I got an email from a man who is in constant chronic pain. He asked me to do an episode on the topic. I talked about the OT Book of Job and the Problem of Suffering a while back, but this man was talking about something less philosophical and more practical. How do we deal with pain, especially when that pain is intense and continuous?
I have not been in that type of extreme pain. I have had strong pain. Anyone who has lived into their seventies must have known pain at some point. The strongest pain I have known has been kidney stones, abscessed teeth and gall bladder. All those have been short lived. Not more than days or weeks, and were alleviated by the removal of the offending part, whether that be kidney stone, infected tooth or bad gallbladder.
I have never had intense pain that went on for months or years. Yet during my forty years as a fulltime pastor I ministered to people with such pain. Pain caused by cancer or traumatic injury. I have ministered to church members who took their own lives because they could no longer tolerate the intensity of the pain.
Pain is serious problem for many people. Physical pain is to be distinguished from what is sometimes called suffering in spiritual circles. Suffering is emotional. Pain is physical. There is overlap and between the two. Suffering is the psychological suffering that is added to the physical pain and makes the situation worse.
The young prince Gotama saw four sights when he went outside his palace walls. He saw an old person, a sick person, a dead person, and an ascetic. From these four sights, Gotama learned of aging, illness, death, and the spiritual search for an end to suffering. He embarked on a spiritual journey. Many of us have been spurred to a spiritual quest because of our encounter with suffering – psychological and/or physical.
After enlightenment the Buddha taught the four noble truths of suffering: the reality of suffering, the cause of suffering, the end of suffering, and the path that leads to the cessation of suffering, known as the eightfold path.
Usually that suffering that the Buddha talked about is interpreted as emotional suffering or existential angst. But there is undoubtedly a physical component to the suffering, as the four sights reveal. Old age, disease and death are physical conditions.
Often it is said that suffering can be eliminated but pain cannot. Pain has to do with the body and cannot be completely eliminated as long as there is a body. Perhaps yogis who devote themselves to years of ascetism and physical self-discipline can control their bodies and minds enough to overcome a lot of the pain. Yet I imagine that there is certain degree of physical pain that even the most austere yogi cannot eliminate.
Life is suffering, as the Buddha said. Physical and psychological. That is a fact of life. What can we do about physical pain? That is the question. My first initial response is: “I am not sure.” I don’t mind admitting that I do not have all the answers. And I hesitate to address the issue since I have not had to deal with unbearable physical pain, like some people I have known. It seems disingenuous. But having said that – and because I have been asked to talk about this subject - there are a few things that I will venture to suggest.
The first thing is not to add to the physical pain with psychological suffering. In the book of Job, the friends of Job make the suffering of Job worse by blaming it on him. The worst thing we can do is blame the person suffering, saying if only they had enough faith or more spiritual or more enlightened, than the pain would end. All that does is add more suffering. It adds shame and guilt to the mix. If we are the person suffering, the worst thing we can do is blame ourselves for not being able to stop the suffering.
Job did not blame himself. He yelled and screamed at the universe. He blamed God. Good for him! I respect Job – and the author of the book of Job – for being willing to question God and the pat answers of religious people. There is no religious or philosophical answer to pain, but there is a spiritual approach to pain.
Jesus was known as a healer. When you read the gospels you see that he spent as much time healing people physically and psychologically as he did giving spiritual teachings. So healing is part of the approach. Ending the pain caused by illness seemed to be important to Jesus.
These days healing is addressed through scientifically-tested medical care supplemented with alternative medicine. Part of that healthcare is addressing pain with medication. My primary care physician is the head of palliative care at our local hospital. She says that with the medical knowledge that we now have that there is no reason for anyone to be in chronic pain.
Treatment plans for pain management are available. It is not a perfect science. It is trial and error and customized for each individual case. But it seems that pain management is possible with a combination of pharmaceutical and psychological techniques, including meditation techniques. So that is part of it.
What does nonduality – and in particular Christian nonduality - have to contribute to this mix of approaches to reducing pain? That is what I think the man was asking me. My response is that nonduality has have some things to say about addressing the problem of pain.
First, pain is an interpretation of physical sensation. Pain does not exist apart from the body and mind. The body feels something and the mind interprets it as dangerous and seeks to end it. Pain is a bodily mechanism to identify that something is wrong with the body and needs to be addressed.
Nonduality says we are not the body. So there is pain but it is not ours. We tend to say and think that we are in pain, but what we really are cannot feel pain. The pain belongs to the body, but not to our True Nature. That realization, when it known firsthand and is not just a belief, puts a psychological distance between us and pain. That space between us and the pain helps. The body still hurts, but it cannot hurt us.
To live this realization is to abide in what we really are and not in what we aren’t. So really the nondual approach to pain is not any different than the nondual approach to anything else. It is simply abiding in our true nature. Abiding in the kingdom of God. That is why eternal life or heaven is seen as pain-free. The Book of Revelation describes this reality saying, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Heaven is not a future state. It is here now. It is simply a matter of living in that eternal kingdom of Heaven here and now. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” Eternity is experienced in the here-now, rather than in space-time, which is the world of suffering and pain.
The human experience of this reality is not perfect, but nondual awareness can help reduce the pain. But still there is pain, even for the greatest spiritual teachers. Everything is one. That means that pain is part of the oneness. Jesus experienced pain on the cross. Jesus was fearing pain while praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. But Jesus found the grace to accept the pain. “Not my will but thine be done,” he prayed.
Jesus is our example. He did not seek to avoid the pain. He accepted the pain and let the it come and go without attaching to it. Painlessness is not possible as long as there is a human body. But we do not have to dwell in the pain. We watch the pain as it comes and then moves on. Jesus did not cling to the pain. He did not cling to physical life. He let physical life come and let it go. The gospels say the Roman soldiers were surprised how quickly Jesus died. That was because he did not cling to the body.
Another way that pain is lessened is by sharing pain. “Pain shared is pain lessened.” (Spider Robinson ) The apostle Paul instructs us to share each other's burdens, and so fulfill the teaching of Christ. We are not separate. We are all one body. If one person hurts we all hurt. In community we share the pain and thereby lessen the pain for any one person. We are all one and that oneness reduces the burden of any part of the one body.
That is the spiritual meaning behind the Cross. The prophet Isaiah’s said that the Messiah takes on our infirmities and carries our sorrows. There is strength in Christ and in oneness with each other. All is one. That is Christian nonduality.
And that is a bit more than I normally say in an episode, but it was needed to address this important subject.