Yogi: When I’m sick, what should I observe? I only know that the mind resists something.
Sayadaw: When you’re sick, defilement comes. You need to watch the defilement first. After the defilement is gone, you can then watch the pain, the sickness, as an object.
Before that, take your medicine first. You need to take care of the body with medicine.
Defilement is a mental disease – you need also to take care of the mental disease.
When there’s no anger in the mind, you can then use the sickness as an object.
The mind resists the pain because of anger towards the sickness. This experience is unpleasant because of anger. If there is no defilement, you can see the experience change to something that is not unpleasant.
If there is no anger any more, then the sickness becomes an interesting object.