I think Marvin Minsky had it right in his book The Emotion Machine (2006):
From Chapter III. From Pain to Suffering
>Why does the sensation called pain sometimes lead to what we call suffering? How could such a simple event distort all your other thoughts so much? This chapter proposes a theory of this: if a pain is intense and persistent enough, it will stir up a certain set of resources, and then these, in turn, arouse some more. Then, if this process continues to grow, your mind becomes a victim of the kind of spreading, large-scale “cascade” that overcomes the rest of the mind, as we depicted in §1-7:
Then he quotes Daniel Dennett:
> “If you can make yourself study your pains (even quite intense pains) you will find, as it were, no room left to mind them: (they stop hurting). However studying a pain (e.g., a headache) gets boring pretty fast, and as soon as you stop studying them, they come back and hurt, which, oddly enough, is sometimes less boring than being bored by them and so, to some degree, preferable."
Hah. There's definitely pain out there that can't be studied to oblivion. Anyone so pompous hasn't experienced, for example, a cluster headache.
Or passed a kidney stone, or had a thrombosed hemorrhoid, or been tortured. I think there’s a difference between breathing through lower back pain, and trying to contextualize someone threading a live wire up your urethra to make you talk. Even if you’re exceptionally good with pain, most people are going to have trouble with damage too. If you start cutting off someone’s fingers, they’re going to lose their zen in a hurry.
But hey, maybe we’re wrong, but to people who think I’d say... go to a burn unit and see if you can make a difference where nothing short of a medically induced coma can. There’s a Nobel prize with your name on it if you succeed.
There was the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who self-immolated in public. He appeared to remain calm throughout. Searching for "the burning monk 1963" will turn up images and videos, though I won't link to them here.
XKCD 846: "It's hard to imagine the pain of a deeply infected dental nerve. To get an idea, put your hands in a bowl full of ice cubes, and hold them there for 90 seconds."
Here Randall is using this example as one of the worst pains in the world, while others submerge themselves in ice baths voluntarily for health and enjoyment (eg. Wim Hof the ice man)
There is something about facing an unpleasant stimulus (to put it lightly) voluntarily that changes the neurology, and the subjective experience of it.
There’s also something to be said about the brevity of pain, even if the end is death. As incredible as thst monk’s composure was, hismnerves would have been dead within a short time, and he would have followed in a minute or two. Still an amazing thing to maintain himself in the face of that, butmits different than the same or worse pain for hours, days, or weeks. Being burned hurts, but anyone who has been badly burned can tell you it hurts so much more after the acute injury. Sticking your hand in ice really does hurt, but you can stop it anytime you want, and while it hurts it’s in an extremity. As someone who’s done that, and had an infected dental nerve can attest, it hardly compares. This may sound off but the fact that the pain is in your head makes it somehow worse, more inescapable and debilitating.
I never felt so much relief as I did when the endodontist gave me novicaine, and a large bolus in your palette isn’t pleasant either. Still it was like a cool breeze of relief next to that tooth. People are always scared of root canals, but the truth is that if you need one, it’s actually nothing at all next to the pain that brought you there.
I think it helps to remember that they occur as cluster headaches. It’s one thing to have a terrible pain that ends within the day. It’s quite another to have the same exact pain with maximum intensity “pounce” on you every day for weeks, months, years.
It's interesting that I'm reading a book written by a person who suffered from cluster headache. It's a book about mindfulness in which he suggests to treat your pain as a message and listen to that message, that is, study the pain. He no longer has this headache.
Yeah, I am reading all these posts saying "if you just focus on the pain, it'll stop being a problem", with most examples being "my leg is sore", and wonder how much time the people have actually spent trying to imagine high pain.
Granted I think mindful pain management is a thing, especially chronic pain which I've had forever. But I've certainly felt acute pain far beyond the ability of my higher faculties to contend with...
Yeah, I won't disagree that things can be managed given certain conditions. There are definitely better and worse ways of greeting pain for the average person.
But I'd never say it as an absolute and I think that's incredibly dangerous and the "suffering is an optional thing we invent in our heads" all over this thread is making me cringe.
It reminds me of a quote by Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius: “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
I think so, too (even though I haven't read it). That jibes with my own experiences in meditating. Part of the process is going through a quick scan of your body and just noticing how your different parts feel: "huh, there's tenseness in my jaw", "there's a headache", "there's soreness in my leg" etc. It's amazing how quickly you can turn that from "my head hurts" to "there's pain in my head", which is a subtle but important distinction. You can't choose not to experience the pain sensation, but up to a point you can decide to simply note it and not react to it as pain.
I also think that un-explained pain feels worse to one's mind. The fact that you used part of your brain to sense it changes that. I very often turn pain into a 'what are you telling me?', as if it was a form of communication. Half the time, the emotional grief vanishes.
I've found that to be true for me, too. "I feel pain in my mouth. Oh, right: that's where the dentist gave me a shot. That's reasonable, then." It doesn't reduce the pain sensation, but it definitely reduces my emotional response to it. I wouldn't have believed that those were separable, but they really are.
