Simply This Moment - Buddhist Meditation and Theravada ...

and find out what that pain really means and how it works. It gives you a lot offreedom, especially in monastic life, to understand this thing called pain. As you getolder the physical pain will increase and the physical body will be less able toovercome it. It will get worse and worse until you die. That’s your future, my future,and everybody’s future.So you have to have some understanding of physical pain and discomfort. That’sbody awareness, body contemplation, because that is where that physical pain usuallyarises. If we can do this – look on pain with equanimity and investigation – we cangain a lot of freedom from pain and the fear of pain. So often pain is fearsomebecause we never really know it. We are always running away from it, trying toovercome it, never stopping to look at it with equanimity to find out exactly what it is.The Buddha said there are two aspects to pain, two thorns, a mental thorn and aphysical thorn. You can take out the mental thorn because the mental thorn is due towanting, not being at peace with, and not accepting the physical pain. That’ssomething you can control. Very often you can do nothing about the physical pain;it’s there until you die. But taking away that mental thorn, that mental dart, issomething you can do from time to time. The Arahant does it all the time but with theputhujjana, the ordinary person, and even with the Anāgāmī or the Steam Winner,sometimes that thorn is still there. But you can pull it out so that you really arelooking on with equanimity. As I said earlier, you know you have equanimity in themind when everything gets peaceful, when there is no struggle anymore.When there is no craving, when there is no desire to have any more than you haveright now, full equanimity gives rise to a beautiful stillness and peace in the mind.And of course the deep reason for this is that the ‘doer’ cannot coexist withequanimity. Pure equanimity is clear and bright consciousness, without the ‘doer.’Many people think they have equanimity, but if they are still doing things, it’s notreally equanimity, it’s not just looking on, it’s looking on and getting involved.So, we can practise equanimity with physical pain. We can also practise it with someof the things that we have to do, things we don’t like, things that we disagree with.We can do this to overcome that ‘fault-finding’ mind, which I talk so much about inthis monastery. I talk so much about it because it is one of the big obstacles to living166