On my six-day silent retreat, I enter the meditation hall in physical pain. The hall is darkened, silent; forty others are already sitting. My chronic lumbar stenosis arrives with a sciatic impulse that is bright and active. I sit on my two zafus (meditation cushions), cross my legs over my zabuton (the padded platform the zafus sit on), feel my right ankle press into the zabuton, and begin a familiar suffering. At least eight on a scale of one to ten, the pain creeps down my leg to my ankle. I am in the present; the only present I can be in, thanks to the pain. “Damn,” I think, “here we go again.”

This chronic pain has been with me for five years. It is almost always with me when I meditate, waiting so it can begin its own disruptive journey. It constantly takes me away from any other object of meditation, breath included. The only remedy—temporary, at best—is to lie down, my lumbar region resting on a firm oval pillow bearing the three knitted black bears that are my comfort animals. For years, I have searched for a remedy, a cure, or relief in my practice and found nothing but familiar words that change nothing.

“I will not lie down here,” I think to myself, on the first day of silence. It is one thing to be lying down to meditate in the privacy of your own home. But here? On retreat? The dharma hall rules say you can’t. Anyway, the shame of it deters me; thinking about the judgments others in the room will make: “Ah, well, they can’t sit the way perfect meditators do. Poor Abby; they will fall short of being a fully practicing Buddhist.”

The shame, my comparing mind state, and the tragedy of it all grab me. My back will never heal, I think. Not for the first time this pain will dominate the next six days, and, like a hungry jackal, my mind will lock onto it. My back will tighten, my dantian (core) will spasm, grip me, and drag me away from my practice. This pain is the enemy of my practice, my nemesis, my Dark Lord.

And then it begins, the restless battle. I shift and turn my body, recross my legs; left on right, then right on left. I lift my legs off the floor a bit to reduce the pressure on my ankles, set my feet flat on the floor, arch my back, and sit up. I am in the moment, this moment, for real—body and mind battling over pain.

The teacher’s voice drones on; I have completely lost the thread of her dharma talk.

I knew this was coming. I had brought my oval pillow, my Pregabalin, my Tramadol, and taken all the necessary doses. Nothing was working. Was this it? Would I have to get up and leave the retreat—my first long in-person retreat?

Oh, the shame of it all. Sensing everyone looking at me, I take an extra blanket and my oval pillow, adjust my cushions, and lie down, zafu under my head, oval under my back, lying on my back. The pain goes away slowly, as it always does when I lie down. And I immediately feel sleepy, struggling to stay awake. No, not that too? I struggle awake as I hear my own rumbling snore. Now surely they are all looking at me.

Is this part of death? When I die, will this room all but disappear (a blessing?) Back to my breath: Thoughts rise again. I am old; the condition is chronic; I am in decline. This condition will put a stop to all of my hopes for old age—acting onstage, performing my one-person show on gender and karma. I will no longer hike or walk; death stalks just behind me. This contact with impermanence now dominates my existence, my awareness. So much thinking!

The dharma talk by teacher Tuere Sala is about compassion, or karuna, one of the four brahma-viharas, or the four sublime states, the focus of the retreat. I feel like she is talking to me—teaching me self-compassion. Specifically, teaching me self-compassion about my physical pain. Talking directly to my mind, to my heart—I was ready to listen.

As she talks, my mind spreads open—yes, thinking. My first insight is a realization that I was at this retreat for this specific talk; at this retreat because of my pain. I had been seeing the pain as an obstacle to my participation, as the enemy of my practice, when it was, in fact, the reason for my taking this retreat and my core practice for those six days. How little I knew. I had been clenching against my pain rather than opening up to it.

Why is it so hard for me to be with my pain? Then Sala launches directly into an exploration of the five hindrances and the way they can block access to an aware relationship with our pain. Hearing Sala talk, it dawns on me that there I am, sitting with all five hindrances at once.

Aversion: I hate this pain. “Shut up,” I scream; “go away,” “leave me alone with my practice!”

Grasping: I want a lovely, pain-free existence full of hiking and exercise and joy; not this.

Restlessness: Oh, I have this one perfected. Not only am I physically restless on my cushion, I have been pinballing endlessly through remedies and cures: pills, steroids, chiropractic treatment, massage therapy, exercise, acupuncture. I’ve been holding out, hoping one of them—any of them or all of them together—would be the miracle cure I was searching for. 

Sleepiness: To make the pain go away, I lie down. Sleepiness is an immediate result; with this hindrance I would inevitably check out from awareness altogether. 

Doubt: Having failed so far to bring the dharma to my pain, I begin to doubt the value of the practice as a tool for dealing with it altogether. My resident skeptic is alive and well.

In the land of dharma poker and hindrance, I had drawn a full house. But then, it happens. 

In her talk, the key phrase Sala keeps repeating is to “soften”; to soften into the pain. Strangely enough, my mind, which usually provides a tumult of distraction from the moment I am in, focuses in, like a laser, on this moment. I begin a conversation, the first ever, with my lumbar-driven sciatica, relaxing my whole body right down into my back and leg.

Into my meditating but curious mind came the tale of the two arrows. My sciatic pain is the first arrow; the second is my relationship to that pain.

I look down at my right leg and say, “You’re what brought me here. I didn’t come despite you; I came because of you. You have been telling me to pay attention for the last two days, and I have been pushing aside your insistent demand to pay attention to you or ‘see’ you.” Tears start rolling down my face. “I feel you; I see you—there in my leg. My lesson, my teacher, my personal invitation to compassion, loving-kindness, and equanimity—stay here, you are welcome. You are me; I am you; you are here in this body, our body, in this moment.”

I talk to my pain for ten to fifteen minutes, cross-legged on my cushion. Slowly, but surely, it eases. I feel it responding, relaxing a bit.

I sit longer than the allotted time, crying and talking softly to my pain. Into my meditating but curious mind came the tale of the two arrows. My sciatic pain is the first arrow; the second is my relationship to that pain. The pain itself is easing; it is becoming just pain.

Reflecting on this experience, I know that this is not a “miracle cure.” The MRI is dispositive: cramped vertebrae, extruding discs, the irreversible package that presses on the sciatic nerve, leading to pain. There was and will be pain; it will quite likely be with me for the rest of my life.

Yet it is my choice now how I relate to it. Not how I feel about my fear of judgment or comparison but how I relate to my body. Rather than my enemy, the pain is a gift to my practice, as it holds the potential to open up new opportunities for awareness. I can relate to it with softening and welcome and make the physical adjustments I may need in those moments, to help it to relax—which includes lying down, if that is what seems to work—without judgment.

My sciatica has become my own personal dharma teacher. I will continue to practice with it; one retreat does not settle our relationship. But now it can be the suffering that helps to guide me on the path.

♦

This article was adapted from a piece that originally appeared on Ross’s Substack blog “Sheathed Sword.”