If we can learn to withhold our judgment that pain is terrible or harmful, then we can strip away its horrific mask, and it no longer appears so monstrous to us.22 We’re just left with the banal observation that our flesh is being stimulated “roughly,” as Epictetus liked to put it. It’s just a sensation. Through our judgment that it is intrinsically bad, unbearable, or catastrophic, though, we escalate the mere sensation of bodily pain into the inner turmoil of emotional suffering.
