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By bringing together the Buddhist notion that suffering is intrinsic to all forms of our self-experience with Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological interpretation of selfhood in terms of the "habit-body," I show that vulnerability and meaningfulness go hand-in-hand. I then use this developed understanding of the nature of selfhood and suffering as the basis for a critique of various foundational aspects of contemporary, institutionalized healthcare. In particular, I consider ways in which oppressive social and political practices are instituted when the existential dimensions of pain are ignored and a medical model, based on the vision of pain as an alien threat to be eliminated, is adopted instead.