Parts of it are similar enough to pain killers that some meditators occasionally get into trouble with not going to the hospital soon enough. So the amelioration side of things seems pretty straightforward. We (QRI) recently spoke with Daniel Ingram about this. We still have some followup questions but he’s very good at jhanas (incl 4th which is high equanimity) and claims to be an arahant and said that kidney stones (which he has experienced ~14 times) still caused suffering. This is particularly interesting because using deference networks showed us that people report kidney stones as multiple orders of magnitude worse than the next closest thing, which Daniel also claimed unprompted from us.
This doesn’t address the core of your concern about utility, but since suffering and utility are both under-specified I’m not sure what a definitive answer looks like.
I’ve had kidney stones and I fully endorse the “multiple orders of magnitude worse” sentiment! I look forward to never finding out if my equanimity is strong enough to overcome that level of pain.
Parts of it are similar enough to pain killers that some meditators occasionally get into trouble with not going to the hospital soon enough. So the amelioration side of things seems pretty straightforward. We (QRI) recently spoke with Daniel Ingram about this. We still have some followup questions but he’s very good at jhanas (incl 4th which is high equanimity) and claims to be an arahant and said that kidney stones (which he has experienced ~14 times) still caused suffering. This is particularly interesting because using deference networks showed us that people report kidney stones as multiple orders of magnitude worse than the next closest thing, which Daniel also claimed unprompted from us.
This doesn’t address the core of your concern about utility, but since suffering and utility are both under-specified I’m not sure what a definitive answer looks like.
I’ve had kidney stones and I fully endorse the “multiple orders of magnitude worse” sentiment! I look forward to never finding out if my equanimity is strong enough to overcome that level of pain.
I think at will attainment of nirodha samapatti is probably the only plausible counter.