Pain is the mind. It's the thoughts of the mind. Then I get rid

“Pain is the mind. It's the thoughts of the mind. Then I get rid of the thoughts, and I get in my witness, which is down in my spiritual heart. The witness that witnesses being. Then those particular thoughts that are painful—love them. I love them to death!” Thus spoke Ram Dass, the modern mystic and teacher of awakening, whose words carried the fragrance of both East and West. In this luminous declaration, he unveils a great secret known to sages through the ages: that pain is not born of the body alone, but of the mind—and that liberation from it lies not in resistance, but in love.

The origin of this wisdom comes from Ram Dass’s lifelong journey between the realms of intellect and spirit. Once known as Richard Alpert, a Harvard professor of psychology, he sought the nature of consciousness through science, and later through spirit. His transformation under the guidance of his Indian teacher, Neem Karoli Baba, led him to discover that true peace is not the absence of suffering, but the understanding of it. This quote is the essence of that realization: that our painful thoughts, when met with awareness and compassion, dissolve into love—the very force that sustains the universe.

“Pain is the mind,” he says. For indeed, pain begins as thought—memories of what has been lost, fears of what might come, judgments about what is. The mind spins its web of sorrow, binding the heart in illusion. But beyond thought lies the witness, the still consciousness that observes without attachment or reaction. It is the spiritual heart, the seat of awareness that exists before fear and after death. When one descends from the noise of thinking into the quiet of being, pain loses its grip, for it cannot survive the light of pure attention.

Ram Dass does not advise us to flee from pain or deny it. Instead, he urges us to love it—to hold even our suffering as sacred. “Love them to death,” he says of painful thoughts. This is not mere metaphor, but spiritual alchemy: when one meets pain with love, the pain dissolves. To hate one’s pain is to feed it with resistance; to love it is to embrace the lost part of oneself that cries for healing. The mystic does not fight the storm—he opens his arms and lets it pass through, knowing that only through surrender does peace arrive.

Consider the story of the Buddha, who in his enlightenment discovered the truth of suffering. He was not spared pain—his body aged, his followers quarreled, his loved ones died. Yet he no longer suffered, for he saw pain as a teacher, not an enemy. His mind rested in the witness, in that silent awareness Ram Dass describes, where all things arise and pass away like clouds in the sky. This is the same wisdom reborn in modern language—the teaching that freedom is not found by controlling the mind, but by seeing through it.

To “love painful thoughts to death” is to transcend them through compassion. It means to hold every sorrow, fear, and memory in the embrace of consciousness, until it melts into light. This is the great work of the soul—to transform pain into understanding, judgment into mercy, and fear into love. When one learns this art, even the darkest thought becomes a doorway to the divine. Pain ceases to be punishment; it becomes purification.

The lesson, then, is this: do not run from your pain, for it is your greatest teacher. When the mind torments you with thoughts of regret, fear, or loss, step back into your witness, the still observer within your heart. Look upon your pain as you would upon a crying child—with tenderness, not contempt. Say to it, “You, too, are part of me. I will not abandon you.” In that moment of love, pain begins to die, and in its place arises peace—deep, abiding, eternal.

So, O seeker of truth, remember the wisdom of Ram Dass: that pain belongs to the mind, but love belongs to the soul. When pain comes, do not curse it; love it to death. For in loving even your suffering, you love the whole of your being—and there, in the still center of your heart, the witness awakens, free and radiant, untouched by the shadows of thought.