For historical reasons, I get very tense when the vehicle I'm in goes fast around curves in the road. Last week, I started to get the tell-tale panicky sensation as my bus was flying through a big bend in the highway. I thought, "huh, I'm experiencing a stress response, aren't I?" Just being consciously aware of that immediately and drastically decreased the anxiety I was feeling.
There is a chapter in the book The Contractor by Raymond Davis, a former Special Forces soldier (allegedly) turned CIA contractor (formerly State Department) that talks about how to leave a situation in your mind when Raymond was in near-torturous conditions in a Pakistani prison. I wouldn't do it justice trying to recall it, but it's similar. You focus on the situation, understand it, then you kinda "walk away" in your mind to a place you want to go.
I thought the book was much better than the reviews online made it out to be; though it is Fair Game's inferior.
Is that true if your being tortured by someone other than yourself? I've seen the picture of the monk who set himself on fire while meditating in protest.
I wonder if suffering is only optional if you inflict it on yourself.
At the very least, you could damage someone's brain faculties to the point that they can no longer philosophize their way out of suffering. And that is likely unnecessary, some drugs should suffice.
"Suffering is optional" is a concept that dies immediately if you apply even a tiny amount of creativity to the question. It also fails if applied to animals.
It's really only available to people in a specific range of situations, and often it's stated not because it's actually true, but because it makes people feel powerful in situations where they're rather powerless. Which is mostly the point of stoicism anyway, as it is a philosophy developed during a time when people felt that they couldn't change anything about the world.
Of course, this means it's a poor philosophy to follow if your interest is in things improving, and not in just you personally not caring about them, something that many people already accomplish all too well...
There are quite a lot of things which people transmit as true beliefs, which we all know are false. We tell people that not only love exists, but true love, and justice, and objective truth, and honor. No one has ever touched or measured an atom of love -- but we all need to feel loved, and acting like love or truth or honor don't exist leads to atrocities. Funny old world, ain't it?
It’s not about what I believe. It’s that your original comment made it seem that everyone “knows” these things are false, which is not true (not even loosely).
You're making a purely semantic argument, concerning some very common words, which I actually consider to be somewhat rude. It doesn't seem to be the case that you did not understand the intended meaning, but rather that you are deliberately choosing misconstrusion. If you don't think that there is a well-understood sense by which "abstract" means "not real", then that sounds like an argument that a dictionary or encyclopedia would be better-qualified to answer than myself.
The distinction between "abstract" and "measurable" is not ambiguous. "Real" in this context (and most others) means "empirically observable", as in, you and I are able to make an observation or measurement and arrive at similar values. Abstract concepts are by definition not empirically observable.
Semantic arguments are a complete and utter waste of time.
There is no one true definition of “real” until you bring in your accessory definition of “empirically obserble”. Semantic arguments are typically a waste of time, and by not being clear about your definition and berating everyone for not being in your head already, you are creating one.
Also, there are plenty of “abstract concepts” which are not empirically observable but which most people would agree should be considered “real” in some measure. If you require empirical observability for something to be real, you end up like Descartes, believing only in your own consciousness (and God for some reason). While there’s some wisdom in this viewpoint, there are more practically useful definitions of reality.
Also also, it’s worth pointing out that the position you’re arguing for is called empiricism, and it is one of many theories of what comprises reality. You are participating in an argument by stating that your position is obviously correct and beyond reproach.
You can’t just shut down a semantic argument by taking a position, asserting its correctness, and refusing to acknowledge other views, as a premise of your broader argument.
The normal way out of a semantic argument is to just acknowledge the different definitions people are bringing and moving on with that in mind, but you’re not willing to do that. You are the one instigating the semantic argument here.
Bullshit. I said exactly what I intended to say; the distinction between empirical observation and other forms of truth was pretty much the entire point. I mean, you did actually read what I wrote, right?
Well, if this is Philosophy 201, then clearly everything is abstract, and something something Plato's cave. However, the default position is that (surprise!) objective reality exists. Things that are observable and measurable are not abstract. Those things around you that you can perceive with your senses are not abstract. For a more in-depth perspective, you could take a look at the Wikipedia pages for: empiricism, epistemology, philosophy of science. Also, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy should have a reasonably topical article about Rationalism vs. Empiricism.
For an interesting perspective on this topic, I'd recommend "Man's Search for Meaning", by Victor Frankl.
Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz, and one of his points (as I understand it) is that humans deeply desire to know that their life is meaningful, and even if another person is torturing you, you can find meaning by maintaining your human dignity in the face of the evil around you.
The stories in the book are heartbreaking, but there is a clear sense that it's possible to find something even when it seems like there's nothing. I guess he would say: perhaps you can't always find peace, but you can find meaning.
It’s easy to make this argument: Jewish people were in a place where their experience was entirely existential, thus anything is survivable simply because the other option is death (and so it was for their children and their friends).
It’s an absolutely different story when you are being wrongfully interrogated in the USSR and thus giving up simply implies a life in prison. And the other option is another day of torture.
