<story><title>&apos;Mindful people&apos; feel less pain</title><url>https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-09-mindful-people-pain-mri-imaging.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>HiroshiSan</author><text>Is that true if your being tortured by someone other than yourself? I&amp;#x27;ve seen the picture of the monk who set himself on fire while meditating in protest.&lt;p&gt;I wonder if suffering is only optional if you inflict it on yourself.</text></item><item><author>mcculley</author><text>Mindfulness meditation taught me something that Haruki Murakami describes well about running: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>projektir</author><text>At the very least, you could damage someone&amp;#x27;s brain faculties to the point that they can no longer philosophize their way out of suffering. And that is likely unnecessary, some drugs should suffice.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Suffering is optional&amp;quot; is a concept that dies immediately if you apply even a tiny amount of creativity to the question. It also fails if applied to animals.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really only available to people in a specific range of situations, and often it&amp;#x27;s stated not because it&amp;#x27;s actually true, but because it makes people feel powerful in situations where they&amp;#x27;re rather powerless. Which is mostly the point of stoicism anyway, as it is a philosophy developed during a time when people felt that they couldn&amp;#x27;t change anything about the world.&lt;p&gt;Of course, this means it&amp;#x27;s a poor philosophy to follow if your interest is in things improving, and not in just you personally not caring about them, something that many people already accomplish all too well...</text></comment>
<story><title>&apos;Mindful people&apos; feel less pain</title><url>https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-09-mindful-people-pain-mri-imaging.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>HiroshiSan</author><text>Is that true if your being tortured by someone other than yourself? I&amp;#x27;ve seen the picture of the monk who set himself on fire while meditating in protest.&lt;p&gt;I wonder if suffering is only optional if you inflict it on yourself.</text></item><item><author>mcculley</author><text>Mindfulness meditation taught me something that Haruki Murakami describes well about running: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>philwelch</author><text>People do tend to have an easier time enduring things they inflict on themselves than things inflicted on them by others, but perhaps you can trick this mechanism by accepting what is inflicted onto you by others.</text></comment>