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Mindfulness of Discomfort

Good evening everyone, welcome.

Several weeks ago, Diana Clark asked me if I would give a talk tonight. She's away, and at the time that she asked me, I was working in South Korea and hadn't been attending IMC since early June or early July. I was somewhat at a loss for what to talk about. So I decided that I would talk about how I spent my summer vacation.

I work for NASA, and in that capacity, I have an instrument that flies on high-altitude aircraft for measuring atmospheric gases. For the last several years, I've been preparing to get that ready to go on this aircraft into Korea. It required that I go to Houston, Texas, in late June and early July of this year. I knew that it would be hot and humid, but it was record-breaking hot and humid. They had more days over a hundred than they'd ever had before.

I had to deal with the discomfort of being in a hot, humid, uncomfortable environment for generally short periods of time—just between the building that I was working in and my car, or between my car and a restaurant, or the hotel and the car. I realized I didn't think about it too much, but mostly my way of working with that discomfort was sort of a stoic endurance of it. I was tuning it out in a certain way, or hardening myself to that experience. I was really looking forward to leaving it and going to South Korea, which I thought would be much more pleasant.

I was working at Osan Air Base outside of Seoul, and I couldn't have been more wrong. Seoul had the hottest temperatures that it had ever experienced, in addition to having floods, a typhoon, and all sorts of other challenging conditions. On this base, I didn't have a car. There were taxis all over that were hard to get a hold of at certain times, so it required walking through the heat for about a mile from the lodge that I was in to the flight line where I was working.

All of the places to get food were almost the same distance; they were about three-quarters of a mile from the flight line. In some ways, I was forced to walk in hot, humid conditions, bright sun, and absolutely no wind. I found that I started out with that same sort of stoic endurance strategy, and it turned out it was miserable. It just didn't work.

Then it dawned on me: Oh, I know how to work with this. I'll do mindfulness meditation. This is something that I've been doing now for multiple decades, but for some reason, it hadn't really occurred to me to apply it in this situation. So I made a modified version of walking meditation. I'm curious how many of you have had some kind of training in walking meditation? Okay, some of you have. So you know that it's mostly paying attention to the sensations in your feet or in your lower legs as you lift one foot, move it, place it; lift the other foot, move it, and place it.

I decided I would try. I wondered if this would really work under this kind of extreme condition. At least it was extreme for me; I'm sure that there are people who have lived in even more challenging conditions than that, but for me, it was not a common experience.

In the Theravadan^[1] Buddhist tradition, there's a teaching about how to do mindfulness meditation formally, which is based on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness^[2]. The first foundation is mindfulness of the body. That's perhaps straightforward to think about; it's like paying attention to the sensations that occur in the body, moment to moment. In addition to paying attention to the feet and the legs, I could pay attention to the entire body, in particular the skin, and all of the perspiration that was coming up from the heat and the humidity. The sensation from the clothing that was rapidly getting very wet from sweating.

I was walking about three to five miles a day, which is more than I typically do, and so I was noticing the sensations of soreness of the muscles. I was carrying about a 30-pound computer bag, so there were the sensations in the shoulder and the arm. I was having some back issues, so there were sensations in the back. All of those kinds of sensations are included in the category of mindfulness of the body. What made it somewhat easier to do was that those sensations were pretty predominant; they weren't subtle at all. I didn't have to really try hard to notice what was going on with the body.

The second foundation of mindfulness is mindfulness of feeling tone, sometimes called vedanā^[3]. It's asking if the sensation that you're experiencing is pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Does it have a neutral feeling tone to it? That can be a very important thing to pay attention to, because often we're unconsciously driven to seek out that which is pleasant and to try to avoid or push away that which is unpleasant, and kind of ignore what's neutral. We just don't pay attention to it.

So vedanā, or feeling tone, is the second foundation. The third foundation of mindfulness practice is mindfulness of mind states. What is the state of the mind? Is it open or is it contracted? Is it friendly or is it hostile? Is it curious or is it contracted? There are some formal names for the different mind states, but I kind of make them up for myself, just noticing what states of mind I tend to experience.

There's a differentiation between mind states (the third foundation of mindfulness) and mind objects, or mental formations and thoughts. Mind states tend to be things that last longer. If a certain mind state is developed, it may be around for a while. Mental formations and thoughts tend to just come and go fairly rapidly. So there's paying attention to mind states, and then the fourth foundation is mindfulness of mind objects or mental formations—thoughts, you could say. What kind of things are going on in the mind? What kind of stories? What kind of opinions? What kind of beliefs? All of those things that can occur. So those are the Four Foundations of Mindfulness.

