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Pain as a meditation aid

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hixidom

Rising Star
I find that pain aids meditation for two reasons:
1. It drowns out the other senses, thus helping me clear my mind and focus on one thing.
2. It challenges my sense of control, thus forcing me to attain deeper awareness to regain control.

I could say more, but I really just wanted to throw that idea out there since there does not seem to be a thread on this topic already.
 
There is a huge spectrum/continuum of pain. In my experience and my observations, as one moves forward in the continuum of pain and also in the unique situation where one can experience pain and pleasure together and perhaps even confuse the two, pain becomes rawly mind altering.

At first it is minimal and I have found myself able to meditate. But as I move down that continuum my ability to meditate, focus or clear my mind is destroyed. It becomes chaotic, semi-paniced and desperate. It becomes like a trapped animal.

Finally, as I move forward into some of the most extreme pain I have experienced, the mind alteration becomes extreme and destroys all that I know to be me and myself. My whole self, my whole perception, my entire existence becomes nothing but pain . . .
 
Hixidom

I don't think that using pain to aid you in meditation is a constructive way of focusing your consciousness. Cultivating additional pain and suffering is an unnecessary technique as everything we do or think is sent out into the world and the collective unconscious which creates a ripple effect.

It is far more powerful to concentrate on and to cultivate pure compassion, it is of vital importance to be gentle with ourselves and with others. I really do truly feel nothing can be achieved through pain and suffering other than cultivating and seeding more pain and suffering.


Much Peace and Compassion
 
Although i tend to agree with eagle´s comment, i do think that pain, when it happens, is a challenge. And accepting this challenge can make us stronger. To deliberately hurt yourself would not make any sense and would be a rather negative activity, from where i´m standing. But in our lives, to get hurt at some point, is simply inevitable.

Dealing with pain in a positive way is the greatest challenge there is. Therefore we should try not to run from it, or to curse it, but to accept it. We will very often fail at this, but simply trying makes us stronger and more positive beings already.

There is an interesting story though, that sort of contradicts what i just said, but i´ll tell it anyway: I once had a wound on my foot. I had taken LSD and i was somewhere deep in the forest, in the middle of the night. I had to walk a long, long way while my foot was aching very bad. The LSD though, enabled me to focus all of my counsciousness on the road ahead. When i focussed all of my counsciousness on the path i was walking, i managed to simply forget the pain completely.
 
Meditation is mostly about being able to cope with and be at peace with the present moment as it manifests.
Manufacturing a single more potent distraction to overwhelm (tho not eliminate) smaller distractions sounds like mere escapism. Like watching a horror movie to distract one from an ear ache or smoking crack to plaster over cigarette withdrawal symptoms.

Tho to be fair there are many kinds of meditation and ascetic meditation has been successfully used to cultivate some skills, for instance in india every year ascetics have a passenger bus pulling contest with their penis as the rope. They use your meditation to cultivate that skill. I doubt it would be useful in the west tho, as we have tow trucks :p
 
I said pain, certainly not injury and, with the right mindset, not suffering either. Intense exercise is a good example. Pain is just another part of the spectrum of human experience, and I prefer to embrace it for that reason rather than demonize it. I wish you all had not jumped to the conclusion that I injure myself. I did break my hand recently, which is what got me thinking about pain more than I usually do. The fracture was an accident, by the way, in case anyone suspected otherwise. ; )
 
Getting tattooed is a great example of the sort of thing I think you're talking about. It's like, okay, how deeply can I accept this sensation? Can I just let it be pure sensation, no resistance, let it go right through? Eventually the line between pleasure and pain starts to blur, and then, at some point it becomes pure ecstasy. 😁

But, that aside, I find a moderate amount of discomfort is helpful during my daily sitting practice. (Hence why I sit up straight with no back-support, rather than lying or slouching down.) Working through resistance is part of what "just sitting" is all about, for me.
 
I haven't been tattooed, but what you describe agrees with what I'm trying to say. As, Auxin said, "meditation is mostly about being able to cope with and be at peace with the present moment as it manifests." Sometimes, in life, the present moment manifests pain, so I find that adding pain to meditation or, as it more often occurs, adding meditation to pain is a great way to test and exercise our ability to "be at peace". After all, being at peace is too easy when there is nothing to be upset about. Nirvana would be easy if suffering did not exist. I think that most people would agree that meditating helps with pain. I am only arguing that pain helps with meditation, which I guess makes sense to me since I see meditation solely as a means of conquering suffering. In that sense, reducing suffering during meditation is like minimizing the applicable physical demands in any form of physical exercise: Pointless.
 
The good thing with pain is that it can be shut off, the second you really hurt yourself you can focus it away. I know it takes alot of mental clarity to do it, but once learned pain can be swiched off. Not long term pain, but when the worst pain hits in the start that is when it can be swiched off. But not longterm pain, like extreme headaches. To some degree one can shut it down, but never 100%. Just gotta remove attachment to the pain. For example, hit your kne very bad. think: I dont care about the pain, being mad is no use, screaming is no use, just take a breath.



haha, im sure it is confusing to understand what I mean, but itshard to describe how to do it, but I know it can be done.
 
zombicyckel said:
The good thing with pain is that it can be shut off, the second you really hurt yourself you can focus it away. I know it takes alot of mental clarity to do it, but once learned pain can be swiched off. Not long term pain, but when the worst pain hits in the start that is when it can be swiched off. But not longterm pain, like extreme headaches. To some degree one can shut it down, but never 100%. Just gotta remove attachment to the pain. For example, hit your kne very bad. think: I dont care about the pain, being mad is no use, screaming is no use, just take a breath.



haha, im sure it is confusing to understand what I mean, but itshard to describe how to do it, but I know it can be done.
Click to expand...

I think I know what you mean, but I agree, talking about anything learned during meditation can be tough. It's like trying to describe "how" you move your arm. Doing it is easy, there's nothing tricky involved. Describing it on the other hand. . . .
 
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