Looking at the Source

   I noticed that when I meditated tonight, there seemed to be two different (yet related) approaches to dealing with phenomena and painful experience. One is sometimes known as 'direct contemplation', where I have looked 'directly' at the pain or the phenomena (whichever it is) without judging or putting any labels on that experience. The other is a more inquiry-based approach of probing into the source of the pain itself, in particular 'looking for the presumed self' that is behind the pain. I find that the second approach is more effective, because it doesn't try to indirectly or directly get rid of the pain. Instead, it focuses on the question of who is suffering from pain. And when I start to realize that I cannot really find any self that is particularly experiencing the pain, I notice that the sense of suffering gradually dissipates, and the pain becomes more manageable. Strangely enough, however, the first method is more heavily advocated in Western approaches to mindfulness. I wonder whether perhaps it's because nobody wants to question the sense of self for fear that it might sap one's individuality.
      Why is the second approach more effective? I have a theory, and that is I think the sense of self is always the illusion that's behind the experience of suffering. As long as there is a sense of a distinct, separate individual that is 'carrying' a painful experience, that becomes a real suffering. Pain is no longer experienced simply as sensation (and nothing more) but there is a meaning attached to the pain when I put an "I" in front of that pain. Without that sense of meaning, the sensations are just background. But the trick is, with the sense of self, everything becomes so heavy, because the self is always picking and choosing, filtering experiences in some way. It's a bit like an observer effect: I can say to myself that I am seeing something freshly, but without investigating the self that is observing, I will easily fall into the trap of expectation, or of wanting something or rejecting something else. But when I try to examine what is doing all that work of creating a unified experience that discriminates, I then see where the source of suffering really lies. It is this knotty kind of experience of liking and not liking, grasping and rejecting, and this perpetuates the sense of feeling trapped in one's own body. If I were only to look at the raw experiences themselves, I might not detect what goes behind the scenes to create that emotional experience.