Interesting perspective, thank you for sharing your thoughts here. I’m curious how you view the similarities between temporarily going hungry and experiencing the intractable pain of hunger versus experiencing the physical sensation of intractable pain from nerve damage for years or decades. It seems to me these are two very different things that are being grouped arbitrarily. Abiding may help with the former but doesn’t seem to for the latter.
Joshmaher
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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.