Dealing With Pain

Dealing With Pain – Ajahn Brahm As usual. I was wondering what I was going to talk about tonight. It's quite interesting being a monk and all these people coming and haven't got a clue what I'm going to say. But as it happens, I just returned from Singapore yesterday afternoon and I brought back something from Singapore which was a bit of food poisoning. So I was very sick last night, and even now I've got a very sore stomach. And I just remembered when I was meditating that someone asked me a long time ago, a few days ago, actually not that long. But why can't we? I say a Buddhist attitude or a meditators attitude for dealing with pain. Not just the physical pain, but sometimes coping with the painful experiences of life. And, uh, I think that since that is, uh, very in the front of my mind, or rather just below my mind around here somewhere. And if the good thing to talk about tonight. And of course, it's not a negative thing to talk about because each one of us, no matter who we are, no matter how healthy we think we are, no matter what lifestyle we follow, there will always be times when we get sick or we experience pain, or sometimes even, um, other disappointments in life. And sometimes that people look at a monk and say, wow, you're a meditator, you live a stress free lifestyle, you shouldn't get sick. And I always remember once when I felt very sick, once I forget what it was, some sort of bug or something. And I went to see my local doctor. And at that time I was teaching meditation in the local prison. And as I was sitting in the doctor's waiting room, sort of feeling really, really sick and terrible, and then this prison officer came in and he saw me. He recognized me straight away. I turned brown. What are you doing in here? As if, like, monks are supposed to get sick. We were supposed to eat brown rice and exercise every day and meditate. And so we're not supposed to get sick and dying. So I felt actually very guilty when he said that. As if I'd done something terribly wrong for being sick. But of course, there is nothing wrong with being sick. Each one of us has to endure that from time to time. But one of the wonderful things about being a monk, you have all these amazing techniques and attitudes to deal with, the pain of the body and the difficulties of life. And what that does, it doesn't make you more negative or more depressed when you start talking about pain, but it also shows you how to overcome it, transcend it, and get beyond it so you can still have a good time, even though you feel like your stomach's been kicked by a mule. But nevertheless, when a person has pain, we can usually see just many. Well, actually, this is back to what the Buddha was saying. When a person has pain, he said there's two aspects to that discomfort. And this was for me, one of the key teachings to understand what pain is and how to deal with it. He said it's a mental part of the pain and also the physical part of the pain. It's the physical part you can't do much about, but the mental part you can do everything about. It's the mental part which is the most important. In fact, sometimes the mental attitude to the discomfort and pain in the body can be so effective they can sometimes completely, uh, evaporate the pain, the physical pain. And I think that you all know, stories of, like, people sometimes they're playing soccer or they're playing rugby and they break their leg, or they break their arm and they still carry on playing their game. And it's only afterwards they realize, oh my goodness, I've broken my leg. Or sometimes that we are in some other reading a book or something, and sometimes we don't realize what has happened. As with many occasions in my life when I just realized it's the power of the mind and how the pain in the body is influenced enormously by the attitude of the mind. One of those experiences was when I was a student. And I got a terrible cold or flu, like many people have right now, apparently as a flu bug going around. And it was so bad I couldn't go to any lectures, and I was in the room of my students accommodation feeling really terrible, not being able to get out of bed, no one to look after you, just tossing and turning, not being able to sleep, not being able to get up, feeling really awful, seeing as I once called it, like a drained teabag. Just no unfinished at all. Just really soggy. And there. And anyhow, as I was sitting in this house while sharing with a lot of other students, somebody rang the doorbell. I said, go away! And they kept on ringing it. Get out of here! They kept on ringing it. I had no choice. I drag myself out of bed. I crawled to the door and I opened it, feeling really grumpy. But it was a delivery man. He was delivering my call. Used to call it a stereo system for my records. Not a CD player, you know, it's Hi-Fi, whatever you call it these days. Remember, I've been a monk for 32 years, so I missed that a lot for the last 32 years. But that's what I used to call it those days. And there were delivering it. I thought, oh wow, this is really nice. I can actually play some music now. And I took delivery. I took it to my room and I put it all together because I had to connect it all. When I've put my first disc on Jimi Hendrix, of course, I was really into that as a young man, and I put my first Hendrix record on. I just couldn't believe it. My fluid disappeared. I was perfectly healthy half an hour before now. I wasn't imagining it. My eyes were screaming, I was coughing, and my nose was dripping, and now it had completely vanished. It wasn't so much a miracle because something there had changed the attitude to my mind. Now, I'm not suggesting that the next time you get a flu, go and put on a Jimi Hendrix record or whatever else you like. I don't think that was the the most important part of the the therapy. I don't expect any of you doctors to prescribe to prescribe that on Medicare. But whatever it is that there was something, a change of attitude there which actually got rid of the. The fever, got rid of the symptoms