ekkentros free thoughts - pain

Dr.Thomas: The feeling of pain being very subjective, it is very difficult for others to assess the extent of pain when a patient complains of it. In many a court case the judge has asked, ‘how do you know that the patient was in pain?’ When a patient is constantly complaining of pain and is persistent in asserting that he is in pain although no apparent symptoms could be detected, it is usual to consult more than one doctor to establish the existence of pain. If two doctors agree it is usual to accept that the pain is real. Pain is different from tenderness. Sometimes there may be tenderness at a spot in the body without any accompanying pain. The patient could be malingering.
The extent of pain felt depends upon several factors. In order to ascertain the type and nature of the pain, the doctor asks a series of questions. Does the pain continue while resting, and does it disturb sleep? Does it interfere with daily routines, eating etc? Is it moderate or intense? Is it spread out or located at a particular place or point? Is it moving or stationary? Individual perceptions of pain are generally different. Apart from that, different parts of the body have different levels of sensitivity to pain. The somatic areas feel pains more intensely. Tooth ache and ear pain are more difficult to bear. The tip of the finger is more sensitive than any other part of the body. Middle part of the fingers is dull. The ends of the body have to protect the whole system and have therefore more supply of nerves. It is the nature’s blessing and is also thus anatomically explained. Then there are referred pains. For example, the tip of the shoulder may feel an acute pain while the problem may be at the back of the neck. Referred pain is also associated with sweating and fainting accompanied by Brady kinesis (abnormal sluggishness of physical movement).
Moods of the mind affect the feeling of pain. Endorphins secreted in happy moods reduce the pain considerably. There is also what is called the gateway theory of pain in which not only the secretions of morphine and endorphin are stimulated to reduce the pain but also the cycle or pathway of pain is broken to make the pain disappear. Acupuncture is supposed to use this theory in which the patient has a funny feeling passing through the place of pain by way of anesthesia.
Rishis and mendicants sitting or sleeping on nails is a well-known image. Some say they are punishing themselves to exhaust their sins. Others say that they are disciplining their body by inflicting pain and get some sort of pleasure out of it. Or else they are observing and studying the nature and behaviour of pain.
Sadistic criminals marvel in inflicting the worst type of pain on their victims. They invent newer and crueler methods of creating pain including those, which are psychological. Psychologists say that children who suffer severe punishments and cruelty early in life turn into sadistic criminals on becoming adults.
Some saints and monks are said to be in an ecstatic state even while they are in pain. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa is an example. Research has shown that when certain areas of the brain are touched by probes, ecstatic feeling would result. Maharshis are said to have the capacity to create such ecstasy on their own mental or meditative power. For those who are in search of Truth, lack of knowledge itself is pain.
As regards animals and plants, there are reasons to believe that all living things have pain to some degree or other. Scientist J.C.Bose had proved that plants too react to pain and pleasure. Plant researchers found that in the case of certain plants in Africa, pollination happens when women walk between the plants touching them. These indicate that plants also have sensitivity.
At the physical level, anxiety neurosis, depression and pain are attributable to the lack or balances in the supply of certain chemicals like say serotonin. Chemical changes in the brain can induce a person even to commit suicide. But at the spiritual level pain and mental agony are said to arise from desire and undue expectation as explained in Buddha’s Philosophy. Desire can create pain in the minds of even great achievers. It is said that Einstein was in great agony at the last moments because he could not complete some research.
Fear, especially fear of death is another factor that creates mental pain. The concepts of Ghosts and other unearthly beings have arisen from such painful emotion.
Anesthetics are useful to relieve physical pain. Alcohol, if not misused can take away grief, aches and pains to some extent. Drugs are used to give relief from physical pain.
Pains, physical and mental are there from the beginning of this world and have to be put up with. As a mythical saying goes, God has created the world and put it into motion, and then gone to sleep. It is moving according to the laws laid down. Is pain part of the Rules of Nature?

