Capacity to Ignore Pain

A SCARS Institute Personal Insight

I want to share a personal insight.

You may think this is blaming people who suffer. However, this speaks to a larger truth, and something that I personally experienced when I was shot and wounded during the Vietnam conflict long ago.

I have been thinking about pain and what it really means. Pain, being equivalent to suffering.

Humans actually have a remarkable ability to compartmentalize, suppress, or reframe pain, but in everyday life, we rarely use that capacity to its fullest. We dwell, ruminate, catastrophize, or let emotional pain linger far longer than physical survival would demand. Why? Because most of the time, the pain isn’t tied to imminent death. There’s no immediate existential threat forcing us to shut it down or push through at all costs.

When death is staring someone in the face (a terminal diagnosis, a battlefield wound, a car crash, etc.), many people suddenly discover they can endure levels of pain — physical or emotional — that would have seemed unbearable in normal circumstances. The mind flips a switch. The same person who spent weeks devastated over a breakup or a career setback can, in the face of real mortality, find clarity, acceptance, or even peace remarkably quickly.

This reveals something fundamental about human psychology:

• Most of our suffering is optional or at least amplified by the luxury of safety and time.
• We have a much higher pain tolerance than we usually admit — but we only access it when the alternative is clearly worse (i.e., death).
• In the absence of that ultimate pressure, we often choose to feel the pain more fully, sometimes even romanticizing or prolonging it.

It’s almost as if modern life gives us the strange privilege of marinating in discomfort because nothing is forcing us to move on or shut it off.

Would you say this is mostly about emotional pain (heartbreak, regret, failure), or does it apply equally to physical pain as well? And do you think this capacity to “minimize” pain when death is near is a feature (adaptive resilience) or a bug (denial mechanism)?

Buddha’s view on this topic aligns closely with this observation, but he frames it more precisely and universally through his core teachings on dukkha (often translated as suffering, dissatisfaction, or stress), its causes, and the path to freedom from it.

Pain vs. Suffering: The Two Arrows

The Buddha made a clear distinction between pain (the first arrow) and suffering (the second arrow).

• Pain is inevitable in human life – it includes physical discomfort, illness, aging, loss, heartbreak, failure, and ultimately death. This is simply part of conditioned existence (the “marks of existence”: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and no fixed self).
• Suffering, however, is what we add to the pain through our mental reactions: resistance, clinging, rumination, aversion, and especially attachment (craving or grasping).

Buddha has a unique view of pain and suffering.

He taught that most people do not minimize or ignore non-lethal pain because they are deeply attached to pleasant states, to a sense of self, to outcomes, or to the illusion of permanence. In ordinary life, without the pressure of imminent death, the mind has space to indulge in the “second arrow” – amplifying emotional pain through stories like “This should not be happening,” “I can’t bear this,” or “This will never end.”

When death is imminent, many people naturally drop a lot of that extra layer. The Buddha observed that facing mortality can cut through delusion and attachment, bringing sudden clarity, acceptance, or even equanimity. He encouraged contemplating death and impermanence regularly (not just at the end of life) precisely because it helps us access that capacity for minimization or transcendence before crisis forces it upon us.

Buddha’s famous statement is often rendered as “The root of suffering is attachment” (or craving/thirst – taṇhā).

We suffer more than necessary because we cling to things as if they were permanent: relationships, health, status, youth, pleasure, or even our own identity.

When these inevitably change or are lost (as everything does, due to impermanence), we experience not just the raw pain of loss, but the compounded suffering of resistance and grief amplified by “this shouldn’t be happening.”

In daily life, without death staring us down, we have the luxury of feeding that attachment, dwelling, replaying memories, fantasizing “what if,” or refusing to let go. The Buddha saw this as a form of ignorance (avijjā) – not seeing reality as it is. When death approaches, the illusion of permanence cracks, and many people instinctively (or through practice) let go more easily, reducing the extra suffering.

Buddha has a practical perspective:

• Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional. The Buddha didn’t teach denial or suppression of pain, but a wise relationship to it. Through mindfulness and insight, we can feel the pain fully without piling on the mental resistance that turns it into prolonged torment.
• Regular reflection on impermanence (anicca) and death is a key practice. It trains the mind to hold things lightly, so we don’t wait for a terminal diagnosis to access our innate capacity for equanimity.
• In the face of real mortality, the wise “do not grieve” excessively (operative word: excessively) because they have already understood the nature of the world (as one sutta puts it). They see loss as part of the natural flow rather than a personal catastrophe.

Buddha agreed: most people could minimize ordinary pain far more than they do, but they don’t because they are not yet facing the ultimate teacher – death – and they remain caught in attachment and the illusion of permanence. His entire teaching (the Four Noble Truths) is a practical path to end that unnecessary suffering, not by avoiding pain, but by transforming our relationship to it through wisdom and letting go.

This is why Buddhist practice often includes meditations on death and impermanence, not to make us morbid, but to help us live with greater freedom and less self-created suffering right now.

What do you think?

Prof. Tim McGuinness, Ph.D.
April 2026