the two arrows - disassembling pain

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I write about living with pain, I don’t have to use my imagination. Since 1976 I have been afflicted with chronic head pain that has grown worse over the decades. This condition has thrown a granite boulder across the tracks of my meditation practice. Pain often wipes a day and night off my calendar, and sometimes more at a stretch. The condition has cost me a total of several years of productive activity. Because intense head pain makes reading difficult, it has at times even threatened my vocation as a scholar and translator of Buddhist texts.

In search of a cure, I have consulted not only practitioners of Western medicine but also herbal physicians in remote Sri Lankan villages. I’ve been pierced countless times by acupuncture needles. I’ve subjected my body to the hands of a Chinese massage therapist in Singapore, consumed Tibetan medicine pills in Dharamsala, and sought help from exorcists and chakra healers in Bali. With only moderate success, I currently depend on several medications to keep the pain under control. They cannot extricate it by the root. 

The Buddha compares being afflicted with bodily pain to being struck by an arrow. 

Adding mental pain (aversion, displeasure, depression, or self-pity) 

to physical pain is like being hit by a second arrow.

I know firsthand that chronic bodily pain can eat deeply into the entrails of the spirit. It can cast dark shadows over the chambers of the heart and pull one down into moods of dejection and despair. I cannot claim to have triumphed over pain, but in the course of our long relationship, I’ve discovered some guidelines that have helped me to endure the experience.

First of all, it is useful to recognize the distinction between physical pain

 and the mental reaction to it. Although body and mind are closely intertwined, 

the mind does not have to share the same fate as the body. 

When the body feels pain, the mind can stand back from it. 

Instead of allowing itself to be dragged down, the mind can simply observe the pain.

 Indeed, the mind can even turn the pain around and transform 

it into a means of inner growth.

The Buddha compares being afflicted with bodily pain to being struck by an arrow. 

Adding mental pain (aversion, displeasure, depression, or self-pity) to physical pain

 is like being hit by a second arrow. 

 

The wise person stops with the first arrow. 

Simply by calling the pain by its true name, one can keep it from extending

 beyond the physical, and thereby stop it from inflicting deep 

and penetrating wounds upon the spirit.

Pain can be regarded as a teacher—a stern one that can also be eloquent. My head pain has often felt like a built-in buddha who constantly reminds me of the first noble truth. With such a teacher, I hardly need to consult the sermon in Deer Park at Benares. In order to hear the reverberations of the Buddha’s voice declaring that whatever is felt is included in suffering, 

all I have to do is attend to the sensations in my head.
My own effort to deal with chronic pain has helped me to develop patience, courage, determination, equanimity, and compassion.


The experience of chronic pain has enabled me to understand how inseparable pain is from the human condition. This is something that we in America, habituated as we are to comfort and convenience, tend to forget. Chronic pain has helped me to empathize with the billions living daily with the gnawing pain of hunger; with the millions of women walking miles each day to fetch water for their families; with those in Third World countries who lie on beds in poorly equipped, understaffed hospitals, staring blankly at the wall. 

Whatever feelings there may be—past, present, or future—

all feeling is not mine, not I, not my self.

-The Buddha


The most powerful tool I’ve found for mitigating pain’s impact is a short meditative formula repeated many times in the Buddha’s discourses: “Whatever feelings there may be—past, present, or future—all feeling is not mine, not I, not my self.” Benefiting from this technique does not require deep samadhi or a breakthrough to profound insight. Even using this formula during periods of reflective contemplation helps to create a distance between oneself and one’s experience of pain.

Such contemplation deprives the pain of its power to create nodes of personal identification within the mind, and thus builds equanimity and fortitude. Although the technique takes time and effort, when the three terms of contemplation—“not mine, not I, not my self”—gain momentum, pain loses its sting and cracks opens the door to the end of pain, the door to ultimate freedom.

 

 

 

 

~  Bhikkhu Bodhi|

 excerpts from a Lion's Roar article

 

 

 

wanting and contentment

 

No one grumbles among the oyster clans,

And lobsters play their bone guitars all summer.

Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want

Heaven to be, and God to come, again.

