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audiodharma:
  talks:
    - date: '2021-05-10'
      mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/13471/20210510-Diana_Clark-IMC-guided_meditation_feeling_tone.mp3
      speakers:
        - speaker_name: Diana Clark
          speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/240
      talk_start_time_seconds: 0
      title: 'Guided Meditation: Feeling tone'
      url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/13471
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location_city: Redwood City, CA
video_unavailable: false
youtube:
  id: 6v0PmefPOcM
  imprecise_upload_date: '2022-05-04'
  title: 'Guided Meditation: Feeling Tone; Talk: The Broken Promises of Pleasant Sensations'
  upload_date: null
  uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center
  uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter
youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v0PmefPOcM
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# Guided Meditation: Feeling tone - [Diana Clark](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/240)

_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._

## [Guided Meditation: Feeling tone](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/13471)

Good evening, good evening, and warm welcome, warm welcome. So we'll start with a little bit of a guided meditation and just settling into this moment and taking a meditative posture. A posture that expresses dignity and resolve maybe, but as well as softness and kindness. So some uprightness but without stiffness or rigidity, and feeling into the posture. Does it feel balanced? Does it feel supportive for meditation practice?

Tuning in to the experiences of sitting here. Feeling the pressure of whatever it is you're sitting on against the body. So maybe if you're sitting cross-legged on the floor, the pressure against the legs and the buttocks. You're sitting in a chair, maybe different parts of the legs, or if you're sitting on a bench or a couch.

Feeling the connection between what we're sitting on and the body. We're grounded. We're connected here, here. And hopefully, the pressure against the body is not unpleasant. It might be neutral, maybe a little bit pleasant. I'm sitting here on—I'm not sure why, but I think there are three zabutons. Three of the big cushions. It's very pleasant actually.

Tuning in to other sensations in the body, maybe more subtle. Maybe not. Maybe there are some uncomfortable sensations that are anything but subtle. Maybe the sensations of breathing. The movements the body makes in association with breathing. The chest, the belly. Maybe feeling the air going in and out of the nose.

One way to simplify our experiences so that we don't get lost in thought so much, or so that they don't create more suffering, more difficulties, is just to notice the feeling tone. Is this experience, this sensation, whatever it might be, is it pleasant or unpleasant or neither, or we could say neutral?

Sometimes it's helpful to make a label, use a label, something like _unpleasant, unpleasant, unpleasant, pleasant, unpleasant, unpleasant, pleasant_. So something like this, that whatever experience, sensation arises in the mind, feeling into the tone, the texture, the flavor. These are the only three choices: pleasant, unpleasant, neutral.

If it feels like you're getting tangled up—"I'm not sure, is this pleasant or unpleasant?"—or if you feel like you're playing whack-a-mole and like really slamming a label on the experiences within, is there a way that you might do this that is supportive? It doesn't have to be super fast. It doesn't have to be accurate so much. It's just simplifying our experience to the feeling tone.

What might we learn about our experiences if we apply these labels: pleasant, unpleasant, neutral? What do we tend to notice the most? Is the feeling tone long-lasting or fleeting? We don't have to judge it. We don't have to figure it out or understand exactly why those sensations are arising, just keeping it very simple. If it feels tiresome, you don't have to do it all the time.

So simplifying our practice by noticing pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, there's a way in which there might be more ease to help us stop the tumbling into more and more suffering. And with more ease, our life unfolds in a certain way, and in a way that allows us to have the bandwidth, so to speak, to support others. If we have more ease, then we're more available not only to take care of ourselves but to take care of others. So may our practice together be for the benefit of all beings.

## Dharma Talk

So good evening again, welcome. Welcome wherever you are and whenever it might be. Sometimes it's fun to imagine, you know, you might be listening to this years in advance or years from now. Who knows, whoever you are, wherever you are, you're very welcome here.

