Pain

I was about 5 years old when I discovered pain. Well, obviously, I knew about pain before that; felt it, probably inflicted it. What I mean is that I began to think about it, study it, deconstruct it. I didn't realize then what I was doing, the deconstruction, but that is what I tend to do. I look at something and take it apart, mentally. Like some kids take apart clocks or toys, I guess. Did that, too.

Anyway, I began to examine pain in an effort to understand it. I realized there was a relationship to pleasure on one extreme and pain on the other, with the sense of touch as the link. Some pain is pleasure. Consider tickling. It makes you feel good unless it goes on too long or occurs when you don't want it. Your skin becomes over-sensitive. The light touch becomes painful.

A light stroke, a caress, is pleasurable; a hard rub, a strong squeeze, is painful. But the levels are difficult (if not impossible) to quantify. Except personally. I mean that you learn when pleasure turns to pain.

Over the years I have learned to control my tolerance of pain. I suppose we all do. Not completely, of course. And not in the same way. I like to treat pain as something alien, foreign to my body. I try to see it as a separate thing, to disassociate myself from it. I like to think of this as Zen-like though it probably isn't.

There is something called Bloodstream Sermon:


Buddhas don't save Buddhas. If you use your mind to look for a Buddha, you won't see the Buddha. As long as you look for a Buddha somewhere else, you'll never see that your own mind is the Buddha. Don't use a Buddha to worship a Buddha. And don't use the mind to invoke a Buddha. Buddhas don't recite sutras. Buddhas don't keep precepts. And Buddhas don't break precepts. Buddhas don't keep or break anything. Buddhas don't do good or evil.

To find a Buddha, you have to see your nature.

The concept is one I use to deal with headaches, minor backache, and the like. It saves on aspirin.

Well, just something to consider...

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