People do tend to have an easier time enduring things they inflict on themselves than things inflicted on them by others, but perhaps you can trick this mechanism by accepting what is inflicted onto you by others.
I can only speak to my experience. Mindfulness meditation gave me more capability to decouple pain from suffering, regardless of how the pain is inflicted. Your mileage may vary.
It's often phrased in terms of the "first arrow" (pain) and the "second arrow" (suffering in reaction to the pain): the second arrow is optional and self-inflicted.
In his book "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running", Murakami does not claim it as his own. I do think it captures both running and meditation well.
Just curious what the difference is? Suffering is your reaction to the pain? Like if you're stoic you acknowledge the pain but continue on with out suffering?
Imagine you wake up and your back is sore. Getting out of bed is a struggle, everything aches and you must move slowly.
Without other knowledge, you may get worried, anxious, feel distressed.
If you remember you had a workout yesterday, you may actually enjoy the feeling. It reminds you of the effort you put in, the future progress you’ll make as muscles are repaired.
I like that example, but it breaks down. I have experienced plenty of pain in the muscles of my back in the form of both delayed onset muscle soreness that follows a good workout and the spasms of pain associated with a torn muscle. The former is pleasant. The latter is not.
I have no idea how pain receptors actually work or if there were different pain receptors firing. All I know is that I have experienced muscle soreness after workouts and I know I can ignore it. The first time I tore a muscle in my back and was carried to the hospital for a diagnosis, I experienced a new level of pain. (That was before my first kidney stone, which set the bar for me.)
I think the suffering is the result of your desire for things to be different than what they are. It's natural to feel like you want a headache to go away, but it seems to me that the more I accept that this is just the way it is right now, the more I embrace the pain and accept it as a part of me, the less power it has over me. And conversely the more I try to push it away like it's some kind of monster that's torturing me the more it becomes one. I have actually had that experience while meditating with a headache. Fully embracing and identifying with the pain makes it hurt less. It's a weird paradox because you can't start by thinking "I want this pain to go away so I'm going to embrace it". That doesn't work. You have to start with the attitude of "I'm going to be fully present for this moment, whatever it is". That is the path that leads out of suffering.
Suffering is not a desire that humans invent. It's hard-coded into every evolved creature so that the creature then goes on to do things to avoid said suffering. The source of these things that the creature is wanting is distinctly non-human.
There was no council of people who have decided that moving animals need to consume energy in the form of food, and that they would feel pain if they do not consume enough of this energy in time. Yet here it is, and every creature is enslaved by it.
Adult, well-read humans blessed with mental faculties are at times able to cheat the mental pathway and come up with ways to not have it show up at the forefront, but there's nothing self-inflicted about suffering, and assigning quasi-religious themes to this process is not doing us any favors.
> It's hard-coded into every evolved creature so that the creature then goes on to do things to avoid said suffering.
I like the theory that many emotions, especially negative ones, exist to spur us to some type of action.
Anger means we need a way to resolve a conflict. Fear means we need to take steps to protect ourselves. Regret means we need some introspection to discover how we should do things differently in the future. Revulsion means we need to avoid something. (This applies in less abstract, more visceral ways too. Hunger means we need to eat. Physical pain means we are reaching our physical limits.)
Anyway, a lot of suffering comes about because we don't take any action. When the situation continues to exist, the negative emotion continues to exist.
This isn't to say we should just all act rashly to get rid of our negative feelings. Obviously the right action is important. But sometimes just getting started is enough to help feel better. And if you've already done what you could or should have, sometimes it helps to realize that or remind yourself of it.
My framework on this matter is much more... negative. I perceive these emotions more as a means of control, a form of slavery, and only a helpful guidance towards the original end. Kind of like you could give a slave some ways of foraging for food and some tools to fend off wild animals, but ultimately only so that the slave would build the pyramid better or faster, and not for the benefit of the slave.
This means that the suffering is not always aligned. This is very not obvious since our association of "feels bad == bad" and "feels good == good" is very strong since it's so obviously hardcoded. But it's not hardcoded for your benefit, it's there for building the pyramid, remember that.
A lot of it is quite obvious in the issue of short term vs long term gratification, but there are more complex interactions. People can drown in guilt when something bad was done to them, and a person may be very happy from a sexual encounter, unable to see the causal link between it and the alimony payments they'll soon be making. Reason is necessary, emotions are a blunt instrument. Intuition is better than raw emotions, but requires calibration. Emotion and intuition can be overwritten, to some extent, which is what most of this thread is about.
But quite often, the incentives do align, as we're one of the more advanced and successful species out there, which means we're less likely to be afflicted with the kinds of sufferings and pleasures that lead to a loss of power (i.e., musth in elephants).
Suffering is a form of indulgence. The pain can exist and you can be fully aware of it, but if you don't indulge in it there will be no suffering. It just is. One of the components of this is desire for an alternative. This combined with reobservation of the pain leads to a cycle (indulgence) of the mind - the essence of suffering.