There is no end to our grumbling; we want

Comfortable earth and sumptuous Heaven.

But the heron standing on one leg in the bog

Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.

 

 

 

~ Robert Bly

from The New Yorker, Nov. 5, 2007

 art by Henri Matisse

 

fear, contraction and control

 

 

 

It is not diversity that divides us; it is not our ethnicity or religion or culture that divides us.

 

~ Nelson Mandela

Fear unites the disparate parts of our false selves very quickly. 

The ego moves forward by contraction, self-protection, and refusal, by saying no.

 Contraction gives us focus, purpose, direction, superiority, and a strange kind of security. 

It takes our aimless anxiety, covers it up, and tries to turn it into purposefulness

 and urgency, which results in a kind of drivenness.

 But this drive is not peaceful or happy.

 It is filled with fear and locates all its problems as

 “out there,” never “in here.”

The soul or the True Self does not proceed by contraction but by expansion.

 It moves forward, not by exclusion, but by inclusion. It sees things deeply

 and broadly not by saying no but by saying yes, at least on some level,

 to whatever comes its way. Can you distinguish between those two

 very different movements within yourself?

Fear and contraction allow us to eliminate other people, write them off, 

exclude them, and somehow expel them, at least in our minds. 

This immediately gives us a sense of being in control 

and having a secure set of boundaries... 

But in controlling we are usually afraid of losing something.

 If we go deeper into ourselves, we will see that there is both a rebel

 and a dictator in all of us, two different ends of the same spectrum.

 It is almost always fear that justifies our knee-jerk rebellion

 or our need to dominate—a fear that is hardly ever recognized as such

 because we are acting out and trying to control the situation. 

 

 

 

~ Richard Rohr

from  Dancing Standing Still

 

 

 

 

life as it comes

 

 

 

 

 
Just live your life as it comes.
Keep quietly alert, inquiring into the real nature of yourself.
Perception is based on memory and is only imagination.
The world can be said to appear but not to be.
Only that which makes perception possible is real.

You agree to be guided from within

 and life becomes a journey into the unknown. 

Give up all names and forms, and the Real is with you.


Know yourself as you are. Distrust your mind and go beyond.
Do not think of the Real in terms of consciousness and unconsciousness.
It is utterly beyond both.
It gives birth to consciousness.
All else is in consciousness.

Nothing you can see, feel or think is so. Go beyond the personal and see.

 Stop imagining that you were born. You are utterly beyond all existence

 and non-existence, utterly beyond all that the mind conceives.


Question yourself: Who am I?
What is behind and beyond all this?
Soon you will see that thinking yourself to be a person

 is mere habit built on memory. Inquire ceaselessly.

Just be aware of your being here and now.
There is nothing more to it.
In reality you are not a thing nor separate.

You are the infinite potentiality, the inexhaustible possibility.
Because you are, all can be.
The universe is but a partial manifestation of your limitless capacity to become. 

You are neither consciousness nor its content.
You are the timeless Source.


Disassociate yourself from mind and consciousness.
Find a foothold beyond and all will be clear and easy.

—Nisargadatta Maharaj
from I am That

art by Duncan Nagonigwane Pheasant (Ojibwe)

 

 

 

to each and every thing

 

 

 

 

 

You must become brother and sister

to each and every thing

so that they flow through you

dissolving every difference

 between what belongs to you and others.

 

No star, no leaf shall fall -

you fall with them -

to rise again

in every new beginning.

 

 

 

 

~ Hermann Hesse

From The Seasons of the Soul

 

  

walking with those who've come before and those who will follow

 

 

 

 

 

 
When we take a step on the green grass of spring, we walk in such a way

 that allows all our ancestors to take a step with us. Our peace, our joy,

 our freedom, which are in each step, penetrate each generation of our ancestors 

and each generation of our descendants. If we can walk like that,

 that is a step taken in the highest dhyana (training of the mind).

When we take one step we see hundreds and thousands of ancestors 

and descendants taking a step with us, and when we take a breath

 we are light, at ease, calm. We breathe in such a way that all the generations

 of ancestors are breathing with us and all the generations of our descendants

 are also breathing with us […] if we breathe like that, 

only then are we breathing according to the highest teachings.

