Pain and Suffering

 

Although these two words, Pain and Suffering, are often used synonymously, they are actually two completely different things. Pain can be defined as physical discomfort associated with bodily disease, disorder, or injury. Suffering however, is more about how the mind reacts to pain, discomfort or anything else that one desires not to endure.


When we experience pain the mind builds a lot of aversion around that pain. It does not want to have to endure that pain. "Why me?" "Poor me!" or "I just can't stand it any longer" "Why can't this pain just go away?" are typical reactions. The net effect of building a story in the mind around the pain is that we inadvertently cause the effects of the pain to seem as though they are magnified.

Without bringing awareness to what our mind is saying to us, we are actually exacerbating the original problem. The natural tendency to feel aversion to the pain has the opposite effect of actually causing us to focus on the pain more. And of course the more we focus on the pain the more mental anguish the mind tends to create around it. It is in this way that we create our own suffering often without realizing it.

What happens if we bring awareness to the mind created suffering, taking note of just what it is we are saying to ourselves within our mind? What happens if we allow ourselves to simply experience pain without building a "story" around it?

Although becoming aware of the mind creating suffering will not cause the pain to decrease, it will bring about a lessening of the cumulative effects of pain and suffering combined. With practice it is even possible to eliminate the mind created portion of suffering we build around the pain. 


Simply paying attention to what our mind has to say about pain can effectively reduce some of the effects of pain, and thus help to raise our pain tolerance. This also has a secondary benefit of helping to increase overall self awareness, since we are consciously practicing self awareness under difficult circumstances. If we can maintain self awareness under difficult situations, it will in turn become easier to maintain self awareness in simpler circumstances.


So the next time you find yourself dealing with physical pain, spend a few moments actively looking at what the mind has to say about pain. It can be a fantastic learning experience.

Michael L. Fournier