Pain and Penance

Physical Pain
A way to true penance


I can remember being aghast, seeing the rows and rows of devotees hanging by their backs. They were all suspended from a leaning pole, by hooks pierced on to the skin of their backs. Face down, arms spread, and in an angle as if ready for flight into the skies. I can remember the images of devotees with small spears pierced through their cheeks. They all seemed as if from some other planet. I can remember the images of devotees pulling the temple-chariot  by the ropes tied on to the hooks which were pierced on to their backs. As a kid I remember feeling shocked and numb. These images of self-crafted pain became imprinted on to my memory undelibally. Over time, these images somehow became a part of my inner imagery of this worldly life itself: images of living that I had encountered in my life for which I had no answers. To me these images of pain, became a part of a collage of images that symbolically represented life and its sufferings that I could not understand.  These images were always there, demanding answers, demanding explanations. Later, I used to feel overwhelmed, to imagine the intensity of feelings that must have been there in those devotees. May be an intensity of devotion or more likely an intense response to one’s worldly suffering.  But I still could not answer as to why people take to self-crafted pain in response to worldly suffering. Was it in bhakti (devotion) or was it in penance?, or for what other reasons? and how could these self-crafted sufferings become an act of bhakti or penance?
These images and its questions came back to me as I wondered why so many people take to very tough and painful pilgrimages too?

Yes, this Palani-walk is physically daunting. This physical demand, reins in all of one’s physical energy. And the pilgrimage provides a destination to reach, an objective. By reining in and providing a holy objective to one’s energy, the walk not only focuses but also provides a solemnity to one’s effort. This combination of ‘focusing’ and ‘solemnity’ may  be addictive to a whole lot of people, whose daily life may otherwise be bereft of any worthy objective. The pilgrimage could also be a temparory  escape from one’s usual existential problems too. But what other inner gains? Was there any spiritual gains from a pilgrimage?

I thought about the feelings I experienced when the physical pain of the walk was overwhelming. I wondered why I had felt relieved of a burden and also soothed after the previous day’s walk.  Though I had not got into any trance, once I reached the boundary of physical pain, my emotional barriers had broken down after having endured a prolonged pain. An inner barrier that had stopped me from total obeisance to the  very act I was attempting, had broken down, as if ultimately leaving one truely open and yearning from one’s core. I realised that the barrier within me that had held holding me back from totally surrendering had suddenly broken. My ego had been broken leaving me totally vulnerable, open in faith and emotions. With my ego broken I had then totally surrendered to the act of penance. Then my appeal had felt wholesome. There was no play-acting. There was no part of my ‘self’ that was holding back in doubt and not taking part in the act I was doing. The extreme and continuous physical pain had broken my ego, leaving my soul vulnerable and open, in suffering and in appeal to Providence. The suffering was complete and total. I had felt completely truthful and genuine in my penance only then.
This was why it had felt very cleansing. As if this total suffering has cleansed me. And I felt as if I  had reduced the amount of pain I was destined to experience in my life by this ‘offering’ of self crafted wholesome pain. I felt as if I could hope for better times.
There surely is a redeeming quality to suffering. There surely is a liberating quality to suffering. And surely not in the last or in the least, there certainly a focusing quality to suffering.

What I understand from what I have described above was that people who go through suffering in their regular lives, take to self-crafted pain because prolonged pain breaks down one’s ego, leaving one’s soul in suffering. This soul-suffering is taken to in belief that, it will bring down one’s suffering in worldly life. For if in one’s life, there is an account of how  much pain and suffering one has to live through, then one might as well put oneself through genuine and soul-consuming pain so that the account on the measure of pain that is due for one’s soul reduces a bit. For this act becomes an an act of atonement, an act of self-punishment for past sins, may be even of past life, so that one’s present life becomes a little less of sufferings. Sometimes a pilgrimage is taken up as a penance: a ritual that could earn one some spiritual equity with which one can then appeal to God. One can hope for his wishes to be sanctioned because he has made a worthy offering. Genuine and complete.There could be no play-acting and no scope for falseness in a true penance. A true pilgrimage of penance is taken up in the belief that it dissolves past karma, because it is an ego-less, soulful appeal to Providence.
There are no barriers of ego. There is a total surrender to Providence. The ritual of physical pain may prove to be a way to this. It is not as if one breaks down and cries, but sometime during the ritual one crosses over the barrier of doubt and partial participation to total surrender and oneness with the very ritual. It is the physical extremity that pushes one over this barrier. This may be it’s value.

I don’t know the truth of the above but it certainly fit with my feelings and generally with the phenomenon of why so many people take to painful pilgrimages. I was searching for meanings and explanations, and this theory felt coherent to me. I could relate to it in a metaphysical and spiritual way. I felt that this was the truth of all sufferings, whether destined or self-crafted.