We just need a little mindfulness, a little concentration and then we can look

 deeply and see. At first we use the method of visualization and we see,

as we walk, all the ancestors putting their foot down as we put our foot down, 

and gradually we don’t need to visualize any more – each step we take, 

we see that that step is the step of people in the past.

 

~ Thich Naht Hanh
with thanks to Love is a Place

things that are within us

 

 

 

The things we see,” Pistorius said softly, “are the same things that are within us.

 There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people 

live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality 

and never allow the world within to assert itself. You can be happy that way.

 But once you know the other interpretation you no longer have the choice

 of following the crowd. Sinclair, the majority’s path

 is an easy one, ours is difficult.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself.

 What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.” “Each of us has to find out

 for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden.. Forbidden for him.

It’s possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

 And vice versa.

I live in my dreams — that’s what you sense. 

Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. 

That’s the difference.

 

 

 

~ Hermann Hesse

excerpts from Damian 

 art by Alaira Bird

 

 

 

hurt or heal

 

 

 

 

 I have come to the frightening conclusion

 that I am the decisive element.

 

 It is my personal approach that
creates the climate.

 

 It is my daily mood that makes the
weather.

 

 I possess tremendous power to make life
miserable or joyous.

 

 I can be a tool of torture or an
instrument of inspiration. 

 

I can humiliate or humor,
hurt or heal. 

 

In all situations it is my response that
decides whether a crisis is escalated or deescalated,
and a person is humanized or dehumanized. 

 

If we treat people as they ought to be, 

we help them become what they are capable of becoming.

 

 

~ Attributed in various places to both
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

and in others to Dr. Haim Ginott

art by Rodrigo Gaya Villar

 with thanks to Mystic Meanderings

 

 

through the body

 

 

 

Our weaknesses are the way to God

 

Tell me why it is through the body

 

through torment of the body you speak to the spirit

 

why through leprosy fever deafness

 

You are a healer and not a priest

 

you take in your hands the head of the dying

 

from one lump you bring forth new life 

 

like bread you multiply the body

 

You come through bodies not through sunsets

 

and the hard strong hand of blood and flesh

 

holds in the palm like a sparrow

 

the muscle of the human heart

 

 

 

 

~ Anna Kamienska

from Astonishments

 

 

 

 

lack of faith

 

 

 

 

 

Yes

 

even when I don't believe

 

there is a place in me

 

inaccessible to unbelief

 

a patch of wild grace

 

a stubborn preserve

 

impenetrable

 

pain untouched sleeping in the body

 

music that builds its nest in silence

 

 

 

 

 

~ Anna Kamienska

from Astonishments

 art Detail from Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein

 

competition and compassion

 

 

 

 

 

Competition today is tantamount to a blood sport—

and not just on the playing field or in the ring. 

 

The psychoanalytic theorist Karen Horney introduced

 the concept of hyper-competitiveness

 as a neurotic personality trait almost 70 years ago.

 She characterized the hyper-competitive

coping strategy as “moving against people”

 (in contrast to moving toward or away from people).

 Her observations are now all too evident in our culture. 

Extreme us-versus-them behavior has created a lonely world. 

There is always some new adversary to move against, 

so we get locked into a vicious circle of measuring our strength

 by disparaging others.

 

Competition is natural, a part of the human arsenal for survival, 

but when it creates enmity, we need to question its power in our lives. 

 

This is where sympathetic joy — joy in the happiness of others — comes in.

 If we’re in a competitive frame of mind, when something good happens

 to someone else, we think it somehow diminishes us. 

It doesn’t really, of course, but being consumed with jealousy 

and envy clouds our judgment. Even when we’re not in the running, 

extreme competitiveness makes us feel as if we were. 

 
If we approach life from a place of scarcity,

 a mind-set that emphasizes what we lack instead of what we have,

 then anyone who has something we want becomes the enemy. 

 If we approach life from a place of scarcity, 

a mind-set that emphasizes what we lack instead of what we have, 

then anyone who has something we want becomes the enemy.

 
 As Buddhist monk Nyanaponika Thera says,

 

 “It is compassion that removes the heavy bar, 

opens the door to freedom, 

makes the narrow heart as wide as the world..."