and you felt really better afterwards. It is the mind part of the pain which is the most important. And even when I was meditating, starting meditating, I feel really awful now when it's like when you've got a pain inside your gut, so you've got a pain in your head or in your arm or whatever. What do most people usually do? They usually screw their mind around that pain. They tense up. And I think every doctor would know that inflammations are all about the body overreacting. There must be some little cause inside, but all the muscles tense up and they squash that sort of area of trauma. And a lot of times all one is to do is to develop the ability just to open up and to relax. And then the physical pain tends to get less and less and less. You find the more you fight that pain, the more negativity you give it, the more you say, get out of here, you don't belong. Then the tighter that pain becomes, it becomes a ball, a hard energy, and that is what becomes intolerable. So that I've learnt as a Buddhist monk to go in opposite directions to one's normal tendencies. Whenever there's a pain, one always tends to want to run away. Whenever the your finger meets up that meets the flame almost automatically, you draw away from it. You know, if a mosquito bites you, you want to swat it, or you want to scratch an itch or whatever it is, you've got these automatic tendencies which very often make the problem worse. And a lot of times, instead of running away from these pains or these discomforts or these difficulties, both physical and mental, in your life, sometimes I've learned to go in the opposite direction, as if your mind just goes towards the pain instead of running away from it. It goes to befriend the feeling rather than making an enemy. It gives it kindness rather than hate. It's just a general principle for all your life is to make peace, not war. Again. I used to be a bit of a hippy when I was listening to records like Jimi Hendrix in the 60s, and I too used to go around like all the others with my two fingers up. Make peace, not war, make peace, not war. That was at the time of the Vietnam War, and I was a bit of a pacifist. I'm still a pacifist, but not so much towards wars, although that, you know, I won't agree with such things, but also to the war which you have with the realities of your life, the war which we have with pain, with sickness, and sometimes even with mental problems or with social problems, we make war with this. It shouldn't happen. It's not going to happen. I'm going to solve this. Get out of here! Pain. Get out of here! Divorce! Get out of here! Too much stress. Get out of here. Whatever else happens in life. And it's that negativity which actually feeds the pain and makes it tighter and makes it worse. So there's another way. It's welcome pain. Thank you for being here. If I can't beat you, I can be your friend. So. Okay, I'm going to enjoy you as my best friend. Pain. And I learned this attitude from the time when I was a young monk in Thailand, because we had it tough with our master at Changsha. If he wouldn't tolerate namby pamby cream puff monks. So there's no way I could be one like that. You could stand it. Because in this first year, in this forest mine, if this was jungle monastery, really hot, sweaty, and of course, the worst thing was the mosquitoes. Now, the hundreds of them in these forests and very often in the evening. Or we would sit meditation, not in the hall, but outside, under the trees. And a time we'd sit. Meditation was just after sunset. It was as if we had. So this big sign restaurant open. Just when the mosquitoes were hungry. And it was very irritating because those mosquitoes in Thailand, especially in Buddhist countries, are much different than any other country, because in those days the mosquitoes had been genetically bred to understand if they saw a brown robe and a bald head, it was a safe lunch. We would not swap them. Other people would. So, you know, it's just like, um, evolution. Those ones who are attracted towards the brown robe, you know, would have their meal survive and procreate. Those people who went to, you know, like a skirt or trousers, they get swatted and so they would multiply so much. So you can understand just the law of evolution, how it was inbred in these mosquitoes to be attracted to, you know, peaceful and harmless brown monks. Brown robed monks. Not only that, now we've got our jackets on now, because it's a winter time. If you've seen monks in Thailand or even here in the hot weather, we have these bare shoulders and we have bald heads. There are so many more landing places for mosquitoes. It's like more seats at the table for dinner. And not only that, he said, well, we really suffered with his mosquitoes. I was one of the first Westerners in this area. This was the first time in centuries the mosquitoes could eat Western food. And I'm sure they all told their friends, hey, in that forest over there, you could eat Western food. Know what it's like when you get strange food in the country? It always becomes a fad for a while. So these mosquitoes, they were terrible. And this is not a joke. This is true. I remember this very clearly. There's another monk who is. I used to sit next to him. His name was Joschka, actually. Then I saw his daughter some years ago, last year, last November, that he actually disrobed. And the year after I got married, a year after that was killed in the car crash. They just had a baby daughter called Metter. And of course, because I no knew her father, I hadn't seen the baby now. So what was it? 20 year old girl. Wonderful actually seeing her because it was someone I grew up with as a monk. And anyhow, this Jessica, we used to play this game. We sit there for about an hour. An hour and a half with our master. We will count the mosquitoes on your arm. I'd usually get to about 50 or 60 before you couldn't count them any more. There were two close together, so, you know, you couldn't actually distinguish resolve. You know, where there was one over here and one over there. And