Welcome back to bootability.

We're on break from new interviews, but excited to continue our special Q&A mini-series with you in the meantime.

Each week, we've been answering one question that a listener asks about any aspect of Buddhist

practice or how to apply Buddhism to daily life. I'm your host, Ji-jali. Here's today's question,

a topic on which we again received a few questions. First, how can Buddhism help me with the stress caused by chronic physical pain?

And also, how can I be happy living with chronic illness? Let's start with acknowledging how hard this can be.

Any kind of chronic suffering is painful, especially at the beginning stages when we have to confront and

accept our new reality. At times, encountering physical pain or limitations can lead to a period

of grieving what we imagined for our future, which is normal. However, Buddhism does offer

plenty of concrete advice on how to address illness, and I'll

pull from a few articles that I've linked in the show notes for this one.

First, as with any challenge in life, Buddhism encourages us to address our attitude.

Falling ill is not a form of defeat.

When diagnosed with an illness, we might find ourselves

asking, why me? If we consider our karma, we might wonder if it isn't the effect of a bad cause

that we made in the past. Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda, however, tells us, falling

ill is not a form of failure or defeat. In fact, illness is an

important and integral part of our experience of being alive. It's an indispensable part of our

journey to becoming happy and to attaining budahhood or revealing our budability in this lifetime.

Thirteenth century Buddhist teacher Nietzschean Dijschen has written extensively about the purpose of illness,

explaining that illness gives rise to the resolve to attain the way.

From the perspective of the Buddhist teachings, encountering sickness can be seen as an opportunity to strengthen our desire

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