Dr.Sadanandan: Pain is a sensation with an emotional component. Both the sensation and the emotion are unpleasant. Therefore it is avoided. ‘Avoid it’, says the mind. Several things are done by doctors in an attempt to alleviate it. The emotional aspect of pain is generated from the physical. Pain, physical or mental, is thus a living thing for each individual. One has to endure the physical and somehow escape the emotional. The mind always wants to avoid the emotional pain.
How to avoid the mental/emotional pain has been the problem of Man all along. We have depended on so many things trying to find out how to avoid pain. But who gives the answer? We ask the question to somebody else. Man sought knowledge and answer from others, who are supposed to know the answer. But we have not succeeded in getting any satisfactory answer. Some seers have passed on some techniques of meditation. The methods prompt me to find out the answer for myself. One must acquire some method of one’s own to find out how to avoid pain altogether.
I then come to the conclusion that I must have some superior faculty of my own to find out an answer to the problem. What quality of my own can give a method to achieve that superior faculty? If there is a method what is it? I must find it. But is it within the purview of thought or outside or above it? This seems to be our quest here. This can be a basis of our discussion here.

Prof.Sankarankutty: Experience of pain is strictly subjective and its expression is through symptoms, gestures, sounds, body postures and the like. When the intensity is communicated through words, gestures and sounds like screams we, the observers, also experience it indirectly. The sufferer of the pain is thus an object to the observer, although his own experience of the reflected pain is still subjective for him. In short we the onlookers ‘objectify’ the pain through our empathy, to understand the pain of the sufferer. From this originated some great Art. The greatest examples are the artistic works of high dramatic expressions that we find in the Greek Tragedies.
In most of the great Greek Tragedies, a person of eminence is passing through high mental suffering and physical pain. This pain is expressed and communicated with aesthetic effect through high drama to induce pain in the onlookers. The intensity of pain is thus objectified for the viewers in order to understand the real nature of pain. From this understanding arose beauty and the aesthetic experience.
To understand the structure of pain we have to look at our pain right when we are in the midst of it. But can we pay attention to the structure and behaviour of our own pain when we are in it? We cannot. Therefore it is necessary for some body else to objectify the type of pain to us in order for us to understand it. The Greeks used this need of people to create the great tragedies and to communicate the structure of pain through aesthetic expression.
Pain has a physical component and an emotional component. It is the emotional component that is dealt with in the tragedies. The height of human suffering on the emotional and mental level is revealed for the audience in some of the dramas like those of Sophocles. In his drama Oedipus Rex, Oedipus, the king, unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother and even has children by her. When he finally realizes the truth any remedy is agonizingly beyond reach. He blinds himself, and his wife commits suicide. The uncertainty of human suffering is beyond comprehension. The suffering is enacted on stage exploring the structure of pain. The pain is passed on or communicated to the audience in micro-doses so that it could be understood by identification and appraisal. Finally in a catharsis the inner dimension of pain becomes apparent. It is a way of understanding pain, understanding life itself, by the process of objectification.
It is strikingly noticeable that in Eastern dramatic tradition there is practically no work of great tragedy. The reason probably is the spiritual background of the East. The ultimate that we seek is ‘Moksha’ or liberation from the worldly affairs treating tragedies of life as part of the process of advancing towards that liberation. Or such pain was attributed to Fate. Westerners had no such props to fall back on and therefore were more sensitive to tragedies that were beyond their comprehension.
In one of John Milton’s masterpieces Samson Agonistes the dramatist tries to show that purification of the mind takes place in tragic suffering helping the incumbent in the process to achieve calmness. Consciousness expands while pain touches the mind. The glory of Christ is in his acceptance of the spiritual pain of Man while he underwent the physical pain willingly and transcended it. Understanding pain brings forth compassion.
Another aspect of pain is that it has been always an inspiration for creativity. As a subject for creative writers and artists, the contribution of pain is unparalleled. It is almost the starting point of creativity. Pain is the lens of the microscope through which the aesthetic mind views the Universal Man.
As regards the individual, it is through personal pain, a father or son dying, a failure in love, a sudden sickness or some such suffering that he is starts looking at the universe, and the reality in the uncertainty of life in it. In a war there is great suffering, and shades of emotions become highlighted. Highly sensitive artists and writers express these emotions in visual form and succeed in communicating the intensity of painful emotions. An example is the powerful imagery created by the painter Monk titled ‘The Scream’, that really screams at the viewers offering no explanation. None is needed.