that was usually the number we used to get up to, you know, maybe 40, 50, 60. That was about the maximum. And you couldn't sort of count anymore. Too many, too close together. That's not an exaggeration. That's how it was. So you can imagine when you're irritated with one mosquito, imagine about 50 or 60 all at the same time, and every now and again you'd open your eyes and want to run this moment. No repellents, no nets, no mosquito coils. You just out there in the jungle with nothing to protect you. And when I decided to run, you see my master up there sitting. I didn't dare run away. And all this other time. So just sitting there, they weren't bothered. And he found out afterwards. Actually the Thai monks, the something about the metabolism was used to the hot weather. They didn't attract so many mosquitoes. They didn't like to get bitten so much as all our Westerners were the ones who got bitten all the time. So there you were. So when we complained to our teacher. So this is too much. Can we meditate another time? That was when he taught us about the meaning of this word again. Arjun means teacher like imagine Brahm, your agile and sister Yama means teacher. So he said, from now on you've got a new teacher. No agenda again. Mosquito. That's your new master. And what a brilliant little lesson that was, because we had to learn from Agile and Mosquito, and you learn much more from such experiences than you do from reading books, going to universities, or even coming to places like this and listen to a talk for an hour here. You're learning from real life how to cope with some of the difficulties and pains of life. And you found actually, the more you're worried and tensed up about this, the worse it got when you really relaxed and let go. The whole problem disappeared. I know the one thing which I used to do really taught me how to meditate properly. I really focused on my breath. You could not wander or think about other things, because as soon as the mind lost his focus straight away, he would go to your arm or your head and his terrible itches. So after a while, I learned how to get into these very deep meditations where you couldn't feel the body anymore and it'd be so peaceful. Strange thing happened there, though. When I came out of those meditations. I looked to my arms. And you'd been. The mosquitoes have been swarming. You couldn't see any bites at all, because usually after a bite you see little red welts or, you know, bump or something. At least they'll be red and inflamed. There was no bumps there at all. First of all, I thought, it's just like the power of meditation. I know these things have great psychic power. They can do a lot to heal the body, but I only found out a few years ago what actually was happening was. The mosquitoes are attracted to the carbon dioxide coming out from your pores, not the heat from the carbon dioxide. The higher metabolism, the more they know you're there. The more you worry, the more you tense up. The more you upset about this mosquitoes biting you. You're actually saying, come over here, here I am. The more you relax and let go, the more your metabolism slows down, calms down, and they don't know you're there. So I calm my metabolism down so much just by relaxing, making peace, not worrying about anything. Just focusing on my breath. How is it I was invisible to the mosquitoes? I just couldn't see me, which is why they didn't bite. It's amazing little lesson for me. It not only taught me how to meditate, but also taught me some of the benefits of relaxing. Even when you're in very irritating circumstances, when you're even in pain. Because as soon as you relax, the whole tightness tends to. Dissipate. Sometimes I've taught people I've done it myself. Whenever there is a ball of pain somewhere in your body that could be anywhere in that body. Sometimes you can see yourself tightening up around that pain. And instead I've used the meditation of visualization, of expanding that pain, because expanding the pain is different than trying to get rid of it. Trying to get rid of it is giving it negative energy. I actually spread that pain around the whole of my body. Now that's actually going against the usual way you do things. You want to get rid of it. The sun might allow to spread it out throughout the whole of my body, and maybe just in my stomach, spread it out to my limbs, to my my legs, even up to my head. Because as that works, the simile which I developed was when you actually expand something, it gets less dense. Sure, the pain is actually spread over a wider area, but it's less a fall, less hurting when it gets to my whole body and I keep on expanding it and expanding and expanding. It's like an ice cube at first, but when you actually expand, it melts me. Expand it. It becomes like a cloud in the sky, soft and fluffy. Expand it into the whole universe that begets so thin, so spread out it disappears. I found it a very effective way of overcoming the pain because it's not going against it, is going with it. So these are little ways which I found of dealing with the pain. And now there is a way of like substitution. Whereas if you're focusing on a breath and the pain is on the outside, let's use what I call the meditation is similar to the screen to understand this. And this is I think probably why. So footballers, they may break their leg and not know what's going on because they're focusing on something else. The similar the screen goes like this. Whenever you turn on a TV of an evening, you will always notice the edges of the screen and you may have a picture, maybe of your wedding on the top of your TV, and you may have a video or DVD machine underneath. But have you noticed yet that after a few minutes you cannot see the edges of your TV screen? You can't see what's to the left, to the right, above and below? You can't even see the edges of the screen. Or you can see is the centre. Now this is very useful for you to save you many thousands of dollars, because these days people buy these liquid crystal TV screens, this plasma screens, which