On Pain
Charles Tart interviews Shinzen Young. They discuss mindfulness and pain:
Charles: But I wonder about "unnecessary" pain. For instance, Shinzen, you don't have us wear hair shirts when we meditate. Hair shirts, as were used in medieval Christian mysticism, would definitely add to the pain. You don't have us lean sideways ten degrees, which would considerably increase the muscle strain and consequent physical pain.
Shinzen: Pain does two things. If it is experienced in a "skillful" way, the energy in pain will break up the knotty, hard parts of one's being. This is true whether the pain is of physical or psychological origin. On the other hand, if pain is experienced in an unskillful way, it does just the opposite, creates more knots, making a person brittle and rigid.
Therefore, there is nothing whatsoever to be said in favor of pain per se for meditators. It can just as much create new blockages as it can break up old ones. Everything depends on one's degree of skill in experiencing it. Very little depends on the intensity of the discomfort itself. A small discomfort greeted with a large amount of skill will break up old knots. A small discomfort greeted with a large lack of skill will create new knots. The same is true with respect to big discomforts. The trick is not so much to endure massive doses of pain, but to develop that skill which will allow you to get the maximum growth out of whatever happens to come up.
For example, sometimes I'll do a practice where I'll lie in bed and be completely motionless for several hours. Somewhere along the line I feel that I'd like to move part of my body in some little way. I get subtle pressures here or there. I find that if I can detect and open up to those subtle pressures completely, I really get somewhere. These minor irritations are likely to come up at any time, so if you can greet each with great skill, they are opportunities for growth.
"Skill" with sensation means to be relatively more clearly aware of the sensation and relatively more accepting of the sensation than you would be otherwise. When a person greets a minor pain with great awareness and great acceptance, then it has a much more powerful growth effect than to greet a major pain with grudging endurance. This was nicely summarized by Thomas Merton. Merton was a Christian monk with a great appreciation of the Eastern meditative traditions—-not an uncommon combination nowadays. I'm paraphrasing, but somewhere I remember him saying something like "I did not become a monk to suffer more than other people, I became a monk to suffer more effectively."
Charles: But I wonder about "unnecessary" pain. For instance, Shinzen, you don't have us wear hair shirts when we meditate. Hair shirts, as were used in medieval Christian mysticism, would definitely add to the pain. You don't have us lean sideways ten degrees, which would considerably increase the muscle strain and consequent physical pain.
Shinzen: Pain does two things. If it is experienced in a "skillful" way, the energy in pain will break up the knotty, hard parts of one's being. This is true whether the pain is of physical or psychological origin. On the other hand, if pain is experienced in an unskillful way, it does just the opposite, creates more knots, making a person brittle and rigid.
Therefore, there is nothing whatsoever to be said in favor of pain per se for meditators. It can just as much create new blockages as it can break up old ones. Everything depends on one's degree of skill in experiencing it. Very little depends on the intensity of the discomfort itself. A small discomfort greeted with a large amount of skill will break up old knots. A small discomfort greeted with a large lack of skill will create new knots. The same is true with respect to big discomforts. The trick is not so much to endure massive doses of pain, but to develop that skill which will allow you to get the maximum growth out of whatever happens to come up.
For example, sometimes I'll do a practice where I'll lie in bed and be completely motionless for several hours. Somewhere along the line I feel that I'd like to move part of my body in some little way. I get subtle pressures here or there. I find that if I can detect and open up to those subtle pressures completely, I really get somewhere. These minor irritations are likely to come up at any time, so if you can greet each with great skill, they are opportunities for growth.
"Skill" with sensation means to be relatively more clearly aware of the sensation and relatively more accepting of the sensation than you would be otherwise. When a person greets a minor pain with great awareness and great acceptance, then it has a much more powerful growth effect than to greet a major pain with grudging endurance. This was nicely summarized by Thomas Merton. Merton was a Christian monk with a great appreciation of the Eastern meditative traditions—-not an uncommon combination nowadays. I'm paraphrasing, but somewhere I remember him saying something like "I did not become a monk to suffer more than other people, I became a monk to suffer more effectively."
posted by Radish at 11:07 AM
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