Respecting and Yet Transcending

 This past weekend retreat was both a struggle and a surprise, like pretty much all the retreats I have attended. It was a struggle in the sense that I was spending quite a bit of time in some pain or another, which isn't unusual considering the many posts I have had on this subject in the blog. But it is a surprise in a sense that I can never tell what works and doesn't work from one retreat to the next. I think this is the case because mind is something so elusive that it cannot be known so directly, even through repetition of a method. In fact, it seems to arise at moments when I have overcome attachment to techniques.
   Is there a method that works best in dealing with pain? I haven't worked it out in any way because, again, techniques are never a means to it, but I have found that there is a balance of respecting phenomena for what it reveals to us (treating it as a kind of guest or teacher) and transcending the sensation by looking deeply into its empty nature, or by using the phenomena as a starting point for huatou practice. In the afternoon of this retreat, I did find that the latter worked well when I interspersed it with the question, who is experiencing the pain?  By questioning the sense of self, I had a more spacious and less grasping attitude toward the pain. When there is no grasping sense of self that desires and rejects, there isn't so much of a problem or challenge, because the pain is not attributed to a sustainable fixed self. In fact, it starts to lose its ability to invoke suffering.  I even started to see that the nature of mind is deeply embedded in pain, rather than trying to demonize it or cast it out of me.