Thanissaro Bhikkhu

As for pain, don't push it away.

Let pain simply be pain.

Let pleasure simply be pleasure.

Let them simply fall into the category of feelings.

Don't go thinking that you feel pleasure, that you feel pain.

If you can let go of feeling in this way, you'll be able to gain release from suffering and stress because you'll be above and beyond feeling.

This way, when aging, illness and death come, you won't latch onto them, thinking that you are aging

that you are ill, that you are dying, you'll be able to release these things from your grasp.

If you can contemplate purely in these terms that the five khandhas or aggregates

are inconstant, stressful, and not self.

You won't enter into them and latch onto them as me or mine.

But if you don't analyze them in this way, you'll be trapped in dying.

Even your bones, skin, flesh and so forth will become mine.

This is why we're taught to contemplate death.

So that we can make ourselves aware that death doesn't mean that we die.

You have to contemplate until you really know this.

Otherwise you'll stay trapped right there.

You must make yourself sensitive in a way which sees clearly that your bones, flesh and skin are empty of any self.

That way you won't latch onto them.

The fact that you still latch onto them shows that you haven't really seen into their inconstancy, stressfulness and lack of self.