authentic dharma turns suffering into light. Dharma did not end Beethoven’s suffering. He suffered until the end of his life. I have at home a picture of him on his deathbed, a man utterly worn out by his suffering. But through his dharma, Beethoven transformed his suffering. By the middle of his life, he had learned to plumb the depths of his agony, and to use it. He had learned to open his many wounds—his deafness, his craziness, his paranoid suspicions—to the full view of humanity, and to let a strange light pour from them.