is just so wide. And you should know that when you look at them or when you look at a small screen like a portable TV in your mind, the image in your mind is exactly the same. No difference once you start focusing. That's why when I'm on Singapore Airlines, you see these people in front of their little TV screens looking at these movies, they might as well be looking at a big movie screen. The perception is exactly the same. So look, you don't need to spend all those thousands of dollars buying these huge screens. Just buy a small one and it looks exactly the same once you get into it. You see, you come to this Buddhist society. We also save you thousands of dollars. That's psychology. And it is true. The next time you go on one of these aircraft, you see these little small screens. Notice that the perception, once you focus is exactly the same as if you're in a movie theater with this huge wide screen. You don't realize it's on a small screen or on a big screen. Why don't you focus? Because what happens once you focus on something? Everything on the edge of the screen falls away. It disappears. If you're focusing on the movie, the picture above the TV screen, maybe the magazines underneath, whatever's to the side or vanishes after a few moments. Understanding that you can understand another way of overcoming some of the pain. If you can focus on another object and put that in the center of your awareness of your consciousness, which is what I was doing with the breath, because I've been doing breath meditation for a long time. You put that right in the center. Sure, there's pain, but it's on the edges. You keep focusing and focusing and focusing, sustaining your attention. You don't know when it happens. You only know it had happened. The feeling of pain disappeared. So I think that's also what probably happened when I was focusing on the music of Jimi Hendrix. The feeling of pain and the difficulties of the body had actually disappeared. However, there is always sometimes when the pain is almost impossible to escape from. I think everybody is experienced that from time to time, and if that's the case, then one just is with the pain rather than trying to escape from it. And of course, this is often with chronic pain. Chronic pain is something which just doesn't disappear easily. It's not like just stay and a little cough or a headache or a little stomach ache. It's something which is there continuously. Hour after hour after hour for a long time. And sometimes medication just does not work. So what actually happens is if we understand what I said earlier about the two aspects of pain, the mental pain of the physical pain. The mental pain is that I don't want this. Get out of here. Why do I have to experience this? Not only does that make it worse. It also increases the physical pain. But if you actually let go of that mental pain and just have the physical. It actually becomes incredibly easy to bear. Of all of those two, the mental reaction to pain is 90% of the problem. The physical is only 10%. And so if we can learn to deal not with the physical but the mental part of pain, then we're actually making huge strides in coping and being at peace and even enjoying life in spite of pain. So all we need to do, though, is focus on what am I doing with this pain? What is my reaction? What's my attitude towards this physical feeling? A lot of times we think I shouldn't be in pain. Why is it happening to me? It's not a guilt trip. So because of that, I usually do a little exercise. When I have an audience, I ask, how many people in this audience have never been sick? Is anyone here has never been sick in their life. Put your hand up if you have never been sick. So can we assume that everybody has been sick from time to time? The youth. Have you been in pain? Actually, if someone had did put their hand up, you'd be really weird. You'd be so. Such a strange case. There would be something wrong with you. So why is it? And instead of facing the reality that it's actually wrong not to be sick from time to time. Why is it whenever we are sick or we're in pain, why is it we've got into the habit in our culture of saying there is something wrong with me? I'm sick. Now just that word there shows just a mental attitude towards pain, sickness and disease. We already judging it as something bad, wrong and sometimes even think it's our mistake. I always remember a book which I read as a student by Samuel Butler called L want Everyone is actually Nowhere Spelt backwards. And in this book, which was written about maybe 100 years ago now, this, uh, Samuel Butler envisions a society where when you break the law, when you commit a crime, you sent a hospital for therapy, for rehabilitation. The criminal acts, like stealing or violence were considered to be like a disease. And there's something wrong. And it could be cured now by a doctor or by some sort of treatment. It's an interesting, isn't it, that many people think that that is actually possible. If there's any criminals, if they're cheating or embezzling or, um, whatever, that it might be like a problem which we can treat with, with appropriate therapy. But in this society, when anybody was sick. They've got punished and sent to jail. There is something to that, isn't it? If you get, say, cancer, is it because you haven't been exercising properly, eating the wrong food, stressing out, working too hard? Is it your fault? If you've got a bad back. Is it because you haven't been lifting things properly? Now, if you've got a heart disease, is it because you've been eating too much fish and chips? Too many McDonalds or whatever? Anyway, this is what they said was interesting. I'm not saying this is what I think. This is actually what this guy was actually positing, just as a way to see things in a different light. That's sure. Why is it we say that if you commit a crime, you're fully culpable? But when you're sick, it's no blame at all. So in this I remember this scene in the book where this poor guy was in court. The reason why he'd been charged and