Although I can sit through some pain, my mindfulness always, eventually fades away, I need to change position. Do I always need the 4th jhāna for being able to sit through pain? Or if I persist, can the mind drop into calm while sitting through pain even if I haven’t attained the 4th jhāna yet?

Question:  Although I can sit through some pain, my mindfulness always, eventually fades away, I need to change position. Do I always need the 4th jhāna for being able to sit through pain? Or if I persist, can the mind drop into calm while sitting through pain even if I haven’t attained the 4th jhāna yet?

Than Ajahn:  Yes, even if you haven’t attained the 4th jhāna, if you keep teaching your mind to let go of your desire to get up, you can sit through the pain. You have to tell your mind that you have to face this reality. Don’t try to run away from it. It’s part of your life. It’s like the weather. You cannot force the weather to go away. You have to learn to live with the weather, whether it’s snowing, whether it’s raining, whether it’s hot or cold. You have no choice but to face it. Don’t run away from it. Don’t have any desire to get rid of it. You can teach yourself like this. Then, you might be able to persist in your sitting and face the painful feeling.

I used to compare the pain with the sound that I heard. The sound that I heard came into the ears and then it entered the mind. In the same way, the painful feeling came through the body and it also entered the mind. First, it entered the mind and it became a mental phenomenon. There is no the difference between the sound you hear and the painful feeling that you feel with the mind. And I found that with the sound, when I listened to the sound I like, no matter how loud the sound might be, I could take it. But when I heard a sound that I didn’t like, even if it’s very soft, it could cause me dukkha. So, I realized that it’s due to how I reacted to them, i.e. if I like the sound, no matter how loud, I can endure it because I like it.

If I don’t like the sound, then I try to reject it. By trying to reject it, it’s causing dukkha in my mind.

What we cannot endure is not the painful feeling but the dukkha that arises from us rejecting the painful feeling.

So, by comparing the sound and the painful feeling, eventually, my mind stops resisting. It stops desiring for the painful feeling to fade away. Then, the mind becomes equanimous. It has equanimity. And I could just remain sitting with the pain without feeling any dukkha.

Dhamma in English, Aug 25, 2020.

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

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