For this particular situation, instead of trying to mentally avoid paying attention to the uncomfortable experience of walking in the heat, I decided that I would let it be an opportunity for me to practice developing mindfulness. The muscle of mindfulness. The muscle of being able to be actively aware of what's going on and see what happens. Does that help in some way or not?

As I was saying earlier, mindfulness of the body was pretty obvious. I'd pay attention not only to the heat, the sweating, and the soreness, but there were some sensations that were more subtle, like just the feeling of the feet on the ground. Some were even mildly pleasant. Given that I would often be soaked in sweat, any little breeze, any little air motion, or walking into the shade temporarily had a pleasant feeling tone to it. It was noticeable; I could feel, Oh yeah, that was good. Occasionally on the way back to my lodging, I would stop at this food court, which was air-conditioned. Walking into the air conditioning was really noticeable and it was really, really pleasant, at least at the beginning. [Laughter] So over time, mindfulness of the body was a very easy practice. Not that I liked it, but that it didn't require a lot of energy or effort to be aware of the body.

Similarly with feeling tone—with the pleasant, the unpleasant, and the neutral. For many of the experiences that I was having, many of the physical sensations and also mental activity, I tended to notice most predominantly what was unpleasant. That was what really stood out.

Then, the third foundation, mindfulness of mind states. I could tell those times when there was strong aversion. A very aversive mind was often set by the conditions that I had experienced that day. Did I get enough sleep? Was I rested, or was I tired? Was I hungry, or was I pretty well fed? Had I had a lot of success that day or not? Had the instrument worked well? Had we solved some problems, or had we found new problems? Success and failure would often influence the state of mind that I was experiencing.

Was I thirsty? I have to say, I was very tuned into the fact that being out in the heat had a certain danger to it. It is possible to get dehydrated, to have heat exhaustion or heat stroke. In fact, there was a chemistry professor from Berkeley that I knew who had died of heat exhaustion while taking a short walk in Utah just a few weeks before I went to South Korea. So I realized that these things can sneak up on you. I was very aware of drinking at least two to three liters of water a day, so I didn't often get anywhere near dehydrated. But I would certainly get tired, I would certainly get hungry, and there were other times when I'd just get frustrated. So I'd see what the state of my mind was as I was walking.

And then finally, the fourth foundation is mindfulness of thoughts, mental processes, mental formations. When it first occurred to me to do mindfulness as a way of meeting the discomfort that I was feeling, I had a lot of strong thoughts. I hated this experience. I just really hated it. I had thoughts that this shouldn't be happening; it shouldn't be happening to me. Somebody needs to take care of me. Somebody needs to be chauffeuring me around so that I don't have to experience this. There was self-judgment about why am I suffering, and all these other people are just walking around as though everything's fine? It really was those thoughts of hatred that caught my attention and made me think, Hey, I must find a better way to deal with the discomfort of the heat than just stoically enduring it.

It occurred to me that in the teachings of the Buddha, there's a story about the Buddha asking one of his monks—I'll paraphrase the story. He asked the monk, "If you get hit by an arrow, somebody shoots an arrow and it sticks into you, does that hurt?" And the monk said, "Yes, Buddha, that would hurt." And he said, "And if somebody were to shoot a second arrow into you, would that hurt even more?" And he said, "Oh yeah, that second arrow would also hurt."

The point of the story is that there are some things that happen to us. Being in hot, uncomfortable conditions is like the first arrow^[4]; that part is unavoidable. The second arrow is everything that we add to our experience—all of the thoughts about it, wanting it or clinging to it, or trying to push it away or ignore it. All of the ways that we relate to that first arrow are really the second arrow.

I could see that there was no avoiding the first arrow of the heat. But I could avoid the second, third, and fourth arrows that were my responsibility—that I was choosing in a certain way by not paying attention. I found that over time, as I started to do this mindfulness as I would walk out in the midday heat, it was better. I certainly never reached the point that I liked it or found it an enjoyable experience, but I wasn't hating it. I wasn't pushing it away. I wasn't fighting with it. There was a certain level of acceptance that I was accepting: This is what this moment is like. And that was quite a change.

That was just about the time that Diana asked me if I would give a talk, so I decided that I would look into this a little bit more. About the week before I left Korea, I saw that Eugene Cash^[5] was giving a talk up in San Francisco at San Francisco Insight. His talk was about loving in the present moment—loving whatever experience you're having, even if you don't like it. It was an inspiring talk. I didn't really think that I would get to the point of loving the experience, as that can often be a loaded word, but there were other things that I could do. I could find a level of acceptance: This is what my present moment experience is like.

