Pain and the arahant

Even after attaining full liberation, the arahant — the fully awakened being — remains subject to physical pain as long as the body persists. The dissolution of mental suffering does not eliminate the natural functioning of the body’s nervous system, which continues to register injury, illness, aging, and discomfort.

What distinguishes the arahant, however, is the complete absence of mental proliferation and resistance around pain. The first arrow of physical sensation may still strike, but the second arrow — the mental anguish of aversion, fear, and identification — never follows. Pain is experienced directly as sensation, without embellishment, personal narrative, or grasping.

This radical clarity allows the arahant to remain untroubled even amidst great bodily discomfort. The mind is steady, equanimous, and free from the habitual reactions that turn pain into suffering. What for the unenlightened is a source of distress becomes, for the arahant, simply part of the unfolding of conditioned experience — neither desired nor resisted.

Importantly, this teaching highlights that liberation is not dependent on perfect health or ideal circumstances. Freedom lies not in eliminating pain but in transforming one’s relationship to it. The arahant demonstrates that peace is found not by controlling conditions, but by seeing through the illusion of self that clings to those conditions.

“While feeling pain in the body, the arahant does not add suffering in the mind.”
— Sallatha Sutta, Samyutta Nikāya 36.6