brought to the court for a trial was because he had the flu. And the judge looked at him and he said, it's very clear that you're guilty. You have got the flu. Look, you're sniffling and blowing your nose all the time. So it came to the sentence and the judge, remember, this is not the first time you've been before me. And I told you last time, you must exercise more and eat better food and don't have so much stress. And you never took the warning. And so he threw the book at this guy, five years in jail for the offence of having a cold. Now, of course, that was just a little way of looking at different, different way of looking at things. But even now, yeah, people will get cancer, feel guilty. If they have to go to a doctor, they feel they've made a mistake. Why is it? Do we add guilt to the pain and diseases of life? It's a mental addition to just what's normal in life. Even if you eat brown rice and meditate every day and exercise and only veggies. People still get cancer. They still die. I remember this before I was a monk. I used to be really into yoga 34 years ago. So be really flexible. And the TV series at that time was like yoga for health, I think, from the United States. And I used to watch that every week because I had this guy is just so young and fit and this beautiful girl as well. Maybe the beautiful girls while I was watching, I don't know. But now the boy as well, because I was a lineman and I wasn't a monk. But anyhow, that I started doing all these poses and what I became a monk about a year later, I just asked the people, what happened to that program is still going strong, because I really liked that program. When somebody told me, yeah, it's strange. About six months after I became a monk, the guy had a heart attack on the set and just died. I couldn't believe that this guy was so fit, so healthy, did all the right things. What it told me was that sickness, pain is part of life, and you don't need to add this mental part of it of guilt that something is wrong. It shouldn't happen. So these days I tell people, if ever you have to go to the doctor, if you're coming here to this Buddhist society, Western Australia, many times on a Friday evening, please never go to the doctor and say, there's something wrong with me, doctor. I've got, you know, pain or I'm feeling sickly. Please tell your doctor. Doctor, there's something right with me. I'm sick again. Now, I mean that because I'm actually. Somebody did that once. They told me that because I've said this before. They went to the doctor and I said, there's something wrong with me. I'm sick again. Nothing. They got referred to a psychiatrist. I really get people in trouble. But anyhow, you can understand what I was saying here though. When you add this negativity to pain or to sickness, you make it worse. There's negativity. It shouldn't be happening. Not only does it say it makes it worse, but sometimes it means you don't treat it in time. So many people get lumps in their breasts or pain somewhere else. I think that's not cancer. Can't be cancer. I don't want it to be cancer. Another reason because they're afraid. I think it's wrong to have cancer. It's wrong to be sick. And so sometimes by the time they get to the doctor, it's really late. So please always say it's right to be sick. It's right that some people get cancer. It's like some people die. It's right you have pain from time to time. So don't think it's something wrong. Don't think there's some mistake. Don't think that something which is really awfully bad about this. At least have that mental acceptance of this being part of life. Watch out that mental acceptance is part of life. Then straight away you're facing it and you can deal with it when you're not running away. You will notice when you run away, your face is always in the opposite direction. You can't see when you're running away. What you're running away from. When you face the problem. At least you can see it. I want you can see these things. It's amazing what you can discover and how you can find ways of dealing and overcoming, transcending, being free. One of the ways of dealing with this is actually just using the basic, uh, beginning of meditation, of present moment awareness, because we can actually face pain. You see, a lot of the problem with pain or difficulty is allowing the mind to be afraid for the future. What it is, is saying, I can't stand this any longer. You're standing it now. You're bearing it in this moment. But the point which makes pain unbearable is the thought, this is going to continue for minute, for hours, for days, for years. Is that expectation where the mind runs off into the future, which makes the pain unbearable? Or the memory of pain in the past? It hurt in the past is going to hurt again. All of these moments when you allow yourself to judge this present moment by the past, or anticipate the future, that is a mental part of pain, which makes it very, very difficult to bear. So instead of saying that we learn how to be in the present moment with pain, and the classical story of that which I did write in my book, was one of the fellows in my monastery. He had very bad taste. Some of you know who he is, but he's not here at the moment. He's off overseas. That's a bit of a giveaway already. Shouldn't really tell who it is. But anyhow. He had bad teeth. I don't know what his disease was, but he got fed up. He had to have many teeth. He got fed up with going to a doctor who would give him an anesthetic. He found one, a doctor, one dentist, actually, in the Perth Dental Hospital, just next to Royal Pearse, who would actually take out his teeth without anaesthetic. Now, not many dentists would do that simply because they think that, you know, you may say that, but you won't be able to just cause a lot of screaming and that would scare off your other clients. Imagine you're in the waiting room about to go to the dentist. And so it was great. But anyhow, this was a free clinic, so it didn't really matter about scaring off clients. So anyway, the dentist would do this and it