So one thing I'd like to talk about tonight is feeling tone, or _vedanā_[^1]. It is the Pali word in the language that the ancient literature is preserved in: _vedanā_. And many of you probably know that it's one of the foundations of mindfulness. When we talk about the Four Foundations of Mindfulness[^2], _vedanā_ is one of them, the second one. And often when we talk about it or teach about it, which isn't that often—more often it's about mindfulness of breathing or mindfulness of the body, or sometimes even mindfulness of the mind. So the body is the first foundation, the mind is the third foundation, _vedanā_ or feeling tone is in the middle there in the second. But often when we teach about it, we don't really unpack it or explore some of the depths or how it might be a support to practice. So we might just see what happens if we take kind of like this thread and pull it a little bit and see what gets unraveled. So this thread of looking at the _vedanā_, feeling tone.

So often _vedanā_ is translated as feeling or feelings, but then it starts to feel like emotions, right? We use the word feelings for sad or lonely or hungry or excited or something like that. But rather, feeling tone or sometimes even sensation is really what the Buddha is pointing to here. And over and over he defines them as pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant nor unpleasant, which we often just shorten to neutral. So feeling tone has only three different flavors, whereas emotions of course are more complex and it seems like there's an unlimited number of them. But feeling tone is this sensation, this experience. Pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Pretty simple.

And we might notice if we set this as kind of our lens through which we're looking—looking through the _vedanā_, looking through all of our sensations, we're looking at feeling tone, and this includes the seeing, the tactile, the hearing, as well as thoughts and thinking. Remember in the Buddhist tradition, thinking is one of the senses. Everything, every experience without exception, every experience is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.

And so if we were to tune into this simple categorization of our experience, rather than giving them labels about exactly what they are, but just to notice the feeling tone whether it's pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, it might seem dry or nitpicky or reductionistic. Or we might have some of these ideas like, "Why would I want to do that?" We might feel like it's dismissive of the richness, the fullness of our experience.

But there can be times in which simplifying just to pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral can be a tremendous support. Sometimes when things are difficult, it can be a little bit overwhelming or we feel lost, or we feel confused, or we just feel overwhelmed by the way that we feel. And then just to simplify it down to pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. This is a way that kind of can not only simplify things but also sharpens our awareness. So instead of getting lost in story-making based on the experience—that this uncomfortable experience of my knee, which reminds me of that bicycle accident that I had, which reminds me that that person that I was cycling with, they didn't stop fast enough, and all these stories we might have—so simplifying down to this feeling tone kind of nips in the bud some of the story-making we might be having. And it's just one way of looking at our experience. So there might be a time in which it's helpful and supportive to simplify things down to pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral, and maybe there's other times when it makes more sense to feel the emotions. But that's a different practice, so I'm just talking about one particular practice here.

And so not only does it simplify our experience to practice this way, but it helps create the conditions for more and more freedom. And that's a little bit what I'd like to talk about tonight, because _vedanā_, we will notice, is a key link. Pleasant sensations create the conditions for desire and clinging, which then create the conditions for suffering. Unpleasant sensations create the conditions for dislike and aversion, which is just another form of clinging and is a form of suffering. And neutral feelings also create the conditions for delusion, that is just not quite connecting with our experience at all and not even really being aware of it at all. And ignorance also leads to suffering. So we can see how paying attention to the feeling tone is a way in which, if we could somehow interrupt this connection that goes from a pleasant feeling tone to craving to suffering, is a way that we can diminish our suffering.

Of course one of the messages that the Buddha was teaching was that the pleasures we seek, no matter what those pleasures are, whether it's cookies or sexual encounters or status-enhancing experiences or online purchases or points in a video game, whatever it might be, that some of these pleasant experiences evaporate quickly. I'm sure you've noticed this, and not only do they evaporate quickly, but they leave us thirsting for more. This hedonic treadmill, that even though we might have some pleasant experiences, then we kind of adapt to that, and then we just want more, and then we just want more. And so we rarely are having this feeling of contentment. So we overestimate—this is what human beings do—we overestimate how much happiness pleasant sensations will bring us and how long the pleasant sensation will last. So we keep on chasing after them.

