Metaphysically speaking, what is pain?
Pain is loss of freedom, pain is a hijack of attention, pain fills your awareness with itself, seizes your attention/focus and does not allow you to access your loved objects. Pain has the experience of gravity. You cannot access other loved objects in your awareness when the pain’s gravity pulls you towards itself. Like say you are depressed. Then the depression fills up your awareness and you cannot access other emotional states when the gravity of depression is holding you down. Pain itself is not the problem. It is just a sensation. It is the gravity of the pain that binds you to it and prevents you from accessing any of your other loved objects. So we fear this loss and we apply resistance and desperately try to push against the gravity of pain and hold on to at least the nearest loved objects reachable to us. This resistance = suffering and its the suffering that is the problem, which arises because of attachments to the loved objects. The gravity of pain forces you to apply resistance against it to access your loved objects and this is the suffering that pain causes. If you simply allow pain to fill your awareness and surrender completely, there will be no suffering and pain is no problem (then we would not even call it pain colloquially, we would simply call it sensation).Now the interesting corollary of this is that, even pleasure is pain, because what is pleasure after all, it is a sensation that binds you to it with a gravity of its own. So metaphysically they both are almost the same. The difference in the case of pleasure is that, you want to be tightly bound to this pleasure object with an equal and opposite force as that of pain. In the case of pain, you wanted to desperately escape the pain object. In the case of pleasure, you want to desperately be with the pleasure object. They both are equal and opposite vectors.
As long as you are bound to the object of pleasure it is bliss, but as soon as it begins to leave, you feel a craving to be with it and that is suffering again. In the case of pain, you are repelled but helpless to move by the gravity of the pain object. In the case of pleasure, you are attracted but you are unable to access the vanished pleasure object.
In the immediate experience, pleasure is good and pain is bad.
But seen from a broader picture, pleasure is pain when the object is gone, which is inevitable.
Also, from a broader picture, pain is pleasure once the pain object is gone.
This is because pain and pleasure are relative and are verbs.
Lets start with the pain journey:
If the pain object takes you from 0 to -50, that journey from 0 to -50 is the experience of pain. Now as the pain object leaves you it takes you from -50 to 0. This journey from -50 to 0 gives you pleasure.
In the pleasure journey:
The pleasure object takes you from 0 to +50. The journey from 0 to +50 is experienced as pleasure. Then when the object leaves it takes you from +50 to 0. This journey from +50 to 0 is experienced as pain.
When it comes to intensity, pain and pleasure intensity is based on the acceleration of movement in the positive or negative direction.
Also, we can see here, that if pleasure or pain is the DELTA(change number), then all starting state numbers whether -50, 0 or +50 are equivalent, in terms of their potentials for pain or pleasure.
So in the larger picture we can say:
Both pleasure and pain torture you.
Pleasure tortures you when it leaves.
Pain tortures you when its present.
When seen in the scope of its full cycle:
You either get: Pain-Pleasure or Pleasure-Pain.
The both are equivalent.
Constant pleasure is impossible. Constant Pain is impossible.
What goes up comes down.
What goes down comes up.
The down and the up co-create each other.
This was a linear explanation.
If we go higher to the next dimension beyond time:
We see pleasure and pain are ONE object.
Just like a magnet is one object with 2 poles.
As long as you are bound to the object of pleasure it is bliss, but as soon as it begins to leave, you feel a craving to be with it and that is suffering again. In the case of pain, you are repelled but helpless to move by the gravity of the pain object. In the case of pleasure, you are attracted but you are unable to access the vanished pleasure object.
In the immediate experience, pleasure is good and pain is bad.
But seen from a broader picture, pleasure is pain when the object is gone, which is inevitable.
Also, from a broader picture, pain is pleasure once the pain object is gone.
This is because pain and pleasure are relative and are verbs.
Lets start with the pain journey:
If the pain object takes you from 0 to -50, that journey from 0 to -50 is the experience of pain. Now as the pain object leaves you it takes you from -50 to 0. This journey from -50 to 0 gives you pleasure.
In the pleasure journey:
The pleasure object takes you from 0 to +50. The journey from 0 to +50 is experienced as pleasure. Then when the object leaves it takes you from +50 to 0. This journey from +50 to 0 is experienced as pain.
When it comes to intensity, pain and pleasure intensity is based on the acceleration of movement in the positive or negative direction.
Also, we can see here, that if pleasure or pain is the DELTA(change number), then all starting state numbers whether -50, 0 or +50 are equivalent, in terms of their potentials for pain or pleasure.
So in the larger picture we can say:
Both pleasure and pain torture you.
Pleasure tortures you when it leaves.
Pain tortures you when its present.
When seen in the scope of its full cycle:
You either get: Pain-Pleasure or Pleasure-Pain.
The both are equivalent.
Constant pleasure is impossible. Constant Pain is impossible.
What goes up comes down.
What goes down comes up.
The down and the up co-create each other.
This was a linear explanation.
If we go higher to the next dimension beyond time:
We see pleasure and pain are ONE object.
Just like a magnet is one object with 2 poles.
Journey to the Abstract 