They might not have the ability to ignore things quite as well as a human can, but the same concept applies. Many dogs will ignore their own pain to help another in need. Not indulging in pain takes a discipline of mind that most animals are incapable of in most situations.
The concept of indulgence implies that indulging agencies are at fault for their suffering, and indulging is a free decision. Which is why that term was used, and why I object to its use. How does it make sense to use this term for an animal?
Me deciding to drink alcohol would be indulging. I know the consequences but I do it anyway. In this sense, the side effects of drinking alcohol would then be caused by me.
But if I wake up one day with a huge cluster headache, why am I considered indulging in it? It makes no sense. I didn't ask for the headache, it showed up on its own. Rather, I may try to resist the headache, but I'm certainly not "yielding to a pleasurable experience", more like I am being attacked and I may attempt a skill check, or I am drowning in an ocean and trying to swim; for neither of these is the term "indulge" appropriate.
And that's the core difference. The original poster used terms like "indulge" and "desire for alternative" to imply that suffering is generated, or manufactured, by humans, that it's a fake thing that doesn't have to exist. My example of animals clearly shows that this is not the case, as most animals do not have enough mental faculties to generate such things in the first place, yet we do not kid ourselves that animals do not suffer.
Suffering is primary. Suffering comes first. "We let suffering happen to us" makes about as much sense as saying a victim is letting themselves get beaten by someone bigger. It's technically true, but not in any kind of useful sense, and the history of those kinds of statements is horrible.
> Many dogs will ignore their own pain to help another in need.
Examples like this are not useful here, because they are not situations of high control. The dog is not ignoring the pain, the dog is, rather, feeling something else that took priority. A human can similarly ignore lots of pain if they are high on adrenaline, but it is not because the human is controlling the situation and actively not "indulging" in pain, but that their body is not interested in supplying pain right the moment. But when the body goes back to being interested in supplying pain, it will come.
Suffering is built in but requires attention. By completely focusing attention on other things, or even on the raw pain itself, the suffering doesn’t have a chance to tell you its own story about the pain.
Suffering: My head hurts. It's not going away. Maybe this means something is wrong with me. Maybe it means I have some kind of disease or disorder. What if there's something wrong with my brain, like a brain tumor or a blood clot? What if I suddenly die next week? etc. etc.
Pain: My head hurts, but that's not going to stop me from having an awesome day.
Suffering: I have a headache, this sucks, let me avoid things that might be fun even with a headache.
Perhaps a better example is the stoicism, Steve Prefontaine famously won an Olympic qualifier with the stitches on his toe ripping; "Yes, my toe hurts, but I want to win, I can fix my toe after I finish."
Suffering is a conscious decision, pain is triggered by an outside stimuli. Just like you can feel mad without punching a wall. Punching a wall would be an extreme example of somebody with zero self-control that reacts rather than act. It's normal to have pain or feel mad, it's not 'mindful' to react with the first impulse you get.
it might be more accurate to describe suffering as an optional subconscious process. You suffer by default, but you can choose to not suffer with the right amount of mindfulness. As for the cat, again, the cat might not have the mental fortitude to set aside the suffering.
Interesting argument, with a broken premise. There's still debate on what level of consciousness animals have [0]. Is a cat conscious enough to predict that tomorrow it will have less food and save some for tomorrow to avoid feeling that hunger? Does a human have that degree of consciousness to do exactly that? Can a human differentiate itself from an animal by deciding to act instead of reacting like I proposed? Isn't that the one of the key differences between humans and animals?
You know that animals are known to eat their own young [1]? Do you think its a conscious decision? Or they are just on auto-mode like a person that is less mindful is?
My premise is that an animal in my care, if left hungry, will suffer, just like I would suffer. The cat's degree of consciousness, or whether or not it belongs to a species that eats its young, is not relevant to that premise. If you think that is a broken premise, I don't know what to tell you, but you might perhaps really enjoy reading Hume.
I was talking about suffering, pain and choice IN humans, you brought animals into the equation. It's a comment on HN so sorry for not specifying that the article and my comment were regarding humans only. Bringing animals in was the broken premise. If it is your responsibility to feed the cat, then yes the cat will suffer. I don't even understand your point, where does the cat get a choice to do anything at all? But that is also nonsensical since cats can't do anything about it but react which was my point to begin with.
I am attempting to reject an absolute statement that I find dangerous by showing a very basic and boring counterexample. If suffering is a conscious decision, it is such in all cases where suffering occurs, and suffering occurs in animals.
"Suffering in humans" is not concrete. You would need to create a distinction between "suffering in humans" and "suffering in animals" and explain where it differs and what is special about it and I don't see any such definition, so I am going to go with "suffering in general".
Many people here are talking about physical pain, which animals can also suffer from, so it doesn't seem obvious to me that your definition of "suffering" would be some kind of a special definition that shares nothing with suffering in animals.
You are likely trying to say some kind of a thing where humans are special and have special mental controls and so when a human feels pain they have more means of control about it than an animal can. This is all well and good but then we get into issues like children or people with limited cognitive capacity. The line between human and animal quickly becomes thin and we're back to square one, the square where saying that suffering is a choice is egregiously wrong and the statement must be qualified.
