ON STRESS, SUFFERING AND DEALING WITH PAIN SKILLFULLY

ON STRESS, SUFFERING AND DEALING WITH PAIN SKILLFULLY

"Stress and suffering are to be comprehended. The cause is to be abandoned. The path is to be developed so you can actually realize the cessation of suffering, so that you can experience the cessation directly. A large part of our practice lies in learning how to put these different tasks together—because they have to be done together.
~
For instance, comprehending stress and suffering: To comprehend the experience of stress and suffering, the pain, and the attachment and clinging that go with the pain, you have to watch them. You have to be able to sit with them. This requires a lot of endurance. Most of us don’t like sitting with the pain. As soon as there’s a pain, we move, run away. As a result, we only get little glimpses of it. Then we build up all kinds of monsters around it. It’s like the monsters under your bed when you’re a child. You hear a little noise under your bed and from that one little noise you can create all kinds of monsters with fangs and scary eyes. And because you don’t dare look under the bed, the monsters keep growing.
~
It’s the same with pain. It’s something that drives us, and because we don’t really look at it carefully or continually, it’s like a task-master with a whip. It keeps us running, running, running. So we have to learn how to turn around and stare it down, look at it continually to see which part is the actual pain and which are the imaginary monsters with the imaginary whips.
~
This is why we develop the path: to give ourselves the strength to do that. In particular, the practice of concentration: You’re mindful to stay with the breath and then you try to evaluate and work with the breath so that you can develop a sense of well-being. This becomes your foundation, a place where you can rest, a place you can take as your haven. And because it gives you strength, it gives you your place to take a stance, where you don’t feel so threatened by pain—either physical pain or mental pain. You’ve got another place to go when those things seem threatening. When emotions are raging, you can go to the breath. That pulls you out of all the arguments of all the different committee members in the mind…"
❀❀❀
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Excerpt from "Stop Squirming"
~
You can read the complete talk here:

https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/Meditations7/Section0024.html