If experience is not real, what basis do we have to say anything about anything? From my in situ life, pain is more real than any supposedly real object in the world. I know pain is real. I might be mistaken about things.
Yes, true, experience is real, but why is experience viewed as painful? Is it not just perspective? Some people enjoy pain. Alan studied asceticism and talked a great deal about pain, but I haven’t fully gotten my head around what he is suggesting. Somehow, I figure, pain threatens the self idea, so the less of a self we feel, the less pain we realize. It’s hard to articulate what I do not understand lol. I suppose, obviously, if I’m riding an atv, then I’m enjoying my ‘self’ and therefore pain becomes real. If I were not separate from the atv, the deer, the woods, such that I could enjoy being so, then perhaps both the enjoyment and pain would fade as I cease to identify as a separate entity. Do you see what I’m trying to say?
They enjoy certain kinds of pain, pain in the context of their painfilled psyches which can lead to net gains, despite the unpleasant facets of the pain.
Yes, though there would still be pain, just it would be simply another phenomenon. It seems like in such a state one is not judging, but it is founded on judging the self, the emotions, desires.
Right, it’s a self/other relationship. So if there is no self, there is no pain. I think that is what Alan is trying to bring together.
That’s confused me about buddhism: if there is no one to suffer, why is the remedy for suffering to realize that there is no one to suffer?
What? No! Bruce Lee 
Sure, especially if he is still fighting.
Depth cuts a bunch of different ways. We couldn’t abstract without what most people call thinking. But sometimes that direct experiencing is very deep and all that mental babbling is much more shallow, even when nicely packaged in an academic paper.