It seems to me that you're trying to move some goalposts around.
Ok next time I will write a research paper and post it here as a comment defining cat and human suffering and then after that you will ask but what about suffering in mollusks: "Suffering in humans and cats is not concrete!". I know that HN attracts a crowd that likes to cherry-pick any sentence and treat it as a line of code just to put out a contrarian point of view but come on. Moving goalposts? Nobody mentioned animals you were the one that moved the goalpost.
To be able to be mindful you need consciousness first, to have that you have to be a human. Sorry, either don't move the goalpost and bring animals in, or prove that animals are capable of managing their stimuli with mindfulness.
I'll break it down to you. You receive an input (emotion) and with mindfulness you realize that you ('you' the human, not 'you' the cat) do have a say on how to act based on it. That is all.
> If suffering is a conscious decision, it is such in all cases where suffering occurs
This is the weak point in your argument.
If I have a flat tire, I can get it fixed. I didn’t consciously choose to get a flat tire. But if I don’t fix it, the next day I will have a flat tire I consciously
chose to have.
The way I see it plenty people s seem to live in what The Bhagavad Gita (a book on yoga and consciousness) describes as 'animal nature', in that they do not necessarily know that they're thinking and that they are constantly moved by the thought stream. They are very reactionary to stimuli.
You may not be able to choose the content of your thoughts exactly, but you may be able to change how they work on you.
I do not know how to scientifically quantify or test this but it is a reported by scores of people and can be understood experientially.
Unhappiness comes from reality not meeting expectations. Have no expectations and always be happy. Worrying about events outside of your control is pointless. Everyone needs some stoicism in their lives. Indifference is a power
That's easy to say, and very difficult for people in certain circumstances. With chronic illness and chronic pain, life can be very, very unbearable. We do have a built-in expectation of being able to, for instance, exist without being brought back to the world of pain every 3-5 minutes at random intervals. Not every expectation is willed into existence.
Agree that in situations where you're experiencing chronic pain is much difficult but having a stoic mindset can reduce the domino effects of pain. Anxiety is the difference between reality and expectations, and worrying about whether it's going to get worse or last forever is only going to make it worse. A stoic realizes that physical pain is sensory based and this pain is an automatic response from the body. The pain they bear with but don't react negatively and pessimistic about possible outcomes imagined by the mind. Celebrating the few moments of feeling no pain is way more effective than stressing over all the time when it does hurt. Easier said than done of course
As a chronic migraine sufferer, I do have an ability to compartmentalize the pain, but only to an extent. There are also very hard constraints on my comfort. If I’m in pain there are any number of things that a pain free person could on average do that would spike the pain above the “freak out” point.
Stoicism is definitely something I practice, and migraines easily surpass that. Some I get are known as “suicide migraines”. In short, the monks pain ended with his life within moments, but chronic pain by definition lasts longer.
Anecdata, but I have a condition that led to a childhood and young adulthood of chronic pain. I noticed my way of handling pain I am aware is going to happen is vastly different to other scenarios. If I know it's going to happen, I feel it but feel no need to react. It just happens, and I can keep thinking and operating as if nothing is going wrong. But I still react to unexpected bumps even if they don't actually hurt that much (or at all).
I just thought it was nifty that my body can tell the difference and is happy to bypass the reactive part of pain when it wouldn't help.
I've definitely felt this. I'm more 'mindful' as the article says.. in the sense that I can step outside my emotions and control them.
As in, if I'm getting angry, I can step outside the anger and evaluate whether it's necessary or helpful at the moment or not. If it isn't, I stop it. Otherwise, I let the anger creep into my voice to make the other person more receptive to the urgency of the situation.
It works similarly for other emotions: like, fear, shame, jealousy, frustration or even sadness... which is why I don't often cry at funerals.
I don't know if that makes me a sociopath or not, but it definitely makes me more rational.
That said, I also seem to feel a lot less pain than my wife who tends to panic easier. If I stub my toe, cut my finger or even accidentally grab a falling soldering iron from the wrong end, I can disassociate from the pain, or at least give it a back seat. The hand is mine, but the pain feels like someone else's.
As such, I get a lot more cuts and bruises than my wife. I've even had instances where I had bleeding cuts on my hand that I kept thinking were itches.. I kept confusing the blood for mysterious coppery liquid oozing out of the device I was repairing. Turns out I'd nicked my fingers prying it open.. explained how the liquid kept coming back after I wiped it.
You've taken someone's mastery of a life skill we expect of all adults (emotional self-control) and are pointing to the closest pathological condition you can find even though it's mile and miles away from what the parent poster describes.
If I understand correctly, they say that meditation deactivates default mode and this has a positive impact on pain tolerance. Interestingly, there is lots of discussion on the importance and value of default mode for creativity and other things. Are these at odds or have I misunderstood?