But if we look at the psychology and biology of natural selection, we'd say that this makes perfect sense that humans would do this. That they would overestimate how much happiness pleasant sensations would bring and overestimate how long that happiness would last. Because if we look at natural selection, the original function evolutionarily speaking of even having pleasant sensations or unpleasant sensations was to support organisms approaching those things that are helpful and avoiding those things that aren't helpful, right? So we've inherited this genetic code that means that we have pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral sensations. There was selection pressure for us to have these sensations so that genes could get into the next generation. Natural selection isn't a "designer", but the selection pressure wasn't for us to be happy so much as to get genes into the next generation.

And it wasn't so much that we had to see everything clearly. There wasn't so much selection pressure for absolute perfect seeing things clearly. Instead, natural selection would say actually it's a little bit helpful to have a certain amount of delusion so that there are perceptions and beliefs that make it more likely that our genes will get into the next generation. That's what we've inherited our genetic code from.

So some of the selection pressure is that achieving goals—goals of eating, impressing peers, having sex—should bring pleasure. And because humans tend to pursue things that bring pleasure, the pleasure shouldn't last forever. Because if the pleasure didn't subside, then we wouldn't seek it again. Then we would just eat once and we would be satisfied. We would have sex once and then be satisfied, never have to have it again. We would raise our status in our community once, never have to do it again, right?

But then here's where the delusion part comes in. And I'm getting these ideas from Robert Wright in this book that he wrote, _Why Buddhism is True_[^3]. I think it's a very interesting book. I read it quite a number of years ago and I've just been looking at it recently again. And he's positing that not only is there selection pressure that achieving goals should achieve pleasure and that the pleasure should not be long-lasting, but that there should be a little bit of delusion involved. That organisms should focus on the effect that pleasure will accompany the goal, whatever it is that we want or desire. We focus on the pleasure, and we should not focus on the fact that the pleasure will dissipate shortly after we've experienced it. They're fleeting, they're impermanent.

So for those of you who are listening to the guided meditation I did earlier, if we notice, if we're looking at the feeling tone, we see it's changing, or our mind is going maybe from one feeling tone to the next to the next. But maybe we get on a jag where we're just noticing _unpleasant, unpleasant, unpleasant_. Those tend to be a little bit more compelling, but we're also noticing that it's not like a constant sensation. So a little bit of this delusion is that we don't quite notice in our daily life, and when we're pursuing what we desire, we don't think about it, nor do we really notice how short-lived pleasant experiences are. And so this is another way in which noticing _vedanā_, the feeling tone, can really be a support for us. When we start to see, "Oh, this is really short-lived. It's impermanent," then we're less likely to really grab onto it, identify it, and make a whole story out of it.

So we can practice with this regularly, just noticing the feeling tone of our experience either in meditation as we did in the guided meditation, or we can do it in daily life too. And we don't have to analyze, judge, compare, figure out why it's pleasant or unpleasant, or why we're noticing the pleasant ones and not the unpleasant ones or anything like this. We're just keeping it really simple: pleasant, unpleasant, neutral.

And so one thing that we will often notice is that sometimes if something is really pleasant or really unpleasant, we don't bring that into our meditative experience somehow. We try to separate ourselves from it in some particular way. We will come out of it. If we're in meditation and something really unpleasant happens, very often we shift our posture or stop meditating or something like this. That's one thing we might notice.

Something else that we might notice is that actually, it's the feeling tone that we are attached to or averse to, rather than the objects. We might think that we're attached to the fantasy that we're having, or that we are averse to the sound of the neighbor's dog barking, or averse to certain sensations in the body, but actually, it's that we are more attached to the pleasant feeling that's associated with the fantasy. It's more that we are repelled by the unpleasantness that's associated with the uncomfortable feeling in the body or the sound. So it's a way in which we might get a little bit closer to what it is that's kind of pushing us around.

