Why would anyone want to practice staying with pain? This was a question raised by another student in my mindfulness teacher certification program. He was specifically referring to the pain that comes from sitting on a meditation cushion for an extended amount of time. "Why not just move? Isn't it stupid to sit in pain when you can so easily obtain relief?" Sounded reasonable to me. Jack Kornfield wisely responded, "We practice sitting in pain because there may come a time when we cannot move." There is value in painful practice. That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do. This lesson beautifully coincided with a lecture I listened to later in the day by Seth Godin. He spoke about the importance of training. For a person who has not trained, running a marathon is a painful endeavor. For those who practice and train, a marathon becomes less painful. In fact, those who practice and train find them rewarding enough to do multiple ma...