When you are in pain
Pain is a normal and inevitable part of the human experience. But most of us are not taught how to face it, cope with it and respond to it.
A Buddhist teaching, that’s been now validated by research, can help guide us in moments of pain.
Buddhism teaches that there are certain desirable states of mind that will make you happier. One of them is compassion, which is defined as ‘the feeling that arises in witnessing another's suffering and that motivates a subsequent desire to alleviate it.’
For each desirable state, there is a ‘far enemy’ which is the antithesis of it.
For compassion, the far enemy is judgment or cruelty.
Many of us will have had experiences where our pain has been met by someone else with this far enemy. They can scar us.
Despite those experiences, we also tend to respond to our own pain in this way: through berating ourselves and piling more pain on top of what already exists.
But there is also a ‘near enemy’, The near enemy is sneaky: it can look almost exactly like the desired state, but actually, it undermines it. Near enemies are much harder to spot.
The near enemy of compassion is pity. Pity has a sense of superiority attached to it. It looks at someone else’s pain and says ‘poor you’, creating a distance between you and their suffering.
Sometimes, we respond to our own pain with pity, too. In doing so, we isolate ourselves from the world, believing that we are the only ones who suffer. Treating ourselves with compassion is about opening up and recognizing that in our pain, we are not alone.
To put this teaching into practice, try this:
Name the far enemy and the near enemy when you see them, in both your interactions with yourself and with others.
Question your default responses: Is this judgment? Is this pity?
If you catch yourself, course correct to compassion by asking yourself: what would I do if I was embodying compassion?
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