I’ve practiced vipassana and can relate to the pain asymbolia thing, and do believe that more advanced vipassana practitioners develop a very high level of it.
Suffering seems to be the consequence of a conflict between two systems: one is trying to protect the map (“Oh!, no!, I don’t want to have a worldview that includes a burn in my hand, I don’t like that, please go away!”) and the other, the territory (the body showing you that there’s something wrong and you should pay attention). Consequence: suffering.
Possible solution: just observe the pain for what it is, without trying to conceptualize it. Having got your attention of it, the sensation stays, but there’s no suffering.
Of course, you get better at this after the thousandth time you hear Goenka say: “It can be a tickling sensation. It can be a chicken flying sensation. It can be an ‘I think I’m dying sensation’—just observe, just observe...”. ;)
I’ve practiced vipassana and can relate to the pain asymbolia thing, and do believe that more advanced vipassana practitioners develop a very high level of it.
Suffering seems to be the consequence of a conflict between two systems: one is trying to protect the map (“Oh!, no!, I don’t want to have a worldview that includes a burn in my hand, I don’t like that, please go away!”) and the other, the territory (the body showing you that there’s something wrong and you should pay attention). Consequence: suffering.
Possible solution: just observe the pain for what it is, without trying to conceptualize it. Having got your attention of it, the sensation stays, but there’s no suffering.
Of course, you get better at this after the thousandth time you hear Goenka say: “It can be a tickling sensation. It can be a chicken flying sensation. It can be an ‘I think I’m dying sensation’—just observe, just observe...”. ;)