Between Pleasure and Pain

Deep dive

This practice is adapted from one of the 112 methods described in the Vijñāna Bhairava, a short text from the Kashmir Śaiva tradition, probably composed more than a thousand years ago. The text takes the form of a dialogue in which a goddess asks how reality can be known directly, and the reply is a series of practical doorways into awareness rather than a doctrine. Seven Doors numbers the methods in the order of a popular modern list; the source panel gives the verse as it stands in the 1918 edition.

A theme that runs through many of the text’s methods is the place between: between two breaths, between two thoughts, between one state and the next. Attention resting in such a middle point is often described as less caught up in either side. The method behind this practice is commonly read as applying that idea to the pull of pleasure and pain, pointing to a quality of attention that is not swept towards one or away from the other. Teachers and scholars interpret the details in different ways, and the source panel sets out what the verse itself says. Here we take only the broad, practical idea: notice the swing between comfortable and uncomfortable, and notice what it is like to rest in between.

It is important to be clear about what this adaptation leaves out. Some ascetic traditions, in India and elsewhere, have used deliberate hardship or pain as a means of training the mind. That is not part of this practice in any form. Seven Doors never asks you to induce pain, to hold an uncomfortable posture, or to override what your body is telling you. The general-audience path deliberately avoids anything of that kind. The sensations you work with are the ordinary, mild ones that are already present when you sit quietly: an itch, warmth, the pressure of the seat, a slight stiffness, a pleasant ease.

It may also help to say what “non-judging” means here. It does not mean pretending that everything feels the same, and it does not mean becoming indifferent to your own comfort. Liking and disliking will still happen. The practice is to notice them happening, lightly, as part of the experience, rather than letting them steer every moment. Equanimity in this sense is closer to fairness than to numbness: each sensation gets the same friendly attention, whatever its tone.

This is the third Feeling practice in the discovery path, and it sits close to the Awareness door as well, because so much of it rests on the noticing rather than the thing noticed. The first Feeling practice explores a small pleasant tone. The second explores emotion without its story. This one brings the same curiosity down into plain bodily sensation, and asks whether watching the to and fro of comfort and discomfort feels steadying, neutral or simply uninteresting to you. All of those are useful answers.

Who might this suit? People who are naturally attentive to the body, and those who enjoy a practice with something concrete to notice, often find it easy to settle into. People who are restless when they sit may be surprised to find that the restlessness itself becomes something to explore. Who might prefer something else? If you live with chronic pain, illness or a recent injury, a practice centred on bodily discomfort may not feel like a quiet experiment, and a door based on sound or sight may be kinder. If attention to the body tends to make you anxious, that is another good reason to choose a different practice. You are always free to open your eyes, move, or stop. This is contemplative practice, not a treatment or a pain-management technique.

A practical note: sit or lie in a position that you could hold comfortably for the length of the session, and let yourself adjust whenever you need to. Small movements made with attention are welcome. If you find that a sensation keeps growing or becomes sharp, treat that as a signal to change position or stop rather than as something to observe.