If it is possible to relieve mental anguish by transforming once mind, how can this process be applied to physical suffering? How do we endure crippling, virtually intolerable pain? here again we should distinguish between two types of suffering: psychological pain and the mental and emotional suffering it unleashes. There are certainly a number of ways to experience the same pain with more or less intensity.
Neurologically, we know, emotional reactions to pain vary significantly from person to person, and a considerable percentage of pain sensation is linked to the anxious desire to suppress it. If we allow that anxiety to overwhelm our mind, the most benign pain will soon become unbearable. So our assessment of pain also depends on our mind. It is the mind that reacts to pain with fear, rejection, despondency, or a feeling of powerlessness; instead of being subjected to a single agony, we accumulate a host of them.
Having come to grips with this idea, how do we learn to control pain instead of being its victim? Since we cannot escape it, it is better to embrace then to try to reject it. The pain persists whether we succumb to dejection or hold only to our resilience and desire to live, but in the latter case we maintain our dignity and self confidence, and that makes a big difference.
There are various methods to achieve that end One method uses mental imagery, another leads us transform pain by awakening ourselves to love and compassion, a third involves developing inner strength.