But to also get back to the idea of the impermanence of the feeling tone, of how they're just fleeting. The Buddha, of course, recognizes this and it's part of his teachings, but I appreciate very much this short passage here where the Buddha says: "Just as various winds blow in the sky—winds from the east, winds from the west, winds from the north, winds from the south, dusty winds, dustless winds, cold winds, hot winds, mild winds, strong winds, all kinds of different winds—so too, various feeling tones arise in this body. Pleasant feeling arises, painful feeling arises, neither painful nor pleasant feeling, that is neutral, arises."[^4]

So this can be a real support for us in our practice, to notice that actually it's these pleasant sensations that we are often getting tangled up in, and then to really notice how they are changing, really changing.

But the Buddha talked more about the feeling tone, and in particular, he talked about some of the delusion that we might have that natural selection kind of primed us for. We don't notice maybe some of the unpleasantness of pursuing what we desire. We're just focused on what we desire, the pleasant experience that we are imagining that we might have. And to support this, there are a few colorful similes that the Buddha gave.

So this simile of waking up after a dream of sensual pleasures. We can imagine what kind of dream this might be, but here he gives some specifics. The Buddha says: "Suppose a person dreamt about lovely parks, lovely groves, lovely meadows, and lovely lakes, and on awakening they saw nothing of it. So too, a practitioner considers thus: sensual pleasures have been compared to a dream by the Blessed One; they provide suffering and despair, while the danger in them is great."[^5] So the suffering and the despair is that when we imagine something that we really want, we might actually get it, but it's not satisfying in its way. Or if it is satisfying, it's so short-lived. So there are these broken promises, that the pursuit of sensual pleasures or any pleasant sensation is these broken promises of how it's going to make us happy or how it will be pleasurable for a long time.

There's another colorful simile that maybe highlights more the despair associated with this. The Buddha says: "Suppose a dog, overcome by hunger and weakness, was waiting by a butcher shop." These poor dogs, right? "A skilled butcher or their apprentice would toss the dog a meatless bone smeared with blood. What do you think? Would that dog get rid of his hunger and weakness by gnawing on this meatless bone smeared with blood? No, venerable sir. Eventually, that dog would reap weariness and disappointment."[^6] I can imagine gnawing on a bone, trying to get some nourishment, trying to get something satisfying out of it, and just not finding it. I find this very evocative. We have this expression, "trying to get water from a stone." In the same way, trying to get nourishment from things that can't be nourishing. So in some ways, some of these things that we're pursuing aren't really nourishing, but we find ourselves kind of gnawing on them anyway.

But I don't want to demonize pleasant experiences or sensual pleasures. It's part of the human experience. And of course, it's also part of the path of practice. The Buddha talked about that not all pleasant experiences should be avoided. Not all pleasant experiences bring suffering and danger. And specifically, he pointed to the pleasant experiences associated with behaving ethically, the bliss of blamelessness. _Anavajja-sukha_[^7] in Pali. I just like saying that word, _anavajja-sukha_. This is when we behave in wholesome ways and we know that we don't have any remorse or regret, that we didn't intentionally harm anybody. It doesn't mean that unintentionally we might not have harmed ourselves or others, but we really were practicing non-harming to the best of our ability, without any little footnotes like, "Yeah, okay, well I had to tell that lie," or whatever it might be. When we have this bliss of blamelessness, to know that our behavior is appropriate, that's a good feeling. That's a good feeling to not have remorse, not have regret, and just by maintaining the basics of ethical conduct.

And not only the bliss of blamelessness, but mindfulness itself can be an experience of happiness or can be a pleasant experience. Because when we're mindful, that is, when we arrive and experience the present moment, at that time we're not caught up in reactivity. There's not a proliferation of thoughts, this thought train where we're building on, "And then this, and then that, and then that"—this big complicated story. Those are not associated with settledness and ease. But instead, if we can be mindful, it can bring a certain amount of ease and settledness. It's subtle, but there can be this little bit of joy even: "Ah, yes, okay, I'm here. And at this moment I'm still breathing and things are okay at this very moment." You know, it doesn't mean everything's perfect, and I don't want to be a Pollyanna, but being mindful—probably you've noticed this, otherwise you wouldn't have a regular meditation practice, right? You have noticed sometimes that there is this ease and this pleasant sensation associated with it.

