
• How illness can teach us compassion
• Devotion is the fare on our journey toward enlightenment
• Use riches in a constructive way
• You won’t live forever
• Put on the armor of diligence
• The mind is free of any true reality
• The most profound spiritual practice