Embracing Pain | Brother Phap Linh (Mindfulness & Science)

The Earth,

sky,

space,

stars ...

Is it just this narrative self that I have constructed
with a name, and an identity ...

and you know a birth certificate, and qualifications,
and personal life history?

Or is it more?

What does that look like, that ability to embrace?

Sometimes we have the capacity naturally.

And that's wonderful.

But what do you do if you don't?
If on that day, and that moment, it feels like

"This is too much. I can't embrace this.

"This suffering is too much for me to handle.

"It's too painful. I can't deal with it.
I just want to cover it up."

Then we need help.

We need to know how to ...

find ...

the ... that capacity ...

that capacity to embrace the difficulty.

And ...

one way which I really invite you to try
is to expand your frame of reference.

So it's true that when an uncomfortable feeling
is present,

if it's just me that has to hold it,
that has to deal with it,

it may well be too much.

I may well be unable to deal with it.

But what if I'm not just this?

What if instead I am ... this.

The Earth,

sky,

space,

stars.

Then I have some capacity.

And that is not just a ...
an act of wishful thinking or imagination.

That's actually the truth.
That is what we are.

But we need to train ourselves
in order to make that a reflex

as we have the reflex
when we suffer of contracting.

This is very, very normal when we feel
some difficulties and pain, we contract.

Around it we make ourselves smaller
and we feel that the pain is everything that we are.

It occupies our whole being.
And it is, of course, overwhelming.

So we need to establish some space around it.

The first thing we can do is actually
to establish that space within our own body.

To find that, maybe this pain and this discomfort
that I feel

actually doesn't occupy the whole of me.

A little bit of the spirit of investigation, of curiosity,
to start to notice,

"Ah, OK, what about my fingertips?
What about my hands?

"Are they feeling this overwhelming, noisier and...
sense of despair?

Not really. Feel quite nice.

It's a real thing.

There's a difference between
maybe what we feel here

and what we feel in our hands,
in our feet, in our face.

So we expand this sphere of our awareness,
of our mindfulness.

To start to include more in the field
of our awareness. And we can go further.

We know, intellectually, we know, right,
that we are vast in time and space.

Right? Intellectually you know that you are
the continuation of your ancestors.

All of your ancestors in some sense are present
with you, now, in you, in every cell of your body.

But there's a big difference between
that intellectual understanding

and a lived experience of that
as a place of refuge, as a place of strength.

So it's something that we need to cultivate.

You can't just turn it on all of a sudden
and that's that.

You know, of course, you may have a kind of
breakthrough experience in touching the earth

and then suddenly you see it.
You feel it in your whole body, and it's amazing.

But then you need to cultivate that.
You need to make it a habit,

to invoke the strength and the stability,
the security of our entire lineage.

And not just blood, but our spiritual lineage.

Our friends.

And the whole of the history of evolution.

The truth is that we are survivors.

We're not weak. We are strong.

Every single one of us is the product of
an unbroken chain of survivors.

Every single one of our ancestors lived

to the moment of reproduction, at least.

Otherwise, we wouldn't be here. So they
survived everything that history threw at them.

That's amazing. 'Cause so many didn't.

We have all of that strength in us. Not just
our human ancestors but going back further.

All the way back.

That's in the dimension of time, but also
in the dimension of space, now, in this moment.

We know intellectually that we cannot live ...

Part of our life is the forest, they're our lungs.

Part of our life is the sun.

If the sun were to vanish in an instance, how long
would life survive on this planet?

You would get very cold, very quickly.
And very dark.

Well, we can burn all the oil reserves and
maybe survive a little bit,

hurdle around whatever we could burn,
but it would not last very long.

The sun is part of our body.

The oceans, the forest, the air, the insects,
the fungi, all the bacteria.

We inter-are, we're in this
constant relationship of exchange.

And if we can take that from being just something
that we get intellectually, sure,

to being a lived awareness, something that
you can actually feel an experience,

then our ability to hold and
to embrace pain changes.

It makes a real difference.
And I invite you to experiment with this,

to actually try the next time
you have to face a difficult emotion.

And I hope that is not soon but you'll never know.

Next time it happens,

try to remember,

"Who is holding this feeling?

"Is it just me?

"Is it just this narrative self that I have constructed
with a name, and an identity, and a birth certificate,

and qualifications, and personal life history?
Or is it more?

Feel the Earth under your feet.

Is the Earth small?

No.

It's vast. And it's part of you.

You are the Earth. The Earth is you.
It's not outside of you.

And it dramatically changes your ability
to hold the discomfort, the pain.

It's something to experiment with.

You sit there. It feels unbearable.
But then you remember,

"Ah, I'm not just this.

"What if I allow the trees, the sky, the sunlight,
the grass, the earth under me, the air ...

to be part of this embracing?"

And it actually is. It's not your imagination.
This is actually what is happening.

But we need to let it in.