Physical and Mental Pain

In the Sallatha Sutta, the Buddha taught that though the spiritually untrained and trained experience pleasant, painful and neutral feelings, their responses differ. When the first is touched by physical pain, one tends to worry, grieve, lament and even become distraught. It is as if one suffers from two feelings (physical and mental pain), as if shot by another (mental) arrow after being shot by a physical one. One develops the tendency to resent the pain, while seeking sense pleasures to quell it, due to not knowing other means to escape. When the tendency to attach to pleasant feelings set in, one is unmindful that they rise and fall, of the perils of not knowing how to transcend them. Neutral feelings then nurture the tendency of ignorance, while aversion to pain and attachment to pleasure fetter one to the cycle of rebirth.When the spiritually trained is touched by inevitable physical pain, one does not worry, grieve, lament or become distraught.

Being shot by only one arrow, while not shooting oneself with another, there is only the physical feeling experienced, with no painful mental feeling added. As one does not develop the tendency to resist the pain, one does not seek sense pleasures to quell it, because one is aware of the true means to escape. Since the tendency to attach to pleasant feelings does not set in, one is mindful that they rise and fall, of the perils of not knowing how to transcend them. Neutral feelings then do not nurture the tendency of ignorance, while aversion to pain and attachment to pleasure do not fetter one to rebirth.

The Buddha himself was the best example of how the above can be done. In the Sakalika Sutta, the Buddha was lying down to nurse his foot pierced by a stone sliver. Despite the physical pains being excuciating, he was unperturbed and endured them mindfully. Hundreds of gods gathered to pay homage, many of whom praised his most excellently developed mind. One even exclaimed that to think the Buddha could ever be truly harmed was being blind. Indeed! Here's a reverse example... A girl who visited a dentist to remove an aching tooth returned with multiple cuts in her mouth. Due to her imagined and aggravated anguish over the little pain that she would feel before extraction, she had 'shot' herself with many needless 'arrows' by fidgetting in fear, while sharp surgical instruments were in her mouth