Maybe only tangentially related, but Michael Pollan's recent book about psychedelics "How To Change Your Mind" goes in-depth on this. There's something about being able to quiet the "default mode network" that lends the mind to transcendental/creative thought. The same effect can be achieved through meditation or breathwork.
I think it's more to do with removing the emotional rumination aspect of the default mode network, which is associated with anxiety, depression and pain.
The concept of being more pain-free is dangerous to take at face value. Being 'pain-free' through mindfulness comes from a deep understanding of any given pain, which comes from feeling it fully and coming to terms with that feeling. Which, is itself very painful.
I've been listening to his Guided Mindfulness Meditations a few times a week. The body scan has been a phenomenal way of for me to relax into the difficult emotions and feelings I sometimes experience. Highly recommended.
Don’t lie down while meditating and don’t meditate in your bedroom. Also try not to have your head resting on anything while meditating. Lastly, apparently with certain kinds of meditation if you do fall asleep that’s ok too - it’s your body ridding itself of fatigue - you probably need more sleep :)
Pain is also linked to fear, so more mindfulness, less fear and less pain. Some people, while physically training can inflict extreme pains on their bodies, but without any fear whatsoever, so they're ok, even enjoying it for some, "working hard!"
I don't know how much I really believe this. Could this be a case of false correlation, as opposed to causation? Most medical advice for dealing with pain tells you to distract yourself from the pain, and certainly not to focus on it. Whereas mindfulness exhorts us to focus on our immediate circumstances, and not distract ourselves with more abstract thoughts. These 2 approaches to pain-management seem very contradictory.
Didn't realize that neuroscience has investigated mindfulness directly like this. Very cool. I've long found that practice useful, to focus as directly on pain as I can; it becomes manageable, even sort of interesting in a way. The alternatives, like attempting to escape via addictions / distractions, don't usually turn out well.
I've done more Yoga than most and suffered from chronic pain after a climbing accident for a long time. The reaction to pain makes a big difference, and it's very difficult to react in a sane way when your ego is left running the show while you're out time traveling.
In certain practices pain is treated as a message and your best response is to attentively listen to it, without judgement and even without a desire to end it. This, naturally, changes the way one experiences pain.
They may experience the same intensity of physical pain, but _feel_ less of it, which makes sense as mindfulness meditation trains one to emotionally dissociate from anything painful (affectively or physically).
So if the suffering of others bothers us, all we need to do is remind ourselves it is their fault they are letting the pain get to them, and go on about our business. Hurrah!
> "Mindfulness is related to being aware of the present moment without too much emotional reaction or judgment," said the study's lead author, Fadel Zeidan
I've always thought of the word "mindfulness" as one of those vague, new-age nonsense terms, like "psionic body energy" and "ethereal consciousness". Even given the above quoted definition, I still have no idea what it means. Does anyone know what is an example of mindfulness, or an example of the opposite? I don't know anyone, besides maybe Alzheimer's sufferers, who is actually unaware of the present time.
EDIT: Thanks everyone for the many replies. I think the variety of different answers speaks volumes about this topic.
> I don’t know anyone […] who is actually unaware of the present time.
That’s pretty superficial. People are seldom aware of now. We are thinking of how a meeting went in the past, or what we’ll make for dinner, or how we’ll handle an upcoming conflict, or whether a decision we made in the past was the right one. We aren’t even in our physical location: we think about wanting to go out on a walk, to be back on the beach, to rest in bed, to not have to suffer through a seminar.
The idea here is to be _present_ in the moment, in this place, because that’s all there is: everything else is a delusion. Being present also means appropriate response: a pond ripples precisely as much as it should when a stone is thrown in: not too much, not too little. Too often we are carried too and fro by our thoughts; they drive us, we respond automatically, being pushed from one thought to the next. Mindfulness is being able to observe these thoughts as they pass by and realizing how to respond appropriately, as we choose; being truly alive and not a mindless automaton responding to things that “happen” to us. There really isn’t any new age or spiritual component here if you wish.
I have struggled with the term "Mindfulness" myself for exact same reasons. However, through some readings and discussion, I came to think of it as "Self focus".
Random examples that worked to enhance my understanding:
- Meditation, which typically starts/involves training yourself to focus on something to exclusion of external distractions; frequently it starts with body focus - think of your breathing, think of your body parts. While I still suck at it, I do see the value in continuing the effort of being able to concentrate and focus on what I choose to,and not be continually a slave to random external (and internal!) inputs
- As a completely different example, my way of dealing with many difficult items was to "push them out of my mind". But that never really works for a long time. Being mindful of them to me means diving deep into the anxieties and issues, facing them and through them, and typically they become less scary afterwards.
- Related to both, being mindful of own body is a trick I started learning very late in life. But I now notice when my breathing patterns, posture, etc indicate internal anxiety or stress long before my conscious mind is alerted.
So I'm maybe 1% on my way through the journey, and approaching it from very much the skeptical/rational/scientific side, but again, I do see the value in the goal and method.
Not to say that there aren't million people/instructors/guides/therapists out there who DO make it into woo-woo! But like anything else, you can separate wheat from chaff with a little effort :)
It is observation, with low emotional reaction, in the present moment.