didn't really, you know, this guy didn't really matter. He could do it easily. But one day he went the next stage up. The next he went to the next level. He took his own tooth out. It was just too far to go from all the way from serpentine into town. So why not? We saw him. He had his tooth covered with blood and the pliers from the workshop. Why you screw your face up like that? Yeah, when you asked him. Well. Honestly. What happened? How do you do that? And this is a classical story about pain. How can you do that? This is what he says. He said when I decided to take out my own tooth, it didn't hurt. Then when I walked to the workshop to get the pliers. Walking didn't hurt when I picked up the pliers in my hand. That didn't hurt it when I put the jaw of the pliers on my tooth. That didn't hurt either. For many of you, it's already hurting. Who said this when I wiggled it. That hurt for about two seconds and it was out. It's only two seconds. Easy. Now you understand. For you, it's the thought of what it might be like. That's what hurts, isn't it? So that's why you screwed up your face. And, uh. How could he do that? You can see you had the mental pain without no physical pain at all. Now you understand why the mental part of it is the most important. Taking out a tooth, which is two seconds of pain, that's all. And actually, that probably two seconds of pain is probably much better than was the hour or two hours of the anesthetic wearing off. And you can hardly speak. So isn't it logical and reasonable? You can actually save a lot of money that way. You know, dentists are very expensive these days. And anyway, just getting an appointment is just so hard. So if anyone wants any tooth extractions, I can give you the name of this person. You can come to our monastery. Very cheap. But it's actually the expectation when the mind goes off into the future, this is going to hurt. This is gonna be tough. I'm not gonna stand this. That is a mental part of the pain. So when actually you're actually in the present moment, you can bear this moment. And one of the interesting parts about physical pain is you don't know what's going to happen next. Many people, especially at meditation retreats, have had his amazing experiences when big pain just suddenly disappears. It's weird. First time that happened to me was when I had this terrible toothache. This is my toothache story also in my book. But now this is actually how I understood just how powerful the mind can be. I just terrible, massive toothache. Now, people might say that, you know, pain. A toothache is not much. Not bad, but pain is personal. You cannot compare your agony with somebody else's. And you know what it's like. Sometimes you say it's hurting and people don't believe you. That's nothing. But sometimes. Sometimes you know how bad it is. And this was a huge pain for me. Probably the worst pain I've ever had in my life. And as I was trying to bear with this pain, it was late in the evening in this jungle monastery. There's no telephones, no dentists for miles. There wasn't even any Panadol or aspirin. You just meant to bear with any physical difficulty. So, as usual, what happens with pain in the evening always gets worse when everyone else has gone to bed. That's when pain really starts to show what it's capable of. You ever notice that at nighttime, that's when it really hurts. So by about ten, 11:00, he was so bad, there's no way I could go to sleep. Even I was very tired. I wanted to, but I just couldn't. So I decided to try and block out the plain by doing breath meditation. I was very focused. But this time the pain was too good, too big. Every time I focused on the breath for a few seconds, just this incredible pain would just kick down the door of my mind. Every barricade which I put up will just turn over like matchsticks. The pain was too strong. Now, after trying that for about half an hour and getting absolutely nowhere, the pain getting worse, I thought of another way which was doing walking meditation. It's another method of meditation we use in the monasteries. I gave that up after about five minutes because I wasn't walking meditation, I was writing meditation. You may notice whenever you're in pain, you can't sit still. I think that's probably just before I came in here. Maybe when I was Sumana, my attendant here noticed me getting up and getting down from the seat over there. I couldn't sit still. I was hurting too much beforehand. So I was running meditation, so I stopped that. The next thing which I tried was doing some chanting, some magical Buddhist chanting. Now, this time I was only about 1 or 2 years as a monk. Just come from Cambridge University. Theoretical physicist. I didn't believe in all this superstitious nonsense, chanting and stuff that was just for, you know, this of the lower class Buddhists, the really intellectual ones like me. We didn't believe in that superstitious nonsense. So I started chanting. When you're desperate, you believe anything. And so I was so desperate, I started chanting. Had to stop that after five minutes. Not even less than five minutes because I wasn't chanting. I was shouting at the top of my voice. I was afraid I'd wake everyone else up in the monastery. That's the other thing. When you're in agony, you can't even do anything softly because you're desperate. And this was one of the great times in my life which may happen to you as well when you're in a corner. You can't go anywhere. You've tried everything. You've. You've known every possibility. There's nothing more to do. But you can't stand this moment any longer. You can't stand the pain. It's too much and there's nothing you can do. There's a great times in your life. Those are times of possible spiritual awakening. And that was one of the times when I remembered what I'd heard from teachers like AJ and Chas. Well, everyone here has heard before. Let go. It's easy when you have to. Sometimes we don't have to, so we can't. But sometimes in your life. Your backs against the wall. You're facing a firing squad of pain. The