 

Looking closely at the life of someone we consider to be the competition, 

we are bound to see hardships that the person has endured

 or understand how tenuous status and good fortune can be.

 When we can connect with a perceived enemy on the level of human suffering, 

winning or losing seems less important.

A few years ago I led a meditation group at an elementary school in Washington, D.C.

 The walls of the school corridors were plastered with homilies:

 Treat people the way you would like to be treated. 

Play fair. Don’t hurt others on the inside or the outside. 

The message that stopped me short, however, was 

Everyone can play.

 

 

 

 ~  Sharon Salzberg 

 from Lions Roar

 

 

 

all are heard

 

 

 

 

So a little spring prays to the ocean, 

so the beating heart prays to the heart of the universe, 

so the little word prays to the great Logos, 

so a dust speck prays to the earth, 

so the earth prays to the cosmos, 

so the one prays to the billion, 

so human love prays to God’s love, 

so always prays to never,

 so the moment prays to eternity,

 so the snowflake prays to winter,

 so the frightened beast prays to the forest silence,

 so uncertainty prays to beauty itself.

And all these prayers are heard.

 

 

~ Anna Kamieńska 

from In the Great River: A Notebook
The inner life of one of the great poet-mystics

 Translated by Clare Cavanagh

with thanks to Love Is A Place

 

 

 

the flaws make us who we are

.

 

 

 

 

We don't have to hate ourselves for our own vulnerability. 

We don't have to hate ourselves for what life has done to us. 

We don't have to hate ourselves because hurt or loss or longing has gotten to us. 

Our desires will always be with us in some form, 

keeping us firmly attached to a world that will hurt us. 

 

 

We must come to love ourselves,

 love our life, 

in its vulnerability,

 in its impermanence,

 not in spite of all its flaws,

 but because of them.

 Because the vulnerability,

 the changes, 

the flaws make us who we are.

 

 

 

 
~  Barry Magid

 

 

 

 

no life is single

 

 

When the garden of your unchosen lives has enough space to breathe beneath
 your chosen path, your life enjoys a vitality and sense of creative tension. 
 Rilke refers to this as "the repository of unlived things."

 

*

No one lives his life.

Disguised since childhood,

haphazardly assembled

from voices and fears and little pleasures,

we come of age as masks.

Our true face never speaks.

Somewhere there must be storehouses

where all these lives are laid away

like suits of armor or old carriages

or clothes hanging limply on the walls.

Maybe all paths lead there,

to the repository of unlived things.

excerpted from Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

*

 

You know that you have not compromised the immensity that you carry,
 and in which you participate.  You have not avoided the call of commitment; 
 yet you hold your loyalty to your chosen path in such a way as to be true
 to the blessings and dangers in life's passionate sacramentality. 

 No life is single. Around and beneath each life is the living presence
 of these adjacencies.... to keep the borders of choice porous demands 
critical vigilance and affective hospitality.  To live in such a way invites risk
 and engages complexity.   Yet the integrity of growth demands such courage
 and vulnerability from us; otherwise the tissues of our sensibility atrophy
 and we become trapped behind the same predictable mask of behavior. 

 

 

~ John O'Donohue

from Eternal Echoes

.

to learn from animal being

Nearer to the earth's heart,

Deeper within its silence:

Animals know this world

In a way we never will.

We who are ever

Distanced and distracted

By the parade of bright

Windows thought opens:

Their seamless presence

Is not fractured thus.

Stranded between time

Gone and time emerging,

We manage seldom

To be where we are:

Whereas they are always

Looking out from

The here and now.

May we learn to return

And rest in the beauty

Of animal being,

Learn to lean low,

Leave our locked minds,

And with freed senses

Feel the earth

Breathing with us.

May we enter

Into lightness of spirit,

And slip frequently into

The feel of the wild.

Let the clear silence

Of our animal being

Cleanse our hearts

Of corrosive words.

May we learn to walk

Upon the earth

With all their confidence

And clear-eyed stillness

So that our minds

Might be baptized

In the name of the wind

And light and the rain.

~ John O'Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings