Sitting Through Pain

     During the group meditation sharing today, we talked about the question of whether it's best to sit through pain without moving,  as opposed to gently moving one's body to adjust one's position. It was mentioned that making this a goal of meditation can be problematic. It might lead to the sense that the aim of meditation is to somehow overcome pain or 'do something with it'. It also lead me to realize that so much of what a person does in meditation relates to trying to find new coping strategies. Even when there are no problems, we can somehow find ways to create them, both on and off the cushion.
     If I can see pain as just part of a totality, I might not think of it as a challenge or an obstacle to be overcome. It becomes part of the overall scenery of my experience. I can simply abide in the pain without insisting that I either enjoy it or dislike it. After all, even trying hard to enjoy something creates yet another barrier to seeing things clearly as they are.
       I recall times when I was very young and I 'braced myself' before eating something that seemed unpleasant to me. This 'bracing myself' at times worked very well for me. It even gave me a boost of confidence to realize that there was something I was able to do with just the right modicum of will-power. But soon enough, that 'will power' becomes an end in itself, and it isn't long before it too starts to become stale.
    The alternative to this attitude of 'overcoming pain by enduring it', is to acknowledge pain, but not to make a goal out of it. This attitude almost seems to go against my conditioning to be one way or another--either 'for' some experience or 'against' it altogether. But is it possible to simply acknowledge an experience for all its difficulty, without necessarily looking for ways to mitigate it or solve it? I believe it is possible, but one must first of all see that experience in light of the totality of awareness. Without a sense of an all-encompassing mind, it is too easy for me to contract into a painful experience and create a solid mental image around it. Rather than seeing the pain as local, one pans outward and sees it as the result of many layers of conditions. Pain becomes part of the scenery but I am not consumed by it.