I was recently watching the Netflix documentary ‘Rafa’ on the tennis legend, Rafael Nadal. The Spaniard, who played at a professional level for over three decades, first picked up the racket when he was four years old. At nineteen, he became the youngest player to win the French Open. However, that very year he had a leg injury which was later diagnosed as Müller-Weiss syndrome, a condition that affects the navicular bone and leads to chronic pain.
Rafael Nadal played with this pain for another two decades. His mother, father, sister, uncle, wife, physiotherapist, and coach all bore witness to how the condition worsened with time, affecting his knee and hip too. But Nadal never stopped. His mother, Anna Maria, says in the documentary that Rafa learnt well to ‘suffer through sport’.
This phrase stuck with me for many days after. Why should anyone put up with suffering? And to top it, with such grace and equanimity. Rafael Nadal did it through sport. And there are others who do it in other fields.
I recall learning about the saint Raman Maharishi going through his cancer surgery, declining full anaesthesia and witnessing the procedures in complete peace, stating, ‘Before the cancer, during the cancer, and after the cancer, I am still the Self.’
There are so many examples of yogis overcoming pain and discomfort by their strength of mind. Marco Polo, when he first landed in India around 1291, was fascinated by the yogis he encountered practising comfortably in the hot sun. He remarked that they led a harsh and austere life.
Rafael Nadal could have quit tennis. Raman Maharishi could have chosen anaesthesia. The yogis could have retreated to cooler settings.
This ability to tolerate pain, to endure through difficulties, is an inherent quality of a seeker. It is titiksha.
There are so many of us who let out day-long oohs and aahs when we are down with fever or headache. We have to let the entire world know that we are suffering. And for that duration, it becomes our whole personality.
This is where spiritual wisdom steps in. Nobody has to willingly invite pain and put up with it. However, when such difficulties arise, it is only the evolved mind which can dissociate from the body and say, ‘This pain is temporary. This body is temporary. And I am neither.’
While this example is drawn for pain, this is true for pleasure too. Just because we enjoy the comfort of a cushioned bed or a deep massage, can we say that the experience is a permanent one?
The more we develop the ability to bear pain graciously, something alters in our neural pathways. The pinpricks of life do not bother us as much. Expanding this concept, we can see the same applies to emotional upheavals too.
Along with physical pain, handling emotional pain (such as insults) involves practising the core sadhana of ‘Adapt, Adjust, Accommodate’ rather than seeking revenge. Swami Sivananda says this attitude shift itself brings us closer to the divine, while dropping our identity as the mortal human. In fact, Swamiji goes on to call pain one’s teacher.
While it must take insane levels of forbearance and grit to put up with so much pain without as much as flinching or wailing, we could perhaps begin by not complaining through our bouts of physical and emotional distress.
