Opening to pain in a friendly and accepting way is one of the most common pragmatic adaptations of mindfulness meditation in modern America. A useful paradigm of guidance in doing so can be embodied in a mathematical equation
Suffering = Pain x Resistance
Most people think of the words “suffering” and “pain” as meaning the same thing, but, from a technical meditative perspective, we can define “pain” as simple raw unpleasantness, and “suffering” as our subjective experience of how unpleasant that pain actually feels. And what mindfulness practice can then show us is that our suffering does not simply come from pain, but is instead a combination of pain and our subconscious resistance and aversion to it – the degree to which we struggle with, resist, and try to push away that raw simple pain. The internal friction between the part of us that naturally feels pain and another part of us that tries to clamp down on it and fight with it – the system grinding against itself – is often what is actually making us miserable.
When a person has a massive physical, emotional, or spiritual pain in their life – say, at an imaginary level of “100” – and an immense resistance to it – let’s say, also at an imaginary level of “100” – then that leads to a level of suffering of 10,000, the kind of overwhelming and devastating misery that can crush a person.
If a person has a minor pain – say of 10 – but also resists it at a level of 100, that will lead to an intermediate level of anguish, at say 1,000 on our made-up scale. But some good news is that we also get exactly the same 1,000 level of intermediate suffering when we have a massive raw 100 level of pain in life that is experienced with a minimal resistance of level 10. And, one theory is that there are some rare super-mindful humans that have a resistance level close to 0, so they basically don’t suffer no matter what level of raw pain they might feel, because the pain simply flows through them naturally and smoothly, like wind through the trees.
In a past essay, I have talked about how the “nothing really hurts right now, but I feel like I am going to explode and I am not sure that I can stand this one second more” experience during a meditation session can seem like a sign that something has gone wrong and that we should quit meditating. It is, however, actually an experience that we are aiming for and trying to create when we meditate, and a good sign. This is because if you are in deep agony because your arm is a bit sore, your nose itches, someone next to you is breathing too loudly, or something trivial like that, you are probably experiencing something like a pain level of 5 combined with a high resistance level. So – great! Now we get to work with and gradually release those resistances, without having to wake up in an ICU with a raw pain of 100 and also a resistance level of 100.
It is an understanding of the “Suffering = Pain x Resistance” equation that has many people in the meditation world say, “Pain is mandatory in a human life, but suffering is optional.”