Yogi: Sayadaw once recommended I don’t watch the painful object directly but to watch it together with a neutral object like sound. In this way, it makes the suffering softer.

Sayadaw: At that time, when you had panic attack and the mind was overwhelmed, I said not to look at it, and if you were interested, to use an anchor so that you’d not be sucked into it.

But when the mind is in a good state and it can see the nature of the object, that it is doing this and it is doing that and it is not sucked into the suffering and not involved with it, then you can observe it.