Who Feels Pain?

    The problem of pain, whether it's the simple physical exhaustion of  a workout, can always be resolved by deciding that there is no "person" who feels pain. It might even involve analyzing the pain to see if the sensation itself is truly permanent. However, I get the sense that, for people who suffer illness or chronic pain, the problem isn't simply one of noticing a pain and getting attached to it. Rather, it has more to do with a hidden expectation that we would function much more effectively and even be happier in the absence of this pain. Behind the fear and suffering of pain is the sense of shame, as in "I shouldn't be feeling this way", or "there is something wrong with me that I feel this way". So, again, the suffering of pain comes down to an attachment to the notion of a self who feels pain.

  If one doesn't have the courage to question who is feeling pain, it's likely that a certain kind of habitual reaction will kick in. And I think that by taking a more analytic approach to pain, one will see that there is not a single traceable subject who is identified with that pain. In fact, from the perspective of a primordial kind of awareness, there is no distinct subject who really feels pain. There is no I in it at all; one is merely attaching to words such as self, pain, etc.

   Jon Kabat Zinn has worked with a lot of chronic pain sufferers, which he recounts in the book Full Catastrophic Living. The gist of it is, as he remarks, nobody has it "all together", and so sometimes we have to turn toward what we are and what we can offer in the given moment, even if it may merely be one's presence, one's embodiment or the honest effort to face reality fully and plainly. This can certainly help those who are stigmatized for disabilities.