Pain is inevitable. Suffering is\u00a0optional.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – – – The Dalai Lama<\/p>\n
When I toured through Europe with\u00a0my ballet company back in the late sixties, we often had to perform on a \u201craked\u00a0stage.\u201d There are lots of them in the older theaters, deliberately built on an\u00a0angle, low in the front and sloping upwards toward the back. This was meant to
improve the view for the audience and it does, but it\u2019s hell for ballet dancers\u00a0since it throws off our center of balance and we have to remember to keep\u00a0readjusting. We have to lean slightly back when we do pirouettes which flies in\u00a0the face of our training to be upright with a straight spine. I had the bad\u00a0luck of doing my first solo performance on a raked stage in Bologna, Italy, a\u00a0scary prospect in itself and adding the awkward angle of the stage made it so\u00a0much harder.<\/p>\n
In Barcelona, during the first\u00a0ballet of the evening, when I turned toward the back of the stage, I forgot to\u00a0step upwards. I slammed my foot into the floor and sprained my ankle. When I\u00a0got off stage, I hobbled to the dressing room, changed into my costume for the
next ballet and put my foot into a sinkful of cold water. I hobbled back into the\u00a0wings wondering how I would ever pull this off, but when I stepped on stage, I was\u00a0pain-free . .\u00a0 . until the performance was over and the discomfort roared back at me.<\/p>\n
Maybe it was the adrenaline that stopped\u00a0me from hurting, but whatever it was, ballet dancers are taught to accept pain.\u00a0It’s part of the training to clear our minds and keep on going, no matter what.
That\u2019s something valuable I learned and I guess it stayed with me. These days, I\u00a0have what I call a \u201cbad\u201d shoulder and it was acting up last weekend when I was\u00a0about to teach my weekly Zoom Writing class. But after I led my students in a\u00a0short meditation, just like when I was performing, I forgot about my shoulder\u00a0for the next two hours. After class, a friend asked me, \u201cHow did you manage to teach\u00a0with a sore shoulder?\u201d<\/p>\n
My answer surprised me. \u201cI pretended\u00a0it was somebody else\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pain is a formidable adversary but there\u00a0is a way to work with it by adjusting our mental attitude. I was in a Stephen\u00a0Levine workshop back in the eighties, when a majority of the attendees had AIDS
and were going through a lot of suffering. Someone stood up and asked Mr. Levine how to cope with it. He said, \u201cWe\u2019re made up of a network of sensitive\u00a0nerves. For human beings, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.\u201d<\/p>\n
He explained the difference between\u00a0pain and suffering. Pain is a physical sensation while suffering is our \u00a0interpretation of what is happening, the stories we tell ourselves. When you\u00a0touch your pain with fear and shaming, that creates self-pity and bondage. When
you touch your pain with loving kindness, that creates freedom \u2013 a way to rise\u00a0above the chaos. Mr. Levine believes that our spiritual work on this earth\u00a0plane is to keep our hearts open in hell.<\/p>\n
I came to understand that suffering \u00a0is the tension we build around pain. When we transcend it, there is a still point\u00a0in the center like the eye of a hurricane, and with a great deal of\u00a0concentration and staying present we can drop into it, breathe deeply and feel\u00a0our bodies soften. But when we start to tell ourselves stories, scare\u00a0ourselves, consider ourselves weak and imagine how much worse it’s going to\u00a0get, we are reacting, not responding. That creates suffering.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been talking about physical\u00a0pain, but emotional pain is just as treacherous. When we want things to be\u00a0different than they are, we suffer. When we learn to accept things as they are,\u00a0life becomes gentler and easier. In her book, \u201cThe Wisdom of No Escape,\u201d Buddhist\u00a0nun, Pema Chodron, says that there is a common misunderstanding among human\u00a0beings that the best way to live is to try to avoid pain and find a way to get\u00a0comfortable. But a much more interesting, kind, adventurous and joyful approach\u00a0to live without suffering, she says, is to begin to develop some curiosity about\u00a0our pain and slow down and relax into it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not suggesting that we should\u00a0endure pain and just breathe and that will take care of it. Sometimes we need\u00a0professional help, but whether it\u2019s emotional or physical, the same philosophy\u00a0is true. Scaring ourselves is a reaction instead of a response. We have the
tendency to run away from pain, but although it may feel counter intuitive, we\u00a0need to relax into it. I\u2019ve noticed that when I\u2019m stressed and suffering, when\u00a0I tighten against it, my shoulder throbs. When I slow down my breath and stay
present, it relaxes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt isn’t what happens to us that\u00a0causes us to suffer,\u201d Ms. Chodron says. \u201cIt’s what we say to ourselves about\u00a0what is happening.\u201d I like to remind myself that if I try to transcend\u00a0pettiness, to stop trying to make everything turn out on my own terms, I can\u00a0stay instead of running away, I can soften instead of grasping, and I can find\u00a0a better way to be in this life.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe difference\u00a0between pain and suffering is the difference between freedom and bondage.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – – – Stephen Levine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is\u00a0optional. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – – – The Dalai Lama When I toured through Europe with\u00a0my ballet company back in the late sixties, we often had to perform on a \u201craked\u00a0stage.\u201d There are lots of them in the older theaters, deliberately built on an\u00a0angle, low in the front and sloping upwards toward the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2402,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401\/revisions\/2402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}