“Physical pain is beyond your control”

“Physical pain is beyond your control”

Question:  If we have pain and we watch the aversion towards the pain, and we want a more comfortable position to relieve the pain. We know the cause, so how do we approach that situation?

Than Ajahn:  You should just bring your mind to neutral state, bring the mind to samādhi, to upekkhā. That’s why you need samādhi first before you can contemplate on vipassanā. When you contemplate on vipassanā such as the nature of pain, you have to see that it is annicaṁ, dukkhaṁ, anattā. You cannot control the pain, you cannot tell it to go away but you can control your mind to be able to live with the pain.

Question:  At what level of samādhi can we start to contemplate on vipassanā?

Than Ajahn:   Every level. You can try it for yourself once you have samādhi. After you withdraw from your samādhi, if you have any problems say any suffering or any desire, try to use vipassanā to solve that problem. For example, if you have pain, the goal is to leave the pain alone, because if you want the pain to disappear, you are creating suffering in your mind. You are creating desire which is the cause of mental suffering, which is a lot stronger than the physical suffering.

If you don’t create the mental suffering, then your mind can withstand the physical suffering. It can co-exist with the physical suffering. The mind cannot co-exist with its own suffering, so the goal here is to prevent the mind from creating the mental suffering which is triggered by the physical suffering.

So you first have to have samādhi. When you have samādhi, your mind has this ability to remain still, remain undisturbed. Once you have this ability, when the mind faces the physical pain, then you can just tell the mind that it is okay, it is not that bad, you can live with it. This is as long as you don’t have the desire for this pain to disappear. When you have this desire, you are creating the mental pain which is a lot stronger than physical pain. You don’t have to create this mental pain.

The Buddha knows this nature of mental suffering. It is created by your own desire, your desire to get rid of the physical pain, which is beyond your control. The physical pain arises sometimes due to circumstances which may or may not be possible to eliminate. When we practise, we have to assume that it cannot be eliminated, so we learn to leave it alone. Just like when you get sick, you know that you cannot get rid of the pain while you are still curing it, so the only thing that can prevent suffering is to accept the pain and not have any desire to get rid of the pain.

You have to see that the nature of the pain aniccaṁ. It is temporary, it comes and go. It is anattā, when it comes you cannot tell it to go away. You should just have to wait until it goes away by itself. When you have any desire to get rid of it, you are creating more mental pain which is a lot stronger than the physical pain. This you can stop creating by keeping your mind calm and peaceful and not reacting to the physical pain.

You need to have samādhi to be able to remain calm and not react to the pain and then study the truth of aniccaṁ, dukkhaṁ, anattā. It is better just to leave the pain alone, then there will be no dukkhaṁ in the mind. When you have desire to get rid of the pain, then you are creating dukkhaṁ in the mind which is a lot stronger than the physical pain itself. We are here not to get rid of the physical pain, we are here to get rid of the mental pain which is caused by our desire. The mental pain can arise from many things, and not just the pain itself.

When we are not happy, when our mind is not happy, it is because our mind have desire for things to be like this or like that. When they are not going according to your desire, you become unhappy. If you can get rid of this desire, whatever happens, it will not make you unhappy. This is why we want to train the mind, just to leave everything alone because we cannot control them all the time. Sometimes we can and sometimes we cannot. When we cannot, and we have desire, then we will suffer unnecessarily.

If we know things are beyond our control, then just let it go, let it happen, then we will not be affected by whatever happens.

By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

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