Pain & Suffering

What is a great spirit, usual practitioner? A person lives always in the presence of his or her own true self, someone who has found and who uses continually the springs and sources of profound inspiration. As the modern English writer Lewis Thompson wrote: “Christ, supreme poet, lived truth as passionately that every gesture of his, at once pure Act and perfect Symbol, embodies the transcendent.”

            To embody the transcendent is why we are here.

Glimpse After Glimpse,

Sogyal Rinpoche

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Before I read this, I had been feeling a little depressed. The past few days back pain has enveloped my consciousness and it is difficult to practice, let alone imagine, transcendent embodiment. I know… I know… there are cults of self-flagellation and voluntary punishment for sins and transgressions. They claim to reach transcendent states… like the, Flagellants of the middle ages, the Sun Dance of the Sioux, or even the practitioners of S & M. However, whatever kicks one gets out of these, the pain is short lived. Wear it a while and you can even get accustomed to the annoyance of a hair shirt worn by the so-called devout. These have no attraction to me. As far as I’m concerned, there is enough pain in a normal life to suffice and I don’t have to go looking for wood to be used as an added cross.

            Transcendent-self shines through when I let my pain take a back seat. When it is severe and constant I can think of nothing else but that vertebrae the pain radiates from. Number one on my priorities is the idea that the most spiritual thing I can do is to take care of what is in front of me… the acme of my awareness. I go get help… a chiropractor, an orthopedic specialist: or an epidural? In the meantime, do I feel transcendent…. Hell no! But feelings isn’t what it is about. Transcendence and the act of being spiritually centered is about eating when hungry, drinking when thirsty, sleeping when tired, and so on. Meditation and prayer might help me skip through the tulips but, when I can’t do that, it helps me trudge the road of happy destiny.

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