meditation and ignoring pain

[Lopez]

so i've recently "converted" to buddhism. i've found that i already practiced some of its teachings before i even knew what it was all about (simplicity mostly). my life is blissful, however the only thing that does bother me from time to time is physical pain...

whether it be at the gym or from my acl and meniscus surgery that went wrong (knee still wobbly and hurts sometimes), physical pain seems to be the only barrier in the way of peace in my life.

the other day i was watching that famous buddhist monk (forgot the name...) burn himself in protest of their vietnamese dictator's treatment of buddhists, and i thought to myself... how can one ignore the pain of immolation? it's one of the worst ways to die... i mean the extreme temperature, the suffocation, the burning sensation (i've been pepper sprayed on purpose and that was HORRID).

anyway, is this a skill acquired over a long period of time of meditating or is there more to it than that? can anyone give me some feedback on this?

thanks.

 

[Foreigner]

The pain of immolation is actually relatively quick. Once the nerve endings are destroyed you don't feel much, and once the skin is burned away you bleed out all your bodily fluids. If suffocation doesn't kill you first then hypovolemia will. I also think that fatal levels of pain make you leave your body so that you aren't exactly present for the experience. Most people faint if pain becomes too much, for example.

But yes, there is also the mind-over-matter aspect of pain. From a buddhist perspective, pain is inevitable but suffering is optional. At more advance levels, you'll begin to see pain as a projection just like everything else. It's part of samsara that you can choose to detach from.

Dental freezing doesn't work on me so I've had to have work done without it. It's not pleasant, but I am able to step out of the pain to a certain degree. I still have a threshold though.

 

[Lopez]

thanks for the feedback!

currently reading "resistance to interrogation" techniques, and a lot of it involves zen meditation!