only thing to do let go. And my experience was let go. I let go within one second. The pain a completely vanished. Like a miracle. No pain left at all. And instead it's incredible. Peace even. Actually not just peace. Bliss as well. It was a wonderful experience when you truly let go. It works immediately. One minute you had pain. Incredible pain. Next minute, nothing at all. It was just such a wonderful experience. I just sat down and enjoyed it by meditating about an hour. Two hours. I don't know how long. No pain at all. Completely gone. And then I lay down to have a sort of rest, but never very little rest. When you got good meditation, you lay down. You don't really go asleep. You know, you sort of mindfully just resting. I got up early for the morning meeting at 3:00 in the morning. We hardly slept in those monasteries. And I just thought I'd meditate again. When I woke up, there was a dull ache in my mouth. Later on, I went to see the dentist to get sort of something done. But at that time, it was just so amazing. You can have this incredible pain one moment and gone the next. And the only trick was stop fighting. Let it go. Leave it alone. Now, when I wrote the story in the book, I gave her a little warning. Because many people try that. They're incredible pains. They let go. Come on, let go! I'm telling you, let go! And it doesn't work. And so they come and complain to me, and I jump from. You said what you said. It doesn't work. You made it up, didn't you? So now I know this is a true story, I don't lie. And so the trouble was, you weren't letting go. This was just another technique of trying to get rid of the pain. That's not letting go. That's another management technique, another way of controlling. To really let go of pain, you have to say something like pain. You can be in here forever and mean it. You can even get worse if you want to. The door of my heart is completely open to you. No matter what you ever do. You can come, you can stay. You can get worse. I welcome you. That's a hard thing to do. It takes a lot of courage, even compassion. Compassion to pain, to realize it's part of the scheme of things is part of life. There's nothing wrong with it. So why discriminate against the pain and say I don't want you? When you allow it to be and let it be and allow it to come and stay, that's when it goes. It was a mental part of the pain which I truly let go of. I don't want this. I can't stand this. Why me? This is unfair. I want to go home to England, where I can go and see a dentist. All those sorts of things. The complaining, moaning, negative mind. That is what I let go of because of that. The mind was free and the body just really relaxed and the pain disappeared. Fascinating. Amazing experience. And of course, once you do that once, it's very easy to understand how you deal with pain when you've got no other choice. You're going to paint somewhere instead of fighting it, which means your tent suffocates so you give it more negative energy. You let it be your friendly towards the pain, your kind towards it. Give it Metta. Compassion. Loving kindness. It's incredible to see effect that will have if you do it properly. Has to be 100% 99.9% does not work. So the mental part which is the worst. And of course, there has to come a time in everybody's life when you have a pain which is going to kill you, your death. For most of you, there will be very unpleasant time. So if you learn how to deal with pain now, then your sweet. When you die, you can be there in great pain and smiling and enjoying life. Your last moments with your loved ones. I've seen that many times. People, especially with meditated on a little bit of dharma, a little bit of the truce and how their mind and body works together. This should have been in great agony. Sometimes the doctors can't understand what's going on, but there they are, at peace. The last moments of life. It's beautiful to see that. It's inspiring. It shows what can be done. But of course, I can't help but quoting one of my heroes in history. This is not even a Buddhist. This is a Catholic. A Catholic saint called Saint Lawrence. The reason I like this guy was because he was so radical. He was just such so much. He didn't sort of follow the usual dogmas. What happened to people like that in those days? They usually ended up tied to a post with a fire underneath them. I'm very happy that I wasn't. I'm not alive in those those days. The sort of things I stay here on a Friday night. I'm sure I'd have been had that tree, but a long time ago. But anyhow, there was this great Christian saint being burned alive on a stake. Now, you may not have had that amount of pain and torture, but you know you've burnt your finger sometimes. You know how how how that feels, how painful that is. Now multiply that and imagine that your title stake being burnt alive. How would that hurt? But this guy, he had his act together. He was charred and blistered just before he lost consciousness. Before he could speak, he uttered his last words. His last words to humanity were these. It was in Latin, but it translates as being burnt at the stake. He said, turn me over this side. Stand. Like a piece of toast. Like a sausage being barbecued on a Sunday afternoon. Like, you know, a pawn being grilled. Turn me over this side, Stan. That's what he said at last. Well, I can really admire someone like that. Not only was he completely beyond the physical pain, but he also had compassion for all those miserable people watching him. He decided to tell them a joke to cheer them up. Now, the reason I say it can be done. It has been done. You've seen it done. How can it be done? Nothing. I've told you why. The mental part of it. That's the big part. It's a tough one, but we can learn. It's not only the tough part of it. If you really relax a body. The other part of meditation, which I wanted to say about dealing with pain, when you really relax because you don't tense up. Whether it's a key or an Indian medicine, the winds of the body, they have a chance to flow freely and heal