Yogi: I would sense different pain and it would disappear, but there was one that didn’t and I decided to change to sitting on a chair. How much should I watch pain before I change?
Sayadaw: We must understand why we observe, not just pain, but our reaction to pain. This is important to remember.
The reason why pain is an important experience is because it allows us to observe our reaction to the pain.
We’re not observing this experience to make the pain go away. We watch so that we can watch the reaction to the pain and understand how the mind experiences pain depending on its reaction to it. This is what we want to learn.
We want to understand the true nature of pain as it is. What is pain? Who is in pain? That, we can only tell when there is no more reaction in the mind to the experience.
Because you have experience in watching certain pain and they can disappear, the mind hasn’t actually challenged itself to understand pain.
Imagine people who can’t move or have chronic pain, how do they live with it - how can we use meditation so the mind learns enough about it to have a better response towards pain rather than just suffering.
When we have pain, success will mean that there is no more reaction in the mind towards the pain. That would be success.
When there is that physical pain, what is the reaction in the mind? That is what you want to watch.
We watch the reaction so that the mind can see when it is reacting, how does the pain feel? When the reaction increases, how does the pain feel? When the reaction decreases, how does the mind feel? When the reaction is gone, how does the pain feel?
As the state of the reaction changes, you will find that your view of the pain changes. That is important to see.
That is your homework.