What is "Mind?"

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jgill

Boulder climber

The high prairie of southern Colorado

Dec 15, 2015 - 08:46pm PT

Thanks, Paul. However, suffering vs pain is semantics, IMHO.

I've been able to deal with chronic pain for the last 40 years by various mind techniques: sciatica, severe shoulder arthritis, etc. However, the severe jolts of pain I received due to a lumbar region that looks like a battleground left me literally reeling, especially when pain meds didn't work.

I question whether such severe pain can be dealt with by meditation, short of the amazing abilities of those immolated monks. And I wonder: how can they do that? Can they actually shut down the pain centers in the brain? Or somehow dampen the nerves leading to the brain?

And how much of this discussion is about brain? About mind?

MikeL

Social climber

Seattle, WA

Dec 15, 2015 - 08:52pm PT

Thank you, Sycorax. (Yeah, I wasn’t really intending that particular message.)

To all:

Suffering is that which gets and keeps your attention, wishing things would be different. Of course some Buddhists would want to promote the idea that suffering should be exterminated for obvious reasons (it makes people unhappy), but others will argue that suffering is simply an indication that you’re stuck.

It’s the ‘stuckness’ that’s is a more fundamental issue.

With regards to reality, one uses the same guideline as he or she would use in working with another in improvisation: It’s never, “no.” It’s “yes, . . . and . . . .”

jogill

climber

Colorado

Dec 16, 2015 - 01:58pm PT

I question whether such severe pain can be dealt with by meditation, short of the amazing abilities of those immolated monks. And I wonder: how can they do that?

I assume no one here knows the answer. General comments about suffering notwithstanding.

OK

PSP also PP

Trad climber

Berkeley

Dec 16, 2015 - 04:05pm PT

Severe back pain is debilitating. when did it calm down to a non-panic level?

Meditation is an observation process, ie witnessing. Most people don't want to hang out and embrace and watch and become intimate with their pain, but , I think that is what it takes to really start to work with it from a meditation point of view. Having a very curious mind of what it is that rather than I hate this and want to get rid of it. Because then you get stuck in that negative mind frame.

Obviously this would be very challenging to do with severe pain and I have only done it with medium pain and worked well. the pain became a sensation that was just there and I began to notice that it changed quite a bit during short periods of time and sometimes it was not there at all.

MikeL

Social climber

Seattle, WA

Dec 16, 2015 - 05:48pm PT

John:

Nothing appears to be impossible. Young mothers have been known to lift cars to save their babies underneath. Hasn’t sports shown us that there is hardly anything that can’t be achieved? 5.15 Really? That looks completely impossible to me.

What I hear from you is that you are in pain, and that gives rise to suffering. I’m sorry, really.

WBraun

climber

Dec 16, 2015 - 05:53pm PT

short of the amazing abilities of those immolated monks. And I wonder: how can they do that?

They leave their material body.

In the old days before modern caveman reject everything sciences monks, could interplanetary travel.

They had so much control and knowledge was passed on in disiplic succession.

Modern science and rigid western dependence on theory is soooo clueless .....

MikeL

Social climber

Seattle, WA

Dec 16, 2015 - 06:00pm PT

^^^^^^^
I think I agree with that one, too.

jstan

climber

Dec 16, 2015 - 06:01pm PT

After one boulder problem I was in traction in the hospital for four days. Afterwards I had constant but manageable low back pain for fifteen years that has since gone away as long as I enforce a maximum weight that I will lift. Since the last surgery I have been in the "silver sneaker" program at the gym using the machines. On all of them I stay low in weight and mainly explore reps. Working my way up using some sort of relaxed interval training focussed on reps. Once making 65 I found the glory is pretty much to be measured in how foggy I can make a mirror.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Dec 16, 2015 - 07:52pm PT

Last month I experienced spasms of pain so severe that, in the ER, a shot of morphine and pain pills didn't touch them.

Do you know how much morphine you were given?

A pharmacologist gave a talk to one of my nursing school classes. He said that if he had bad pain, say from a broken femur, he would tell the ER doc to give him morphine until either the pain went away or he passed out.

Acute pain should respond to morphine as long as you get enough of it.

Chronic pain is much harder to treat.

jgill

Boulder climber

The high prairie of southern Colorado

Dec 16, 2015 - 08:35pm PT

when did it calm down to a non-panic level?

It was on and off for several weeks, but improved quite a bit after a ten-day prednisone regimen starting a few days after the initial jolts. Most of the time I feel almost normal, but things have changed physiologically for me and all those exercises I was doing are probably just a memory. Jumping off boulders for thirty years up to the age of fifty plus prior gymnastics took its toll. No complaints. It was a fun ride.