And part of what's nice about really noticing the happiness or the pleasant sensations associated with mindfulness is that this subtle happiness of being in the present moment actually can be aroused at any time. It doesn't have to be just when we're on the meditation cushion. All it requires is just turning towards our experience, like "What's happening right now?" and then just remaining aware of that experience. It can be done at the same time as everything else we're doing. It doesn't have to be separate. So this is a pleasant sensation, a pleasant experience that we can bring with us all day, every day.

Then another pleasant experience that the Buddha brought in, and some of you might be familiar with this, is that before the Buddha was the Buddha, that is, before his awakening when he was practicing to become awakened, the tradition holds this story that he remembered when he was a young boy, that there was this pleasant meditative experience that he had.[^8] And then the memory of that comes to his mind, and he asks himself: "Why am I afraid of a type of happiness that is apart from sensuality and unwholesome states?" And this was the turning point for him that enabled him to meditate and become awakened. So this recognition that he doesn't have to be afraid of this type of happiness or pleasant sensation. _Sukha_[^9], it's the opposite of _dukkha_[^10]. Sometimes it gets translated as happiness and sometimes it gets translated as pleasant sensation, usually depending on the context. So the Buddha asks himself, "Why am I afraid of this type of pleasant sensation that is apart from sensuality and unwholesome states?"

So this is how we can practice. Notice feeling tone, including noticing pleasant sensations. It's part of our human experience that we possess desire, chasing after pleasant experiences. Natural selection created the conditions in which we all do this; it's part of the human experience. But then we can ask ourselves, "Is this helpful or not helpful, pursuing this pleasant sensation? Does it lead to more freedom or less freedom? Does it lead to more ease or less ease?"

And we might find that just simplifying down to the actual feeling tone might be a way in which we can simplify it and not get carried away. It might bring us into something that is more satisfying, brings more happiness, even though it is fleeting. Even though it is not the greatest happiness, because awakening, of course, is the biggest happiness. _Mahāsukha_[^11].

So _vedanā_, feeling tone, and pleasant sensations can be a really rich place for practice. And may our practice with feeling tone help us find more ease, and may it support us in supporting others. Thank you.

---

[^1]: **Vedanā**: A Pali word typically translated as "feeling" or "feeling tone." It refers to the pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral sensations that arise when our senses make contact with the world.

[^2]: **Four Foundations of Mindfulness** (_Satipaṭṭhāna_): The core mindfulness practices in Buddhism, categorized as mindfulness of the body, feelings (_vedanā_), mind, and phenomena (_dhammās_).

[^3]: _Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment_ is a 2017 book by evolutionary psychologist Robert Wright.

[^4]: This simile can be found in the _Ākāsa Sutta_ (Discourse on the Sky), Samyutta Nikaya 36.12.

[^5]: This simile of the dream is found in the _Potaliya Sutta_, Majjhima Nikaya 54, which outlines the dangers of sensual pleasures.

[^6]: Also from the _Potaliya Sutta_ (MN 54), using a blood-smeared, meatless bone to illustrate how sensual pleasures offer little satisfaction and much weariness.

[^7]: **Anavajja-sukha**: The "bliss of blamelessness" or the happiness derived from knowing one has acted ethically and harmlessly.

[^8]: This refers to the Buddha's memory of spontaneously entering the first _jhāna_ (a state of deep, wholesome meditative absorption) as a young boy sitting under a rose-apple tree, as recounted in the _Mahāsaccaka Sutta_ (MN 36).

[^9]: **Sukha**: A Pali word meaning happiness, pleasure, ease, or bliss.

[^10]: **Dukkha**: A Pali word often translated as "suffering," "stress," or "unsatisfactoriness."

[^11]: **Mahāsukha**: The "great bliss" or ultimate happiness associated with full awakening and liberation.