Chronic pain totally sucks.
It can literally suck the life energy out of us, especially when we resist it. Although this is a very reasonable response to ongoing physical suffering and all the other levels of related suffering it rarely brings more than temporary relief. In the last few years of my life I have lived with varying degrees of chronic pain and have used a variety of strategies (or non-strategies) to cope with it: denial, pushing through it, obsessing over it, staying under the covers for days, trying to figure it out, watching the unfolding sensation, listening, crying.
Learning to delight in pain.
But it wasn’t until about two years ago when I was introduced by a friend to the teachings of Darlene Cohen that I realized I could delight in it.
Darlene Cohen died today. She was a Zen Buddhist Meditation Teacher and worked with many people to help them realize the possibilities for living a joyful life amidst chronic pain.
She was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis when she was thirty seven years old. She had a three year old son at the time and for a number of years was completely bed-ridden. She had the support of her husband and the San Francisco Zen Center community. Through this experience and her ongoing zen practice she discovered ways to approach her chronic pain that transformed her own experience and through her teaching transformed the experience of many others. I highly recommend her book, Finding a Joyful Life in the Heart of Pain
Sex and Anger
But she didn’t just teach about chronic pain, she taught about everything. Two of my favorite dharma talks of hers include this one about sex and this one about anger. Part of the joy of her teaching is her willingness to share her own vulnerability, her own mistakes, and her great compassion.
Being Present With Emotion in Relationship
I randomly opened her book Finding a Joyful Life in the Heart of Pain
I decided to ask myself again and again for as long as it took to get an answer: What would it be like to feel anger? To really feel it completely, starting with the stirrings, and then instead of cutting it off and going numb or jumping into my so-called higher self and explaining it away, thereby “taming” it in the only way I knew, trying instead to just sit there in the middle of it and letting it run its whole course? So I began doing this.
The first thing I noticed was that I didn’t have many emotions at all, and when I did have them, they didn’t last very long. They immediately changed into some sort of numbness. That numbness got better defined in time, as I observed it closely, and it was actually more like muddleheadedness, woolheadedness, like having a really bad head cold. After a while, I came to understand that this was my substitute for feeling because I was really frightened to feel anything in front of another person, especially if such a feeling would make me the center of attention, like at meetings. If something upset me, I got confused and muddled, unable to think. I saw over time that this was such a reliable indication that I was angry that I started acting on it as if I really felt my anger. I began saying at meetings, “Wait, something is wrong here. I don’t know what, but something is off.” And this worked very well. People would stop and process my objection, because, of course, I was rarely the only one who felt something awry. But now, with my new determination to ferret out my anger, I was often the first person to say something was wrong.
Darlene Cohen embodied her practice and she brought it into each breath and sensation and interaction of her life. May her transformation of form be full of the joy she created with her life. I offer my warm heart to her family and community and students this day.