The classic example would be focusing on your breathing. You may have thoughts arise during this time, but you do not react to those thoughts, instead just acknowledge them and return your focus to your breath. This can be extended out to many other things that you are doing, for example, driving and having your whole head in the action of driving.
A counter example would be having anxiety over a hypothetical situation that may or may not ever occur. As well, being angry about something that happened in the past. In these situations you would refocus on the present moment and do your best to let the emotions go.
The word "mindfulness" in the context of a particular faculty or practice derives from attempts to translate the Pali word "sati". Cultivating sati correctly is part of the Noble Eightfold Path described by the Buddha. Unfortunately, the constituents that comprise "mindfulness" don't really convey the meaning behind "sati," so it's only really useful if you know that this is a token pointing to a foreign concept and you understand that concept. Because mostly Westerners don't, it has certainly been broadly misused to cover all kinds of unrelated things, including many practices/ideas you might call "new-age nonsense." (You may also think of Buddhism as nonsense, but the cultivation of sati being a practice with several thousand years of history should at least exclude it from being "new-age.")
Hopefully you can find out a lot more about the concept by googling for it under its real name. I'm happy to point to additional resources, please feel free to pm.
I'm sure this isn't entirely accurate, but I think it can be analogized to Sherlock Holmes' powers of observation. Everyone sees but they don't observe. They don't notice details about anything. Mindfulness is like that but more internal. Of course everyone is "aware" of the present time in a trivial sense, but lots of people spend a ton of their time lost in daydreams or reliving old arguments or mindlessly browsing FB or Hacker News. And it's not that that's a bad thing, just that they have no idea what their brain is doing, they just let it go wherever it will. Mindfulness is actually witnessing and understanding your state of mind.
I feel like the opposite of mindfulness is when you're driving to work in the morning and you realize you're already there and you have no idea where the time went.
I think of Mindfulness as setting a 'watchdog process' on your own brain: you think about how you're thinking, actively, so that you can control thoughts that might be unwanted at the time, like anger or fear. It takes you from a passenger, reacting to your brain's processing, to being an active driver of your thoughts. That's how I think of it, at least.
You’re absolutely correct, the terms have been muddled and people, even ‘experts’ confuse the terms. The book: The Mind Illuminated is a great modern day guide on meditation and the different stages of progression one may hit along the way.
While meditating, one typically develops two skills:
1. Samadhi: stable attention, being able to focus on the meditation object without forgetting or getting distracted.
2. Sati: mindfulness. Best translated to something like peripheral awareness.
Samadhi is focus on the book you’re reading without losing your place because the dog is barking. Sati is being aware of the context of your environment (dog barks, birds chirping, the feeling of your butt against your chair) without losing sustained attention on the book.
One cannot really develop mindfulness without sustained awareness, as otherwise you context switch from the soup you’re eating to that thing Brett said at work, to back pain, back to the soup.
Training those two skills gives a person the ability to better focus their attention on things deliberately while keeping enough in your conscious periphery that you have enough context to switch attention to other things that matter.
Normally people's attention is being drawn back and forth by various stimulus. "I have to schedule a meeting. I should reply to this email. What am I going to eat for lunch?" And so forth. If you meditate you will see there is a constant flow of these types of thoughts.
Being mindful means sticking your attention to direct perception. Somehow, you resist applying labels or analyzing things. Instead you just experience them as they are.
May I answer through analogy to ground our discussion in a topic more familiar?
How do we define running?
The expert/fit runner can:
- Run faster than those that haven’t trained.
- Run further than those that haven’t trained.
- But at some very picky level of semantics, we understand that running is the exercise and the physical adaptation it produces might be referred to as “running fitness”.
- and if we wanted, we could insist this superficial discussion barely scratches the surface, after all sprinters and ultrarunners train differently and develop dramatically different types of fitness.
- Here’s the kicker – someone might insist “so what, anyone can do that. I can run a few steps myself”. But we understand that the level of running fitness achieved by an expert runner is something beyond innate ability of someone who has not trained.
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How do we define mindfulness?
Those who are expert/fit at (Shamatha) meditation can:
- Upon realizing they are distracted, refocus the mind or calm the emotions. This is true for both intellectual distractions (a half hour ago, an intriguing idea just came to me and I was swept away) and emotional distractions (a half hour ago, a deep depression settled in and I was swept away).
- Recognize subtle distractions as they arise in the mind, and dismiss them before they hijack their train of thought.
- But at some very picky level of semantics, we understand that (Shamatha) meditation is the exercise and the physical adaptation it produces might be referred to as “mindfulness”.
- and if we wanted, we could insist this superficial discussion barely scratches the surface, after all shamatha meditation is altogether different than metta meditation and both produce different types of fitness.
- don't be that person that says sells the topic short and says "so what, I can do that". Yes, you can. but those who have a shamatha meditation practice can do it in a way that is beyond innate ability of someone who has not trained.