Yes, the shot of morphine was very conservative in the ER!

Thanks for the comments.

Merry Xmas all!

WBraun

climber

Dec 16, 2015 - 08:47pm PT

The gross physical material body is the source of all misery and the house of pain for the embodied living entity.

MikeL

Social climber

Seattle, WA

Dec 16, 2015 - 09:48pm PT

John (Jgill):

I’ve read a bit about pain and its treatment, and I’ve seen it in my wife. With all due respect to medical professionals, I seem to think that they are not exactly sure how to treat it. I think that’s sort of up to you. You know, they are very hesitant to over-prescribe pain killers of all sorts. And many well-tested early drugs are no longer legal.

If I remember properly of my limited training in hospice, you give a person all that’s needed—but no more—to solve their pain problems. It was an issue of finding the right mixture and balance to bring a person into normal consciousness.

I was sort of there with oxycodine (perkocets) with the treatment for throat cancer, and I admit it’s a little tricky to find and keep to the proper balance. I think it can be done.

I think you have to be your own doctor. Do what you think will work. Experiment. You’re a very smart and aware guy. As a poor scientist, I’d say: experiment a little.

Everyone should kindly correct me now.

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Dec 17, 2015 - 10:25am PT

There are hard choices to make in medicine. There are times when many competing concerns must be weighed in the balance.

JEleazarian's questions about what one should or ought to do remind me of the class in medical ethics we had in nursing school. It was taught by Alister Browne, a PhD in philosophy and a smart, compassionate, and funny person.

The guides for making ethical decisions take the form of principles that are valued by society, such as individual liberty and doing no harm.

In medicine it gets tricky when we are not sure whether a person is competent to make their own decisions or when resources are scarce and giving help to one person means another will not get help.

In cases where ethical and moral principles are in conflict, the people faced with making an important decision should begin by learning as many of the relevant facts of the case as they can. Then they should try to consider the consequences of various courses of action in the light of all relevant ethical and moral principles.

An example our class was given: a terminally ill person who has severe untreatable pain and is on a ventilator asks to have the ventilator unplugged. The person shows no evidence of mental incompetence. Should you respect individual autonomy, or do no harm? In our class the answer wasn't so hard, because if you unplugged the ventilator you would be marched off to jail. Today, society may be headed in the direction of respecting individual liberty even in this fraught situation.

There are no right answers to difficult ethical questions. But you may have to justify your decision to other people and that is why it helps to know as much as you can about ethics, law, social values, and the facts of each particular case.

Most medical workers don't have the time to get into big debates about what they ought to do. They just do what worked in the past.

There are less fraught choices, too. Another situation we were given:

An old man in a nursing home wants ice cream but he has difficulty swallowing and might get ice cream into his lungs and get pneumonia. He understands the risk. Do you give him the ice cream? If you are his physician, do you write an order allowing the nurses to given him ice cream?

What would Alister Browne do?

http://www.ltcam.mb.ca/2010speakers/Autonomy%20in%20Long%20Term%20Care%20May%202010.pdf

WBraun

climber

Dec 17, 2015 - 10:31am PT

If you are his physician, do you write an order allowing the nurses to given him ice cream?

No you don't pass the responsibility onto someone else in case like this.

The physician takes full responsibility him/herself and should feed him directly if so chooses .....

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Dec 17, 2015 - 06:31pm PT

Werner is right, as always.

The doctor who was our teaching assistant in that class said she would give the old man his ice cream but she would not write an order for it.

I said I wouldn't give him the ice cream and I had good reasons.

MikeL

Social climber

Seattle, WA

Dec 17, 2015 - 08:12pm PT

Whatever mind is, I cannot really remember it from the past. Only “events” painted from my feelings—barely.

The history of my mind is just about nothing when looked closely at. Fleeting images.

Nothing whatsoever lasts. Even history.

It’s only ever really now.

BLUEBLOCR

Social climber

joshua tree

Dec 17, 2015 - 09:06pm PT

^^^ Ha! Do you really mean, Mind is an illusion brought on by a shortage of beer?

TomCochrane

Trad climber

Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay

Dec 17, 2015 - 09:27pm PT

pain is resistance to a flow…(by the mind)

some of the mental methods mentioned above are very relevant

you do have a magic wand: your mind...

BLUEBLOCR

Social climber

joshua tree

Dec 17, 2015 - 10:08pm PT

No, mind is best brought forward by a shortage of you.

Hahahahahahahah,the Cananuck gets a funny :D

maybe canada is moving forward in the micro evolutionary steps?

Forgive me for relying on what Iceland has been saying.