By turning my attention toward, rather than away from, the discomfort, there came to be a certain intimacy with the experience. It wasn't like looking aside and wondering, Is it going away yet? but really just welcoming it in a certain way. It was helpful then to hear Eugene talking about just how precious the present moment is, whatever it is. Whether it's comfortable or uncomfortable, joyous or sad, connected or lonely. There aren't any moments that we have to reject, that we have to push away, that we have to turn from. We can have this intimacy with our experience, and that was part of the lesson for me in being in Korea.

When I got back, I listened to a talk yesterday morning by a Tibetan teacher, Anam Thubten^[6], up in Point Richmond. He was speaking about a very similar principle in Tibetan Buddhism: about cultivating within yourself a place of luminous awareness. A place—well, who knows, maybe it is a place inside—that can be aware of what's going on and unperturbed by what the content of the present moment is. It can be aware of discomfort, it can be aware of longing, it can be aware of joy. It can be aware of brightness, energetic brightness; it can be aware of dullness. That place of luminous awareness is up to us to create in a certain way, or maybe find, or strengthen.

So I think this mindfulness of heat meditation that I was doing for about a month in Korea got me on that path. It got me more motivated to see: is it possible for me to reside more often in this place of luminous awareness, and not so much in the reaction to my experience, or the thoughts or opinions about it? I felt grateful, in a way, first of all, that I've been exposed to this practice for so many years that it's kind of sinking in.

Towards the end of my time in Korea, the temperatures actually cooled down a bit, even below 80 at times. So I thought, Well, this is a valuable lesson. I'll put this one in the can and I'll bring it out when I need it again. Of course, I got back to California last Wednesday in the midst of a record heat wave here. I realized, Okay, well, I guess this isn't just something that's now occurred and is a great story I can tell. It was like, Okay, you're not beyond discomfort. The discomfort's going to always be present no matter where you are geographically.

It isn't a practice that's just about being hot, or just the discomfort of the conditions we've all been experiencing in the last week or two. I'm sure in a few months, I could probably give a talk about cold meditation. I think it's going to get cold this winter, it always does. And if it's not that, there are all of the aches and pains that come with getting older. Working with discomfort is a pretty important part of life. Letting the discomfort be a teacher, rather than just something that needs to be avoided or pushed away, is an important lesson for me.

So that's what I have to offer tonight. We have a fair amount of time left if there's anyone that has any questions or comments, or would like to talk about an experience they've had, either dealing with heat, dealing with any other kind of discomfort, or anything else. So thank you.

Q&A

Questioner: Thank you. I just wanted to say thank you for the part where you said, "Let the discomfort be the teacher," because I do often want to avoid discomfort. I'm currently experiencing discomfort to the point where I'm wondering, Can I handle this for an entire school year? I don't know. But instead of just thinking that, I mean, I'm going to be with these kids. Let me learn from them, because boy, it's a hard class. There are times I just don't know what to do at the end. But as you said, I've been resisting it a lot, and I just thank you. Maybe I'll treat it as let me learn from them. I was often having self-judgment, thinking, Why should I have to deal with this? I'm above this, or I've been doing this for almost a decade now, I can deal with it. Or why does it have to be this hard again after the pandemic? But no, there's going to be discomfort at every point in life, and I need to be having that luminous mindfulness within. At least that's what I'm trying to cultivate and strive for every day. So just thanks.

Jim Podolske: Thank you for sharing that. One thing that I didn't say is that in addition to just being aware—a strengthened awareness—I found that over time there was a certain compassion that arose in me. Compassion for myself, caring about the experience, and wanting to do something. It isn't just a practice about observing, but there can also be a much wiser response. The way we respond to our experience can be wiser if we're more connected with it. Hopefully, you'll find some wise ways to work with your pain. Thank you.

Questioner: Thank you. When you were speaking about stoicism, it makes me curious about myself, because that's often my response to adversity. I think what you also said following that was—I'll paraphrase—that you can respond with some wisdom by really being present to whatever is there. That also feels true. It's like stoicism is kind of a coping mechanism, but it's not as accurate. So it feels like something for me to sit with more when I face adversity.

Jim Podolske: I think when I say "stoic endurance," it's more like white-knuckling. It's just bearing down and trying to use the force of will to get through the experience, rather than really allowing it. I suspect that there are probably more years than I'd like to think of where I've sat on a cushion in pain, thinking that somehow if I experience enough pain, I'm going to have some transformational experience. But the pain alone didn't really do it. It's really how one relates to it that's perhaps the more important part. Thank you.

I think that we can end at this point. I'll be around for a few minutes if anyone has a specific question they want to bring to me personally. So thank you all for coming, and may you be skillfully uncomfortable. [Laughter]