Carriage: Sitting with Pain

A peaceful interlude,
During which to work on sitting well.
My practice revolved around posture
And how to balance that with pain.

I had gotten caught on fiddling
To see if I could reduce it,
But this wedged me into it further,
And yet I did not want to ignore it.

How can I reconcile these two:
Not to make the pain worse
Or increase my discomfort
But not to obsess on it either?

For when I focused on comfortable posture
I got caught on pain,
Then couldn’t get off it,
And this discouraged me from sitting.

Today I had an idea:
To neither deny my condition
Nor give in to it
Or get stuck on it.

I sat and repeated my resolve
And set about getting settled,
Then I thought it again
And began my sitting.

Keeping my mind on holding my pose
I reiterated my intention,
And found that this invention
Helped me achieve my goal.

My attention fixed on posture
Tackled the pain in two ways:
One by maintaining a good position
And the other by concentration.