Let’s suppose that that you experience the same level of pain from being hungry and from nerve damage. What’s different about these? Moment to moment, not much really. The main difference is that you expect to be able to alleviate the hunger pain but not the nerve pain, and in fact since the hunger pain is temporary, as you say, then it will in fact eventually go away. So I don’t really see much difference here other than that it’s actually much easier to never learn to live with hunger because you have a way to address it (eat some food) whereas with the nerve pain your only option may be to learn to abide it, so if anything such a strategy is more likely to be useful for nerve pain not less.
I get your thought process here but disagree with your assumption about the equality of experience. They’re certainly not similar physical sensations that can arbitrarily be grouped. Acute and chronic physical pain sensations behave much differently in humans. If we’re talking hunger, it may be acutely painful but it’s chronically lethal. Those monks who starve to death in meditation are not having the same experience as mediators on the Calm app trying to be okay with fasting until lunch.
You’ll have a much different experience and your body will respond differently if you’re stabbed in the arm once today than if you’re stabbed in the arm hourly for the rest of your life.
It’s this difference that seems overlooked. Abiding to one is not like abiding to the other.
Let’s suppose that that you experience the same level of pain from being hungry and from nerve damage. What’s different about these? Moment to moment, not much really. The main difference is that you expect to be able to alleviate the hunger pain but not the nerve pain, and in fact since the hunger pain is temporary, as you say, then it will in fact eventually go away. So I don’t really see much difference here other than that it’s actually much easier to never learn to live with hunger because you have a way to address it (eat some food) whereas with the nerve pain your only option may be to learn to abide it, so if anything such a strategy is more likely to be useful for nerve pain not less.
I get your thought process here but disagree with your assumption about the equality of experience. They’re certainly not similar physical sensations that can arbitrarily be grouped. Acute and chronic physical pain sensations behave much differently in humans. If we’re talking hunger, it may be acutely painful but it’s chronically lethal. Those monks who starve to death in meditation are not having the same experience as mediators on the Calm app trying to be okay with fasting until lunch.
You’ll have a much different experience and your body will respond differently if you’re stabbed in the arm once today than if you’re stabbed in the arm hourly for the rest of your life.
It’s this difference that seems overlooked. Abiding to one is not like abiding to the other.