any sicknesses. I know that from my understanding of the ancient Buddhist suitors, especially the Vinaya, which is a rules of discipline, you can. Because I know this in part, I read it many times, and the way the Buddha described the physical ailments or the physical health, he said. Like the winds flow through the body and when they get blocked, they get sicknesses. That's classical Indian medicine. And I remember reading an article, I think the Dalai Lama's personal doctor was invited to a hospital ward in the United States, and actually they took off all the signs. He didn't know these patients, what they were there for. They just wanted to see whether this ancient Tibetan medicine, now based on Indian medicine, could actually give very good diagnosis of people's ailments. And he went up to this one. One guy can remember reading about this. It's really great fun reading about how ancient medicine and modern medicine when they come together. And I think he sort of felt a few pulses and was and he said, he's got a blockage of winds around his heart. Of course he had. The arteries were all blocked. He's about to have a bypass in those days. In other words, he actually had an accurate diagnosis but just explained it in different words. Just know the flows of energy weren't flowing properly. Fascinating just how accurate you could be. But obviously in Chinese medicine they call the qi going through the body. And you know that those things get blocked up and you get pain. Or if you do get a sickness or an injury, like a bit of food poisoning, the reason it doesn't heal itself up very quickly is you block up more channels, you tense up, you're not relaxed with the pains of life. And that means the body's natural healing process can't work. And I've seen this in meditation many, many times. And even in my retreats, you tell people to really, really, really relax, to meditate, not do this forceful meditation. Very soft and opening. Open the door of your heart. Meditation type things. And actually people start to feel these hotspots in their body. It's fascinating when this happens because they come up to me afterwards. I was meditating, they're really peaceful, but my back became really hot. What's going on? I remember this one time. Couple of years ago, this lady said just that my back and shoulders, they were really almost burning. What the heck is going on? Is this normal? Of course. My first question was he had any physical problems in your back and shoulders? And she said, laugh at your bum. You're reading my mind. How did you know that had an accident two years ago. So I'm not reading your mind. You just told me. Because that's what happens. He had this accident a couple of years ago with her back and shoulders. Obviously, something was needing to be healed there. She hadn't relaxed enough to give the body a chance to heal itself. Now she was relaxed and body energies went to that area and it got nice and warm. How did that she feels it unpleasant. I said very, very nice. I felt really nice afterwards. So that's healing going on. When you really let go the pain, the difficulties tend to soften up and evaporate. Well, this other guy who came to one of my retreats in Sydney and people started complaining about him because whenever he was doing breath meditation, he was going. Home all the time. And of course, you know, that really disturbing. Made a huge noise. And so when I got these complaints, I had to make the announcement. This fellow has got nasal cancer terminal. He's got no hope. This is his last chance. There's no treatment, no more treatments possible. And as soon as I said that, no one ever complained or thought about it. Because that's what he could do. But on the last day of the story, this fellow came up to me just to the very end and said, wow, amazing thing happened. He was meditating there, really relaxed. He said he heard us pop in his nose the first time in weeks he could actually breathe through his nose. But then after a few minutes, it closed up again. This is amazing to know how that happened. And that's the last I saw him. I thought he would have died. But few years later, I was giving a talk in Sydney and this guy came up to me, said, do you remember me? Who are you? Said, I was that guy for remission and now he's spending his time teaching meditation. It's amazing just what can happen. And how can that happen? Because when you really, really relax, the energy of the body can actually do some proper healing. Not only healing, but actually heal the pain in the body to relax it all. Incredible. While not joking when I started this talk. Had issues. Ball of pain in my stomach. It's hardly there now. I can hardly see it. It's just about gone. It's amazing how you can deal with pain if you have this beautiful attitude. Not worrying about the past in the moment. Just being here. Not fighting. Stopping the mental part. If you do address the mental part of the pain, then 99% is going to disappear and sometimes 100% goes as well. So let's talk about how to deal with pain and sometimes chronic pain. And the same thing goes with pain in life. Divorce is separations some mental part. Everyone not everyone just happened to me. I've never got divorced first because I never got married. But it happens. And so don't get guilty about it. Make peace with it, not war. If you can't do anything, where are they stuck with it? It's the mental part which is the worst part. Or you get sacked from work, or somebody dies in your family, or someone commits suicide. Whatever it is this is, sometimes this happens, but the mental part, please look at the mental part of what you have to experience in life. And if you can deal with that, everything else comes good. So thanks for listening to pain. Okay. Any questions now about pain? About anything I said or something similar. No. You got a question? Very good. Any questions? Going? Going good for those people in chronic pain. If you can please see the receptionist to get your Medicare bill. We bolt. There we go. Bill. No. It's okay. All for free.