Fear of pain. Think of the Unpleasant Physical Sensations technique that we teach. That is one way to work with a fear of pain. Have you worked with it? Have you worked with the techniques that we give? I once got a note on day 5 of a retreat from a student who had done 10 retreats. They wrote in the note, "Steve, I have heard that talk about working with pain 10 times now, I guess maybe I should try it." They had never tried it. Working with this technique helps us work with pain, doesn't it? If we are able to be more comfortable with pain, we loose our fear of pain. This person was afraid, they had fear of even getting close to pain so they had never even tried this technique, a technique that could help them get over their fear. So which is the biggest problem, is it actually the pain which is the bigger problem, or is it the fear of the pain that is the bigger problem? It is the fear of the pain. So we need to work more with the pain itself, to start getting used to the pain. To push our limits a little bit at a time. I never tell people to sit for 5 hours straight, but rather a little bit at the time, a little bit at the time and gradually you will get over the fear of pain.
Formal practice is a wonderful place to practice. You can sit there and you might have some pain, but you know that it is what we call a Meditation Pain, it is not real, and if you take you move your posture, it goes away. You have to tell yourself it is not real, that it does go away. You don't only have to do it, you also have to tell yourself, to remind yourself. Then you can say, well, ok, if it is not real, then why don't I sit with it for the next two minutes. Why don't I sit for an extra three minutes. Why don't I see what it is, why don't I investigate it, why don't I see that it is just a kind of vibration, it is just movement, it is this big, it is that big, it is hot, it is cold. Why don't I get interested in this experience? If I take my leg away it is just going to disappear anyhow. Let me get interested in it, let me work with it.
The more you work with meditation pains then the more it will help you with normal everyday pain. These first two fingers on my hand, they look fine now but the tips of them were cut off once, and it was 4 hours before I got a needle to get rid of the pain. It was 4 hours. I was a meditator then and I used techniques very similar to those we teach here. I used the unpleasant physical sensation technique. When I got tired of that, I would switch over and do the breathing, trying to kind of escape it by focusing in on the breathing. When I became tired of that I would switch again and do some Compassion/Lovingkindness for those people who have many more difficulties than just two cut off fingers, I can live without my fingers. Thinking of other people with more pain than me is similar to the D/D method that we teach. I rotated these 3 meditation techniques for 4 hours while my heart was throbbing, and if you didn't know, if you ever cut off your fingers like this, the heart hurts, there is pain in the heart as well, so there is a lot of discomfort. I knew it was not dangerous, "it is only my fingers", however the pain was there, but the techniques worked. Even when we got to the hospital, which was after about two hours, the nurse said, "Sorry, the doctor is in an emergency." I said, "Ok, that person is obviously worse off than me", so I dealt with the pains some more, and some more and it was a total of four hours.
So the techniques that we teach you here can help you to work with your fear of pain. Now, there is a famous saying, "The only thing to fear is fear itself." Fear gets in the way of clear thinking, it definitely gets in the way of clear thinking. Even if you walk out the door and you see a tiger right outside the door, growling, all you have to do is shut the door, and go back inside, you will be safe, right? So you actually don't have to get afraid in those moments. There are a lot of times in life when people actually don't have to get afraid, if they are able to note clearly, "seeing, seeing, hearing, hearing, etc."
I was also bitten by a snake years ago. I had no idea whether it was a poisonous snake or not, I had already learned from a snake expert that the majority of people who die from snake bites do not die from the poison. Interesting? They actually die from a heart attack, they scare themselves to death. You have probably heard this saying, "they scared themselves to death". The majority of people dying from snakebites die from a heart attack, scaring themselves to death. So when I got bitten I was very aware of this, I treated the leg properly, it was an hour before they got a vehicle for me, and took me to the hospital. While it was happening the poison moved up the leg, I got bitten in the foot, the poison moved up my leg, I could feel it moving. It seemed like I could actually feel the blood cells attacking the poison. I could feel the poison moving, and the pain getting worse and worse as the poison moved up my leg. So I could understand how people could definitely freak out and die of a heart attack. If we work with unpleasant physical sensations, this will help us to be calmer and to let go of the fear.