 The good news about pain is the way it cries out for attention. If you place your mind on your pain, you know just where your mind is. The trick is to stay aware of the mind. Most of the time, when pain asks for attention, we respond by trying to get rid of it. Pain becomes an object outside the mind that needs to be ejected, thrown out. Here’s the curious, counterintuitive aspect about pain: When we meet pain with resistance, the pain does not diminish. Instead we add suffering to the pain. The feeling sensation of pain arises in the body. The negative reaction to pain arises in the mind of the fixed self and transforms physical pain into an enemy. That’s how the suffering arises. When we try to get rid of pain, we pit ourselves against ourselves, becoming private war zones—not environments best suited for healing. For many people, self-pity attaches to sickness like sticky glue, and the voice of the ego asks, Why me? Yet this voice does not reside with the pain in the body but with the mind that identifies with the pain.
I started to meditate on pain by directing my mind to the sensation of stomach cramps. Then letting it rest there. Just be with the sensation of pain. No acceptance; no rejection. Just feeling. Explore the sensation. Don’t get caught in a story about the cramps, just feel them. After a few minutes, I started to investigate: What is the quality of this feeling? Where does it reside? I moved my mind from the surface area into my stomach, into the pain itself. Then I asked, Who is having this pain?
One of my esteemed roles?
They are only concepts.
Pain is a concept.
Cramp is a concept.
Stay in the awareness beyond concepts.
Let the self-beyond-self accommodate both concepts and no concepts: pain and no pain.
Pain is just a cloud, passing through the mind of awareness.
Cramps, stomach, pain are all intense forms of awareness.
Stay with the awareness and become bigger than the pain. In awareness, like sky, there is no place for the concept to abide.
Let it come. Let it go. Who holds the pain?
If you become one with your pain, there is no one to hurt. There’s just a concentrated sensation that we label pain.
No one holds the pain.
What happens when no one holds the pain?
Just pain. Actually, not even that, for pain is just a label.
Feel the sensation. Beyond concept, yet present. Nothing extra.
Experience it. Let it be.
Then I returned to just resting my mind in open awareness. |
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Sangha of Auspicious Companions 