What do you see now? What is the position of your head, your shoulders? How your breathing goes? What do you smell? What sound you hear? What are you thinking right now?
Do you sometimes eat while watching a movie, actually not tasting the food fully? Or when in a rush ignoring all what and whom you meet on the way to the target, not happy where you are at the moment? Are you aware of the reasons why you take certain decisions? Is it really your decision, or is it just because of some inner monologue that you are not aware of? Do you sometimes step in a dog shit on the pavement?
I think we all experience moments of mindfulness from time to time but aren't aware of what it is or that it can be cultivated. At least I always have.
I began to experience it as a kid playing out in the woods alone. Sometimes I'd take a break and lie down on the ground and enjoy the breeze in the trees and all of the sensations that go with it.
Another example would be on a beach vacation when I'll just have a cup of coffee and watch the ocean. You're just focused on the present moment and not being distracted by a million other things. Obviously cellphones take you out of this state of mind.
Mindfulness is basically focusing on what is going on in the current moment (your senses, your surroundings, etc) as opposed to things that are not immediately there in front of you. This may seem boring at first but when you break through the boredom you sort of find yourself thinking in the way many of us haven't since we were kids. It has a bit of a nostalgic feeling to me as it reminds me of how when I was a kid I wasn't thinking constantly about things I need to do.
Obviously it's not a good idea to forget your adult obligations completely but letting them go for a moment here and there is a good thing since it can help you gain perspective.
At any given moment we typically have a lot of thoughts racing through our minds. We’re thinking about yesterday, or tomorrow, working through some problem.
Mindfulness is stepping back and observing that phenomena, that process, and entering a state of awareness rather than “active” thinking.
Meditation is a kind of practice - you learn over time how to simply observe the mechanics of the mind as a kind of “3rd party” observer (this is probably where a lot of the spiritual / mystical feelings arise from — what people describe as a feeling of “oneness”, etc.)
Mindfulness is carrying that feeling of calm awareness throughout the rest of the day’s activities. For instance, going for a run and really just running and taking in the sensations without following every thought that pops into your head.
Mindfulness is not a well-defined term and can be used to mean different things depending on the speaker or author.
Typically, I imagine, it is mostly used in a meditation context, often from Buddhism or derived practices.
In that context it would be a translation of "sati", which can also be translated as "recall". Practically this means the ability to remember. It is implied in the idea that true "sati" is in some sense continuous, and therein lies much of its benefit.
It is rarely talked about without reference to "concentration", which is a necessary and related, but distinct (certainly in Buddhist philosophy) idea.
These terms can be confusing if considered in a Western culture - they generally mean something different to what you might guess.
I think the opposite of mindfulness would be anxiousness. Like, if your car breaks down and you start worrying about being late to work, then worry that it's going to cause you to get fired, then your partner might leave you, that's the opposite of mindfulness. But if your car breaks down and you just focus on fixing the immediate problem at hand instead of the potential problems in the future, that's what they normally mean by mindfulness. By awarness of the present, they don't mean "aware" in the literal sense, but more in the act of actually thinking about what's happening instead of living life on autopilot and reacting to situations based on instinct and emotion.
I think what you described is more a situation of suppressing emotion and using pragmatism to reduce further harm.
To me mindfulness is stopping at lunch or after work, removing all distractions and worries, and focusing on yourself. Asking "what am I actually feeling right now? And why am I feeling this way? " instead of just cranking up the proverbial headphones and marching on, oblivious to what is happening to you or how you actually are feeling. It's about emotional intelligence.
I walk a stair and see stains. I walk by garbage and think about it. I thought that my level of detail/awareness is normal but lots of people around me don't notice basic stuff.
I'm more surprised by myself when I become less aware of stuff around me than the other way around. Less or even unaware is quite interesting to me after it happened and I'm happy about it because I have the feeling that overaware is my norm.
Thank you for this. I found the most precise and concise definition of mindfulness on this page.
> MINDFULNESS
> It is always now. This might sound trite, but it is the truth. It’s not quite true as a matter of neurology, because our minds are built upon layers of inputs whose timing we know must be different. [11] But it is true as a matter of conscious experience. The reality of your life is always now. And to realize this, we will see, is liberating. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand if you want to be happy in this world.
From Chapter III. From Pain to Suffering
>Why does the sensation called pain sometimes lead to what we call suffering? How could such a simple event distort all your other thoughts so much? This chapter proposes a theory of this: if a pain is intense and persistent enough, it will stir up a certain set of resources, and then these, in turn, arouse some more. Then, if this process continues to grow, your mind becomes a victim of the kind of spreading, large-scale “cascade” that overcomes the rest of the mind, as we depicted in §1-7:
Then he quotes Daniel Dennett:
> “If you can make yourself study your pains (even quite intense pains) you will find, as it were, no room left to mind them: (they stop hurting). However studying a pain (e.g., a headache) gets boring pretty fast, and as soon as you stop studying them, they come back and hurt, which, oddly enough, is sometimes less boring than being bored by them and so, to some degree, preferable."
The whole chapter is online: http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/E3/eb3.html