Being with the pain
Often, on the Buddhist podcasts I listen to, they say: "be with the pain". Like if you're meditating for long hours and you get a sore back: "just be with the pain in your back".
For a long time I was puzzled as to what this meant. It doesn't make good english. Only in the past few months is it dawning on me. We're conditioned, when we feel pain, to recoil from it, fear it, shun it. The last thing we're doing is being calmly with it. The pain is not us. And when you stop running away from the pain, and just truly observe it, it loses its horror. Its just a different sensation, one that is a stranger to us. The amazing thing I've noticed is that as soon as you stop running, and just observe the pain, without judging it, or fearing it, it kinda dissipates.
That must have been how those famous Buddhist monks set themselves alight in protest to American troops in Vietnam.
And that's how BPG managed to endure his recent trip to the dentist (which is what got me thinking along this track in the first place).
Now if I could only do it with headaches... and depression - that would be the ultimate.
The pic BTW is one of my photos which I doctored up in Photoshop.
PS: Suzanne, Thank U and Namaste 2
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For a long time I was puzzled as to what this meant. It doesn't make good english. Only in the past few months is it dawning on me. We're conditioned, when we feel pain, to recoil from it, fear it, shun it. The last thing we're doing is being calmly with it. The pain is not us. And when you stop running away from the pain, and just truly observe it, it loses its horror. Its just a different sensation, one that is a stranger to us. The amazing thing I've noticed is that as soon as you stop running, and just observe the pain, without judging it, or fearing it, it kinda dissipates.
That must have been how those famous Buddhist monks set themselves alight in protest to American troops in Vietnam.
And that's how BPG managed to endure his recent trip to the dentist (which is what got me thinking along this track in the first place).
Now if I could only do it with headaches... and depression - that would be the ultimate.
The pic BTW is one of my photos which I doctored up in Photoshop.
PS: Suzanne, Thank U and Namaste 2
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very good bpg, very good! understand that you can get to a place where surfing with a depression is just as enjoyable (or i should say "no different") than having an orgasm with mrs M!
ReplyDeletenow sit your ass back on the cushion and don't be quick to judge what i've just said, because i ain't makin fun of your sex life, nor of your depression.
ps: dig around on the introwebs for those pics of self-immolating monk:z - nuttin like serenity under fire & i mean that literally in this case, of course...
Stunning picture and so true on the post.
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