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pain
I have a friend who is in constant physical pain. I would like to recommend a Buddhist practise to him in the hope that he might better cope understand his suffering. thanks in advance!
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There are actually many buddhist teachers that suffer from chronic pain. Darlene Cohen is one of them. I personally haven't read much of her website, but it has a lot of articles about it. (link above)
Living with pain, not with suffering - Bhikkhu Bodhi also writes this out of personal experience, you might check it out.
I know there are people in dire situations. The pain most people are used to is temporary and mild. But it can reach levels where you can't think of anything else and if given enough time you start thinking about killing yourself, its horrible. There are support groups for this though, you might want to check it out.
“An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature.
But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces.
A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him.
But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful.
If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering.
Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death.
Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.”
"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
"Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!"
"We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering."
"Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment."
"When we are no longer able to change a situation - just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer - we are challenged to change ourselves. "
I think there are no simple answers other than complete acceptance of the fact that physical pain is a fact of life and only by changing one's attitude towards it can there be some measure of relief.
With Metta
There are no short cuts, either way.............