May of us are in pain, real, physical pain. Chronic pain can crush expectations, change the future, and, above all, sour us on life, especially older people, older like me. I recently went on a silent retreat and went through an experience with my pain that was more than enlightening; it was life-changing. This is my chronicle of that journey on my retreat:
At my six-day silent retreat, I enter the meditation hall in pain. The hall is darkened, silent; 40 others are already sitting. My chronic lumbar stenosis arrives with a sciatic impulse that is bright and active. I sit on my two zafu’s (meditation cushions), cross my legs over my zabuton (the padded platform the zafus sit on), feel my right ankle press into the zabuton, and begin a familiar suffering. At least 8 on a scale of ten, the pain creeps down my leg to my ankle. I am in the present; the only present I can be in, thanks to the pain. “Damn,” I think, “here we go again.”
This chronic pain has been with me for five years. It is almost always with me when I meditate, waiting so it can begin its own disruptive journey. It constantly takes me away from any other object of meditation, breath included. The only remedy, temporary, at best, is to lie down, my lumbar region resting on a firm oval pillow bearing the three knitted black bears that are my totem animal. For years, I have searched for a remedy, a cure, relief in my practice and found nothing but words that change nothing.
I will not lie down here, I think to myself, on the first day of silence. It is one thing to be lying down to meditate in the privacy of home. But here? On retreat? The Dharma hall rules say you can’t. Anyway, the shame of it deters me; the judgments others in the room will make: “ah, well, they can’t sit like the perfect meditators do. Poor Abby; they will fall short of being a full practicing Buddhist.”
The shame, my comparing mind state, the tragedy of it all grab me. My back will never heal, I think. Not for the first time this pain will dominate the six days and, like a hungry jackal, my mind will lock into it. My back will tighten, my dan tien (core) will spasm, grip me, and drag me away from my practice. This pain is the enemy of my practice, my nemesis, my Dark Lord.
And then it begins, the restless battle. I shift and turn my body, recross my legs, left on right, right on left. Lift my legs off the floor at bit to reduce the pressure on my ankle; set my feet flat on the floor, arch my back, sit up. I am in the moment, this moment, for real, body and mind battling over pain.
The teacher’s voice drones on; I have completely lost the thread.
I knew this was coming. I had brought my oval pillow, my Pregabalin, my Tramadol and taken the necessary doses. Nothing was working. Was this it? Would I have to get up and leave the retreat, my first, in-person long retreat?
Oh, the shame of it. Sensing everyone looking, I took an extra blanket and my oval pillow, adjusted my cushions and lay down, zafu under my head, oval under my back, and lay back. The pain went away slowly, as it always does when I lie down. And I immediately felt sleepy, struggled to stay awake. No, not that, too? Struggled awake as I heard my own rumbling snore. Now they are all surely looking at me.
Is this part of death. When I die, all this room will disappear (a blessing?). Back to breath. Thoughts rise again. I am old; the condition is chronic; I am in decline. It will end my hopes for my old age – acting on stage, performing my one-person show on gender and karma. I will no longer hike or walk; death stalks just behind me. This contact with impermanence now dominates my existence, my awareness. So much thinking!
And then it happens. The Dharma talk by the older teacher is about compassion, one of the four Brahmaviharas (they are lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy for others, and equanimity), the focus of the retreat. I feel like she is talking to me – teaching me self-compassion. Specifically, self-compassion about physical pain. She is talking about the five hindrances, which I explain below, and the way they can block access to an aware relationship with pain. Talking directly to my mind, to my heart. I was ready to listen.
As she talks, my mind spreads open, yes, thinking. My first insight is a realization that I was at that retreat for this specific talk. At this retreat because of my pain. I had been seeing the pain as an obstacle to my participation, as the enemy of my practice, when it was, in fact, the reason for my retreat, my core practice for those six days. I had been clenching against, not opening to the pain.
Why is it so hard for me to be with my pain? The teacher launches into a discussion of the five hindrances, and there I am.
Aversion – I hate this pain. Shut up, I screamed; go away, leave me alone with my practice!
Grasping – I want a lovely, pain-free existence full of hiking and exercise and joy; not this.
Restlessness: oh, I have this one perfected. Not only am I physically restless on my cushion, I have been pin-balling endlessly through remedies and cures: pills, steroids, chiropracty, massage, exercise, acupuncture. Hoping one of them, any of them, all of them together would be the miracle cure.
Sleepiness: To make the pain go away I lie down. Sleepiness is an immediate result; I would check out from awareness altogether.
Doubt: Having failed so far to bring the Dharma, the Buddhist teachings, to my pain, I doubt the value of the practice as a tool for dealing with it. My resident skeptic is alive and well.
In the land of Dharma poker and the hindrances, I had drawn a full house.
The key word the teacher is saying is “soften;” soften into the pain. Strangely enough, my mind, which usually provides a tumult of distraction from the moment I am in, focuses like a lazar on this moment. I begin a conversation, the first ever, with my lumbar-driven sciatica, relaxing my whole body right down into my back and leg.
I look down at my right leg and say “You’re what brought me here. I didn’t come despite you; I came because of you. You have been telling me to pay attention for the last two days and I have been pushing aside your insistent demand to pay attention, to ‘see’ you.” Tears roll down my face. “I feel you; I see you – there in my leg. My lesson, my teacher, my personal invitation to compassion, lovingkindness and equanimity – stay here, you are welcome. You are me; I am you; you are here in this body, our body, in this moment.”
I talk to my pain for 10-15 minutes, cross-legged on my cushion. Slowly, but clearly, it eases. I feel it respond, relax a bit.
I sit longer than the sit, crying and talking softly. Into my meditating but curious mind comes the Buddhist tale of the two arrows. My sciatic pain is the first arrow. Pain is real and it hurts. The second arrow is the one I shoot into myself; my relationship to that pain. As I reflect on these thoughts, the pain itself starts to ease, it becomes just pain. I don’t have to fight it.
Reflecting on this experience, I know that I have not found a “miracle cure.” The MRI is dispositive: cramped vertebrae, extruding discs, the irreversible package that presses on the sciatic nerve, leading to pain. There was and will be pain for me; quite likely for the rest of my life.
It is my choice how I relate to it. Not my fear of judgment or comparison, but how I relate to my body. The pain is a gift to my practice, not my enemy, opening up new opportunities for awareness. I can relate to it with softening and welcome and make the physical adjustments I may need in that moment, to help it relax. Including lying down, if that is what seems to work, without judgment.
My sciatica has become my own personal Dharma teacher. I will continue to practice with it; one retreat does not settle our relationship. But now it can be the suffering that helps me on the path.
Thank you so much for this Abby. I am sorry for your pain and very grateful for your willingness to share, to witness and to teach.
I am so sorry for your pain, and I am glad for your teachers, practice, and self-talk to manage, ease, and lean into the torments of aging.