The art of living with pain

By Rahayu Ratnaningsih

JAKARTA (JP): Living in the present has a special consequence -- you are aware of what is going on at that moment, whether it is good or bad, pleasurable or painful. It is fine and dandy when the day is sunny but what happens when it is cloudy? Should you also be "enjoying" every minute of it?

When pain can be avoided, it would be masochistic for someone to insist on living it. When you are ill, by all means you should go and find a cure. When you are stressed, it is advisable that you find a positive activity that can calm you down. But sometimes pain is unavoidable. Those who live with a terminal illness or have just experienced major grief such as at the death of a loved one, a relationship that falls apart, and so on, have to live with their pain and discomfort either temporarily or permanently. In this situation there is no escape, no activity can distract them from the pain. And the more you resist, the more conflict it generates and the more you are in pain.

The common reaction from people in these situations is ruminating on thoughts of finding the "why", in the expectation that he/she can get rid of the pain. What happens is exactly the opposite; one thought -- one regret -- leads to another, and you become more and more entangled in the process. In the end, the pain becomes fortified and self-perpetuated. The only way out is to befriend your pain or grief, watch it, feel it as it is without justifying or condemning it. Only when you watch it without judgment or labeling will the mind be still and the conflict finally vanish.

The dualistic nature of our thought process is to separate subject from object, the experiencer from the experience, the thinker from the thought, and the feeler from the feeling. Since they are separate, the doer is considered the dominant factor that can control the deed. When we hear a sound, we presume there is the identifiable hearer, hearing and heard. When we see something, there is the separate seer, seeing and seen. When we feel some emotion, there is independent feeler, feeling and felt. It is like describing a single water stream as "the streamer, streaming and streamed," which is redundant. The fact is there is only one experience; the experience itself: streaming, thinking, feeling, hearing, seeing. Can you find the doer? Can you find the streamer?

So what does it mean? It means that when you are feeling pain, there is no person who is in pain, there is only the experience of pain. The inner sensation called "you" and the outer sensation called "the world" are one and the same. The inner subject and the outer object are two names for the feeling, and this is not something you should feel, it is the only thing you can feel. You and the pain are one and inseparable, so you can't escape from it because there is no subject who can escape in the first place. When you are reading this, are you aware that you are a subject who is doing the reading? Yes? Let's check it out. I'm sure when I asked that question you straight away made yourself aware that you were reading, but were you still reading in that exact moment or had you in fact stopped reading and instead thought, "I am reading."? The first experience is reading, the second experience is the thought. Can you find any thinker who was thinking the thought, "I am reading?" In other words, when present experience is the thought, "I am reading," can you think about yourself thinking this thought? Yes? Think some more because when you were aware of the thought, "I am reading," in fact you had entered a third experience which was the thought that you were thinking that you were reading. You see, you can never be separated from the experience because the minute you think you are a separate entity experiencing the experience, you no longer experience it but enter a new experience that again can't be separated from you.

In other words, in each present experience you are only aware of that experience. You are never aware of being aware. You are never able to separate the thinker from the thought, the knower from the known. All you ever find is a new thought, a new experience.

So then this subject, this "I", this ego, as I have mentioned time and again, is a process rather than a fixed, independent, eternal self or concrete entity. As the Buddha said, in describing his process-oriented view of the world, "In hearing, there is just hearing, no hearer, and nothing heard; in seeing there is just seeing, no seer and nothing seen."

Further, the celebrated summary of his teachings says it all: "Suffering alone exists, none who suffer/ The deed there is, but no doer thereof/ Nirvana is, but no one seeking it/ The Path there is, but none who travel it."

As soon as it becomes clear that "I" cannot escape from the reality of the present, since "I" is nothing other than what we feel and know now, this inner turmoil shall stop. As a Chinese sage advised, the only way to escape the heat is by going right into the middle of the fire, we can only be spared from our unavoidable pain, fear, grief and boredom by being aware of them in the same complete way that we are aware of pleasure. If, when swimming, you are caught in a strong current, it is fatal to resist. You must swim with it and gradually edge to the side. The supple willow survives the tough pine in a snowstorm, because where the unyielding branches of the pine accumulate snow until they crack, the springy boughs of the willow bend under the weight, drop the snow, and snap back into place again.

Resistance only gives the same power to the opposing force you wish to repel, on which your pain thrives. Sometimes, when resistance ceases, the pain simply goes away or dwindles to a tolerable ache. Even when it remains, it is no longer problematic. You feel it, but there is no urge to go away from it, for you have discovered that pain and the effort to separate from it are the same thing. Wanting to be free of pain is the pain. When you actually see that you are the pain, pain ceases to be a motive, for there is no one to be moved. You will then just shrug it off and say "It hurts, so what?"