Mind Over Matter When Dealing With Physical Pain?

[Sprite]

 To overcome reoccurring physical pain on your body with your mind how would one go about it? Pain is felt when you're in a state of consciousness, so wouldn't you have to somehow transcend the state of consciousness while still being conscious? Would it be more along the lines of meditation, so only when you're being still the pain isn't present? I'm sorry if it doesn't make sense.

Edited June 3, 2017 by Sprite

[Visitor]

Depending on ones definition of pain and suffering. However, I see pain as inevitable but suffering is optional. That is pain is simply a sensation to alarm the min d that something is wrong with the body or emotions (body-mind). Suffering is the negative story we attach to the pain, like "I can't handle this much more". Without the story about pain, pain becomes simply a curious sensation. In this regard, I find pain as either a high frequency sort of sensation and/or it starts to fade away into insignificance (as if being ignored / denied).

[Sprite]

No emotions involved I'm specifically referring to physical pain. For example say someone was wounded or poked. The pain is felt while in a conscious state of mind. So how would one master it? The body is physically conscious of the pain being felt, so how would you separate your mind from it while still being conscious? I'm sorry if I don't make sense. You detach from the negative story? Sometimes there isn't always a "negative story" attached. Again I'm sorry I'm referring to physical not emotional pain.  When you fall and scrape your knee, when you have a chronic illness, or when a monk lights himself on fire. How are pain receptors separated from that in your mind? Mind over matter but how? A higher level of meditation?

Edited June 3, 2017 by Sprite

[Prabhaker]

@Sprite

The real problem is always psychological. The physical pain is part of life. When you start thinking about it, it is not physical pain at all; it has become psychological. So the first thing to be understood is: if you can dissolve the psychological pain, no problem is left. The other pain, the physical pain, is part of life and death; there is no way to dissolve it. But it never creates a problem. 

Every pain can become a satori… satori, a samadhi, it can become a breakthrough, because it is really the points of pain which become breakthroughs. It is through pain that one transcends, never through pleasure, because in pleasure one indulges and one becomes more and more oblivious of one’s being. When everything is going well, who bothers? Then one is on a merry-go-round, lost. But when pain is there, suffering is there, one naturally becomes more alert, more aware – one has to be: the pain is a great challenge.

Accept whatsoever life brings: accept it with gratefulness, with thankfulness. Don’t have a grudge. It is very natural to have a grudge but through having a grudge you miss the point. You can be very very angry inside: ’Why has this to happen to me? Why not to others? What have I done – what karmas, what wrong have I done in my past lives? Why should it happen to me? why am I suffering?

If you accept pain, if you don’t deny it, if you are not scared of it, if you accept it as part of life with no judgement, with no idea of whether it is good or bad – it is simply there, it is a fact, neither good nor bad…. Once you accept the facticity of it you start transcending, you become more alert, more a witness. The pain is there but you are no more identified with it.

[Sprite]

24 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

@Sprite

The real problem is always psychological. The physical pain is part of life. When you start thinking about it, it is not physical pain at all; it has become psychological. So the first thing to be understood is: if you can dissolve the psychological pain, no problem is left. The other pain, the physical pain, is part of life and death; there is no way to dissolve it. But it never creates a problem. 

Every pain can become a satori… satori, a samadhi, it can become a breakthrough, because it is really the points of pain which become breakthroughs. It is through pain that one transcends, never through pleasure, because in pleasure one indulges and one becomes more and more oblivious of one’s being. When everything is going well, who bothers? Then one is on a merry-go-round, lost. But when pain is there, suffering is there, one naturally becomes more alert, more aware – one has to be: the pain is a great challenge.

Accept whatsoever life brings: accept it with gratefulness, with thankfulness. Don’t have a grudge. It is very natural to have a grudge but through having a grudge you miss the point. You can be very very angry inside: ’Why has this to happen to me? Why not to others? What have I done – what karmas, what wrong have I done in my past lives? Why should it happen to me? why am I suffering?

If you accept pain, if you don’t deny it, if you are not scared of it, if you accept it as part of life with no judgement, with no idea of whether it is good or bad – it is simply there, it is a fact, neither good nor bad…. Once you accept the facticity of it you start transcending, you become more alert, more a witness. The pain is there but you are no more identified with it.

Thank you I never thought about it that way

[Paintballer]

You can not get rid of physical pain. There are senaory pleasures and displeasures in life. A fact that god has already accepted and one that your ego wants to deny.

[Memeito]

You just have to be aware of the pain, and not try to divert your mind and think at something else... Once, I was in great pain at the dentist and discovered that if I actually focused my attention on the pain, it was much more manageable than if I tried to think at different things and let my mind wonder from one thing to another.