What Is It About Feeling Pain?

When perceiving pain, four consciousnesses are operating: the body consciousness, the mind consciousness, the manas, and the eighth consciousness. Only when these four consciousnesses operate in conjunction can the pain in the foot be perceived; lacking even one, it cannot be accomplished. What specifically feels the pain are the body consciousness and the mind consciousness; the manas and the eighth consciousness do not feel pain. How can these four consciousnesses be distinguished from one another? If one can distinguish them, one possesses great wisdom.

The sensation of feeling pain belongs to the aggregate of feeling. Only when the aggregate of feeling is exhausted can one no longer feel pain. To cultivate until the aggregate of feeling is exhausted, one must be at the fourth dhyāna or above; after seeing the mind and seeing one's nature, one must cultivate to the level of a bodhisattva at the fourth bhūmi or above. Xuanzang's Indian Yogācāra master still suffered from headaches so severe that he wanted to leave, and Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva came to stop him, saying that he should first finish teaching Xuanzang the Yogācāra teachings, and also told him about the karmic causes and conditions from his past lives. Are there any people in the world today who have cultivated to the level of wisdom of Xuanzang's Indian master? Even if they had, they would not have reached the point of exhausting the aggregate of feeling, and perhaps not even the point of exhausting the aggregate of form—so what is there to say about having no sensation of pain?

As for people without the sensation of pain: one kind is those who obtained it as a karmic retribution from birth, which disappears when their merit is exhausted. Another kind received it through the blessing of beings of other categories, which is even more subject to arising and ceasing and unreliable. Yet another kind cultivated it through the four dhyānas and eight meditative absorptions, which is also a conditioned phenomenon subject to arising and ceasing. But bodhisattvas at the fourth bhūmi and above can sustain it; those who are not sages who have seen the mind, seen their nature, and realized the fruits simply cannot sustain it.