Suffering can bring you to a place of profound mindfulness about your relationships and your spiritual beliefs. While your loved one may not have hurt you directly or intentionally, the loss of that loved one and your shared relationship certainly does hurt. In the context of grief, then, the person, and by extension the relationship, can be your spiritual teacher. Being aware of how your loved one lived, what his or her role was in your life, and how you are experiencing the loss of that person can turn your grief journey into a vehicle for your spiritual growth. Without this person's presence in and loss from your life, you would not have this unique opportunity to appreciate life and love, and seek out personal growth.

Using the pain of loss as a spiritual teacher, you begin to cultivate a sense of gratitude toward what you are feeling and experiencing. The intense emotional pain of your grief may still hurt. However, as you experience grief mindfully, allowing yourself to feel the twists and turns of the spiral staircase, the triggers and changes in your relationships, and your own personal development, you may eventually come to realize, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, perhaps even physically, that your capacity to grieve - and your capacity to love - are interconnected.

Grieving mindfully can therefore be an affirmation of life and of love. This is the challenge and apparent paradox of the Lojong practice: to experience grief, hardship, and difficulty not as something shameful, impossible, punishing, or toxic, but as an opportunity to learn priceless life lessons.

This approach to loss and suffering in general is certainly not unique to Buddhism; it is part of various spiritual traditions. For instance, in the Bible, the Letter of James says, "whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have it's full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, and lacking in nothing" (2-4).

What James is saying has much in common with the Lojong teachings. He is asking us to confront our trials and hardships and see them in a spiritual context rather than according to our own limited perceptions of what is good and bad. Indeed, he is even asking us to see our sufferings as joys!

This spiritual-minded attitude toward suffering changes how you think about life. You may find as you grieve mindfully, aware of what you are thinking and feeling, that you develop a deep confidence in your ability to live through pain. And your capacity to endure the inherent uncertainties of life only become more evolved and mature with time, and with diligent practice of mindfulness and mindful activities.

Excerpt from Grieving Mindfully: A Compassionate and Spiritual Guide to Coping with Loss by Sameet M. Kumar, Ph.D.