Connecting to your pain is the first and perhaps most important teaching of the historical Buddha more than 2,500 years ago. It's the first truth of what are called the Four Noble Truths.

The first truth states the unavoidable, obvious facts of the world: Discomfort, sickness, old age and death visit every being, if we're lucky. Time, change and impermanence are the only things that endure. Everything else ends. It was no news flash even then, but the Buddha’s first truth is that being human is truly a tough gig.