..續本文上一頁 The Vipassana meditator is very fortunate to have pain, at least posture pain, as it is an excellent teacher - with the added bonus that you will at least remain awake!

　　Pain is the body”s signal that something is wrong. The pain is telling you that you must attend to it. The painful sensations we work with in meditation are mostly those from the sitting posture. The reason, of course, for the pain is that a person is not used to sitting in the crossed legged position for long periods at a stretch. So posture pain is workable.

　　The rule of thumb when working with any pain is to first check – given that it is not a pre-existing condition - whether its cause is a health problem or not. Take note as to whether the pain that one was experiencing during the sitting goes away more or less immediately after the session. If that is the case, then one can be assured that it is only posture pain and no damage is being done.

　　When one experiences posture pain in sitting meditation, it is actually an opportunity to work with it. Regard it as your best friend, as you can learn much from it. So do not drive it away. Invite it in and get to know it. It is not a matter of just bearing the pain. The practice is to investigate it - to penetrate it deeply. If you can successfully work with physical pain, then you are more likely to be able to work with mental pain.

　　Yet meditators are inclined to avoid working with pain. For example, every time they get to the threshold of pain they pull away, and this then becomes the ”pain barrier”, a block in the practice. They hope that they can build up a tolerance of pain without having to work with it. But unfortunately disinclination to work with pain becomes a major mental and physical obstacle to the meditator”s progress.

　　How to Work with Pain

　　It is not likely that you are experiencing pain all over the body, so first localise it, for example in the knee area. Initially, there might be muscular reaction to the pain: like when one has a dip in icy cold water, there is an initial shock, but once one is in the water usually one can bear it and stay with the cold sensations. Relax and soften into the painful sensations, looking for particular characteristics in the pain - heat, tension, stabbing, throbbing, etc.

　　When there is no resistance to the pain, the particular characteristics will manifest. Then when the particular characteristics are aligned with the ”knowing of” (consciousness of) the pain this will reveal the general or universal characteristics of change, unsatisfactoriness, and insubstantiality.

　　Besides posture pain, there can be all sorts of mysterious aches and pains in this type of meditation, so-called ”vipassana pain”, that is, various painful sensations in the body, often so intense that you suppose there must be some medical condition causing them. If that is the case, having checked whether that is or not - then not to worry, it is all “workable”. They have a saying in the Burmese Vipassana tradition: "Pain is the doorway to Nibbana". The teachers are very pleased when you report interesting pain in the interview, as they know that you can make good progress in the meditation if you are prepared to work with and can sort out the pain from the suffering.

　　It is the resistance to the pain that is causing the suffering. The mind is striking at the so-called pain, complaining about the pain, wanting it to go away or trying to dissociate from the pain. But once you are able to work with pain you will be able to differentiate the pain from the suffering, and thus how one relates to the pain will change.

　　Three Kinds of Suffering

　　Not appreciating the basic premise of the Buddha Dharma, that is, the 1st Noble Truth, the fact of suffering (dukkha sacca), is the root of the problem. It cannot …

《The Vipassana Retreat: 5· Working with Thinking and Pain in Meditation》全文未完，請進入下頁繼續閱讀…