On this last retreat for the summer we explored pain meditation.
It wasn't a meditation that I would have chosen because I hate pain. I avoid it. I have never seen a purpose for it. In that way I suppose I am normal. I'm also quite fortunate because I'm basically healthy and have never had to experience a lot of pain, or live with someone who is in pain. And I live in a society that has an entire industry devoted to numbing, managing, getting rid of pain. So it would never occur to me, on my own, to find something positive in pain.
But as Mingyur Rinpoche points out, pain is energy and awareness. Pain brings us immediately into the present. Presence is effortless as long as we have pain, because the mind focusses easily on pain.
If we let it. But so much of our suffering is built on aversion to pain. So much of my suffering is built on aversion to pain. And that is a legacy that Ben is already learning.
On the way to the retreat I did a breathing meditation on the bus, just watching my breath and feeling it as awareness in itself. And I had a moment where pure awareness was interrupting monkey mind. Minjur says that I'm on the cusp of higher awareness and what I should do when I feel that is to try to extend it. And also to notice the fear that takes me out of it. Because in the same way that I avoid pain, I also avoid awakening, pure awareness and the loss of control.
Meditating on pain seems to me just the flip side of meditating in emptiness, bliss and timeless awareness. The better you get at one, the better you get at the other. Maybe I'm more able to face pain now that I'm finding it a little easier to feel a life free of suffering and pain.
Hatred is another kind of pain and at the end of this morning's meditation I felt that familiar self hatred, and remembered how much of my life has been spent steeped in hatred. If I am able to break down my resistance to feeling and letting go of pain, then I will be better prepared to feel and finally let go of all that hatred.
