This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Dharmette: Feeling Tone (Vedana) Is A Changing Perception

So, on the theme of vedana (feeling tone), the Second Foundation of Mindfulness, continuing our exploration.

In Buddhist psychology, vedana is one of the Five Aggregates, one of the five aspects of experience. And also in the Abhidhamma^[1], in the higher teachings, it's one of the seven universal mind factors that are present in every moment of experience. It is always concomitant, always showing up together with consciousness. Whenever consciousness at any of the sense doors touches an object, recognition (saññā^[2]) arises, and vedana^[3]—feeling tone—arises in every moment of experience, with every object. It is associated with objects of the mind, body, ear door, etc.

We often don't notice it, of course, when we're not tuned to it, many times when it's neutral. As I mentioned yesterday, neutral might not be as easy to detect sometimes, but if we notice the absence of pleasant or unpleasant, then neutral could become more apparent.

Now, it turns out, interestingly enough—as you also noticed—vedana is not just impermanent. It doesn't just keep shifting and changing moment to moment. One moment, "Oh, this is unpleasant, my shoulder is tight." "Ah, my breath is smooth." Unpleasant, pleasant, unpleasant, pleasant, pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, neutral.

Not only does it keep shifting in the field of experience, but what's even more fascinating—and I was hoping with the guidance this morning you would see it with the sounds—is that even for the same object, the feeling tone can switch. One moment it can be perceived as pleasant; another moment the same experience, the same object, could be perceived as unpleasant, or neutral, or pleasant again. We can go back and forth and back and forth.

So much of the vedana, the feeling tone that our mind perceives, has to do with our perspective, our assumptions, our mood, and our emotions. Have you noticed sometimes when, say, you wake up in the morning and maybe you don't feel so well or you're grumpy, everything seems unpleasant in the environment? Everything seems to have an unpleasant vedana. Or imagine when you're happy, or say you're in a new environment, you're on vacation. Ah, everything seems pleasant. The skies are pleasant. Maybe you love walking in the rain, and when you're traveling, it's just so pleasant. Whereas if you were back at home^[4] and it's all wet, it's unpleasant.

There are so many ways to experiment to see that vedana is impermanent. It keeps shifting and changing. And yet, like a marionette, like a doll on strings, when we perceive—or rather, let's say when vedana arises, the feeling tone arises—then it gets amplified. Maybe it's a tiny little unpleasant feeling at the beginning, and then it becomes "unpleasant, unpleasant, I don't like it, make it stop, make it go away, I hate it." And then clinging, attachment, and pushing away follow.

But it all starts from that tiny little vedana that we don't notice. We'll explore that aspect of it more tomorrow as we look into the wheel of Dependent Origination^[5], why vedana is so important. We'll explore that in the guided meditation tomorrow and in that teaching of the dharma.

So for today, continuing with the theme of noticing the impermanence of vedana, noticing how it shifts even for the same object. For example, another way you can experiment with it is with cold water, especially cold showers. You say, "Oh, cold, cold," and then if you just say, "Oh, refreshing, refreshing," now it can change and really feel good. So there are so many ways that the vedana of the same stimulus can shift.

In the Abhidhamma, the compendium of Buddhist psychology, the only sense door that has a positive or negative vedana inherently attached to it is the body door. All the other five sense doors are invariably neutral, and they are simply an outcome of one's own evaluation.

It turns out that, of course, all the sense doors have receptors—to light, air vibrations for sound, chemical stimuli for taste or smell—but none of them have any distinct set of nerves that signify harm. The bodily sensation is the only one, according to the Abhidhamma, that has dedicated sensors that might actually detect harm and have an unpleasant vedana associated with them.

I find this particularly interesting that the ancient contemplatives made this observation. Actually, when I gave this teaching some time ago, a neuroscientist heard it on a recording and sent me a note saying, "Yes, actually this is another example where Buddhist contemplatives really intuited something that we have later found independently in neuroscience and psychology." The body sense, touch, is made up of several receptors: mechanoreceptors, which feel pressure; thermoreceptors, which feel temperature; proprioceptors, for body position; and finally nociceptors, which only respond to high-intensity, potentially damaging stimuli. Nociceptors are normally inactive until some intense influence acts on them, which we interpret as painful.

Fascinatingly, none of the other sense doors have this. So whatever arises—if a sound arises, or if a sensation arises, unless it's really high intensity—there is no inherent vedana. It's all impermanent. It all arises and passes away, and it's all dependent on our perception.

The invitation that I have for today is to notice how your mind makes comparisons. You compare this to that: "Oh, this is pleasant. Oh, this is unpleasant." And I hear various comments right now about, I think, the mic, etc. So notice how the mind labels. These are all practice opportunities: how our minds find something rather unpleasant, and then lead into other steps of Dependent Origination.

From an object at a sense door, contact arises, then vedana arises, and then taṇhā^[6] arises—craving, wanting, or not wanting. And then upādāna^[7]—clinging—and becoming arises. All of these make up our worlds of liking, not liking, and getting caught. Notice how we get caught in liking and disliking, trying to make things go away or wanting more of them. It all starts with a vedana. This tiny little like and dislike then snowballs into our reactivity, into our likes and dislikes, our preferences, into wars. All starting from pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral.

This is why this is such an important teaching and is said to be the place where we can actually stop the wheel of Dependent Origination, of suffering going round and round. This is where we can notice it: between vedana and taṇhā. When you notice pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, before it becomes "I like it, I want it," or "Oh, I don't want it, make it go away." Before we get caught. It's a very important link.

So the invitation for today is to notice how your perception and your assumptions influence vedana, and how impermanent it actually is. Notice how it arises and passes. It just changes on its own, not just for the overall experience, but for any particular experience.

Q&A: Rapid Shifting of Feeling Tones

There was one question that was asked of me, and I wanted to comment on that because I thought the question was really of benefit for everyone.

The idea that vedana can come up with different sense objects, or with one sense object, and they can arise in rapid succession. For example, there might be a difficult emotion or difficult thought, like, "Ah, unpleasant." And then you might see it with awareness, so there could be pleasantness associated with the seeing. They can rapidly shift and change. There could still be the unpleasantness of the emotion or difficult thought, and the pleasantness that you're being mindful of it. The mind will go back and forth so fast that you think they're both present at the same time, but actually, the mind is going back and forth.

And the other thing is that, as we will explore tomorrow and Friday, the teaching on vedana is not to try to push it away or make all vedana become neutral. That's not the goal of practice at all.

However, it is to have freedom in the midst of it. They arise and pass. Pleasant, unpleasant. Yes, you get to enjoy the pleasant without clinging to it. The unpleasant arises, yep, it's just unpleasant. It's just unpleasant, that's all. Unless it's a physically dangerous stimulus. If it's just an unpleasant sound, it's just unpleasant.

So you can have freedom in the midst of it, instead of trying to shift and change the vedana. That's not the teaching. And we'll explore this again more in the coming days.

Thank you all for practicing, both for your own sake and the sake of all those whose lives you touch. Be well, take good care.