How do I meditate on unpleasant sensations to be at peace during their appearance?
Instead of performing a style of spiritual gymnastics, harnessing effort or concentration to manipulate our self or the sensation, the approach suggested here is a simple and relaxed investigation into the true nature of our current experience.
In our investigation, we begin with the initial hypothesis posed in the question; it seems that the sensation is unpleasant.
The investigation starts here, for here is the only presence from which we can start. We can't start yesterday or tomorrow. There is no experience of yesterday or tomorrow right now. There is only now, now. So we start now, and ask our self; is unpleasantness what we are really experiencing? What gives us the seeming certainty that the sensation is unpleasant?
It just seems unpleasant.
Right, it 'seems' that way. The mind, through the act of believing in its own ideas, contrives a pseudo-certainty of the nature of sensations, then superimposing that belief onto the sensation itself, giving us the impression that we're actually experiencing a sensation that is qualitatively identical to the concept of unpleasantness, or depression, anxiety, anger, whatever.
And it doesn't just do this with sensations. The mind contrives pseudo-certainties about all manor of things that it imagines. It labels experience, and then believes that its labels define what the actual experience is. The kicker is that the mind then plays a delusive trick on itself by believing that its certainty is not derived in the mind, but rather that it comes direct from the experience.
If we are attentive to our actual experience, in our direct tasting of it, it is evident that the experience has a Reality which precedes the appearance of the labelling thought. As such, the experience itself is not known by that thought, and therefore, not limited by that thought, just as the wind is not limited by the thought that says, 'that is the wind', or a deer is limited by the thought that says 'deer'.
Within the fine print of your initial question is a belief that the sensation is unpleasant. That belief is the catalyst which triggers the experience of unpleasantness. It may not seem like unpleasantness is a belief. It may seem so obvious, straightforward and commonsensical to us that the sensation is unpleasantness itself, that all there is to the experience is unpleasantness. However this is a misinterpretation, born of thought.
If there is an intimate and clinical looking at the sensation, it can be noticed that the sensation arrives without any conceptual information attached to it. Nor does the sensation proclaim; 'I am unpleasant and a problem!' It says nothing of the conceptual sort. In its immediacy, the sensation arrives silently, devoid of mental sounds or labels.
Imagine if we were incapable of believing any idea about the nature of experience, what would our experience be? We would have no idea what it is. We would simply experience it’s pure, silent is-ness.
What is that?
...
The seeming palpability and conviction of unpleasantness arises solely because we believe the label is what the actuality of the experience is, that the thought and sensation are identical. However, a sensation is not a thought. They are evidently distinct forms of experience. The thought of an orange monkey and the sensation of the chest area are not objectively the same, just as the wind is not the trees, and the thought of unpleasantness is not the bodily sensation to which it refers.
By making a distinction between thought and sensation, it is clear that the sensation has an existence independent of thought, that the sensation can exist alone, without any label.
From the belief in the definition 'unpleasant', thought transforms what is essentially a neutral experience into an apparently afflictive problem, activating the request for help to “be at peace,” which is code for, ‘how do I remove this sensation from my experience?’
There is no need to remove the sensation to be free of problems or unpleasantness. Peace can be totally here, in and as our Presence, whilst the sensation remains in the same condition. In fact, we are already totally at peace with the sensation. It is only from the perspective of the mind that there seems to be a problem or an unpleasant sensation. And the mind’s perspective is an imaginary one. There is no need to eradicate an imaginary perspective. All that is necessary to be free of it is to understand its imaginary nature.
The imagination cannot define what is real. The reality of experience precedes the imagination, and is therefore not limited by it. Experience, in essence, is already completely what it is before thought imagines or conceptualises what it is. In such wise, all thoughts are untrue, for truth is by nature that which is ever-present, and no thought is ever-present. They all come and go.
What is the nature of this sensation all alone, by itself? Thought cannot know what it is. Thought merely pretends to know what the sensation is.
Leaving aside all thoughts, knowing full well that they are incapable of defining what is really here, we closely and intimately contemplate our experience, revealing the sensation for what it really is; pure, raw, naked sensation. We find that the experience is essentially devoid of definition. Right there is the experience of peace. It is simply what it is.
If on some level we are still convinced that the sensation is unpleasant, we go deeper into the experience, setting aside all thoughts that label the experience, until we are left with what is really, essentially there; pure sensation.
Now check and notice in the immediacy of the now, what is the actual experience of this sensation without reference to the mind?
Silence.
Right, it cannot be described, for any description would be of the mind. The sensation is absolutely ineffable and therefore absolutely free of the sense of being problematic, afflictive or unpleasant, for such definitions only appear to exist, and have credence, within the mind. When the mind is absent, so are all ideas.
In this ineffability of the moment there is a sense of absolute neutrality. The sensation is experienced as being neither positive nor negative, for again such definitions of positive or negative only exist within the mind. The sensation is left to be what it irreducibly is, pure, silent experiencing.
Now, behold the sensation again. What happens to the question “how can I be at peace with this sensation?” now it is clear that the definition 'unpleasant' is not fundamental to the actual experience?
It disappears.
Right, there is no desire to get rid of the sensation now it is experienced as ineffable. It can just be what it is, substantially the same as the sound of the rain or the caress of wind on our face.
Now we are aware from this neutrality, a new possibility can emerge. That is, to enjoy this sensation in the same gentle way we enjoy the sound of the rain or the caress of wind on our face.
Allowing the sensation to be what it is, without setting up a resistance against it, there is a natural unfolding that takes place, whereby the energies that coelesce into the movement of the sensation are felt thoroughly in and as peace.
Peace is, by nature, the experience of being without resistance to what is. Without belief in thought, there is no experience of resistance or separation. There is just a oneness of presence that includes our self and the sensation. We are one seamless continuum of peace. We are this peace that is the substance of the sensation.
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