Pain in Practice: What to Do?
There's something to be discovered right where we don't want to find it.
Join me tomorrow night at the Shambhala Meditation Center of New York Dharma Gathering, Tuesday, October 12 at 7-8:30 PM.
“Pain in Practice: What to Do?”
A public talk and guided meditation. Register here.
Wat Ram Poeng (Thailand)
One of the things that you often don’t imagine when you begin, or want to begin, meditation is that you will likely be in pain at times. Instead of clear-headed bliss or peace, your knees will be bothering you, your back will be stiffening, or you will be chased by anxiety or sadness. We don’t put that on the marketing materials.
For many of us, meditation is where we’d like to escape the pain of our lives: distress, heartbreak, indecision, social media. We imagine a still place, quietly humming with contentment.
When my wife undertook a meditation retreat in Thailand many years ago (one in which she was admittedly unprepared for), she met with the young Abbott at the Buddhist monastery and asked him about these intense aches and pains from sitting all day. He looked at her with a smile of recognition and said, “Ah, pain, always your friend.”
So, what the heck was he talking about? This talk tomorrow night is my guess.
When you’re in pain – physical or emotional – you feel something has to be done. What’s more clear than exactly what is to be done is the recognition that something must change right now. It’s understandable. But what if it’s not going away easily? Or what if, despite your best efforts, you continue to be pestered by inconvenient emotions on a daily basis. Super annoying!
Each day of our lives, we are affronted by something we don’t want to experience – the weather, a scary thought, a glance at our body in the mirror, or being disappointed by others. Sometimes it’s a little pain, sometimes it’s a lot.
It’s those who have a lot of pain that are forced to deal with the issue front on. Normally, we try to solve all our problems – and sometimes, with great success. Here’s an example: if the space under your bathroom sink is cluttered and unappealing, go to Bed, Bath & Beyond (my main competitor for your inbox attention), get a shelf-organizer and voilà, problem solved!
But the mindset of someone in chronic is often that their life is one giant problem to be solved. Always brainstorming, scanning options, always busy in the mind because maybe you will be able to get everything in order.
It feels hard to live with these big, wide open questions: Am I going to be okay? Am I doing the right thing?
It feels especially difficult to live with these questions if we are a nonstop hardass to ourselves. If we’ve retreated from others out of shame or sheer overwhelm. It’s hard to constantly be on the hook for figuring your life out.
And then, you’ve got to deal with pain? Oh boy.
It’s enough to break your heart.
Exactly. Pain can short-circuit this treadmill where we are constantly trying to improve ourselves. Pain can unburden us of the hope that we could make everything in our life perfect. That’s not optimism, that’s a misery-making weight we carry, to think that every difficult thing is meant to be conquered or life-hacked.
There is tremendous energy and vulnerability when we neither push away our pain nor try to conquer it. We are in a state of total humanness – momentarily even with every other person on the planet.
It’s not that we need to try and be in pain or that I’m advocating we sit cross-legged with tremendous knee pain (I’ll address this in the talk). It’s learning to live with greater openness and kindness that I’m interested in. And if you want the accelerated course, you should try to use your pain to wake up and connect with others. This doesn’t mean that you’ll stay stuck in your current state forever, but it will likely mean you’ll be able to appreciate the life you have, not the one you’re always trying to reach.
Join me tomorrow night, Tuesday, at 7 PM with the Shambhala Meditation Center of New York. Register here for "Pain in Practice: What to Do?”So, what the heck was he talking about? This talk tomorrow night is my guess.
When you’re in pain – physical or emotional – you feel something has to be done. What’s more clear than exactly what is to be done is the recognition that something must change right now. It’s understandable. But what if it’s not going away easily? Or what if, despite your best efforts, you continue to be pestered by inconvenient emotions on a daily basis. Super annoying!
Each day of our lives, we are affronted by something we don’t want to experience – the weather, a scary thought, a glance at our body in the mirror, or being disappointed by others. Sometimes it’s a little pain, sometimes it’s a lot.
It’s those who have a lot of pain that are forced to deal with the issue front on. Normally, we try to solve all our problems – and sometimes, with great success. Here’s an example: if the space under your bathroom sink is cluttered and unappealing, go to Bed, Bath & Beyond (my main competitor for your inbox attention), get a shelf-organizer and voilà, problem solved!
But the mindset of someone in chronic is often that their life is one giant problem to be solved. Always brainstorming, scanning options, always busy in the mind because maybe you will be able to get everything in order.
It feels hard to live with these big, wide open questions: Am I going to be okay? Am I doing the right thing?
It feels especially difficult to live with these questions if we are a nonstop hardass to ourselves. If we’ve retreated from others out of shame or sheer overwhelm. It’s hard to constantly be on the hook for figuring your life out.
And then, you’ve got to deal with pain? Oh boy.
It’s enough to break your heart.
Exactly. Pain can short-circuit this treadmill where we are constantly trying to improve ourselves. Pain can unburden us of the hope that we could make everything in our life perfect. That’s not optimism, that’s a misery-making weight we carry, to think that every difficult thing is meant to be conquered or life-hacked.
There is tremendous energy and vulnerability when we neither push away our pain nor try to conquer it. We are in a state of total humanness – momentarily even with every other person on the planet.
It’s not that we need to try and be in pain or that I’m advocating we sit cross-legged with tremendous knee pain (I’ll address this in the talk). It’s learning to live with greater openness and kindness that I’m interested in. And if you want the accelerated course, you should try to use your pain to wake up and connect with others. This doesn’t mean that you’ll stay stuck in your current state forever, but it will likely mean you’ll be able to appreciate the life you have, not the one you’re always trying to reach.
Join me tomorrow night, Tuesday, at 7 PM with the Shambhala Meditation Center of New York. Register here for "Pain in Practice: What to Do?”
