Zen koan: When does pain become suffering?

An old Zen master's thoughts on how pain and suffering connect to each other, and about whether they really need to do so.

The old Zen master, Herclots Zepipocrites, had suffered from many physical ailments in his long life, and he often contemplated on what the Buddha had meant when he said:

"Pain is certain, suffering is optional."

Herclots knew that pain was not a part of his deeper essence self. Pain was mostly in his surface self only.

"So, if we are pained to our soul level, perhaps, this is the type of suffering that is optional," he thought to himself

Pain, he postulated, is a set of rules that apply to the body, and the presence of pain is a result of some of these laws being broken, or not working optimally any-more.

Suffering is seeing this as being a problem because of the pain,whereas the problem started before the pain, and once happened, it is hard to restore, or return, non-pained situations again from the painful ones.

Zen itself never suffers from itself, but pain's sufferers are those not fully understanding that Zen never suffers. 

It is the proponent of Zen that suffers, and when you just let the two sit together, (pain and Zen) your Zen will improve then too, and your suffering lessen.

Both pain and Zen will be just what they really are for you then. 

You need not suffer, because your Zen will show you that at the Zen level of yourself, there is nothing there to suffer the suffering.

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