Leigh Brasington
/ 
/ Revised 05 Nov 25
Mindfulness of vedanā is the second establishment of mindfulness found in the Mahāsatipaṭṭhānasutta Sutta (the Discourse on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness). Vedanā is the initial categorization of a sensory input, and there are only three possibilities: pleasant, unpleasant and neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant. We do have an English word that is a somewhat reasonable translation: "valence." But "valence" is not a word that's well known, except perhaps in chemistry. It indicates whether something is positive or negative, which is very similar to what vedanā is pointing to.
Vedanā is usually translated as "feelings" but this leads to confusion since the word "feelings" in English most often refers to emotions. Vedanā is not emotions! Sometimes you find "vedanā" translated as "feeling tone" – that's better, but still easy to misunderstand. So for this essay, I will leave "vedanā" untranslated.
Vedanā seem to take place in the old brain, the so-called reptilian structure. Because of that, it's not under your conscious control. Within a tenth of a second, you automatically judge any sensory input as either pleasant, unpleasant or neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant. It's easy to see where this would have an evolutionary advantage. If it's a pleasant sensory input, it should be investigated further to see if there is something available that will provide an advantage – food, a mate, etc. If it's unpleasant, it should be investigated to see if it signals danger that needs to be dealt with. And if it is neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant, it probably can be safely ignored. This gives an organism a first line filter for incoming sensory input. Some of the input is important and needs to be acted upon – the pleasant and unpleasant input. Most of the input is probably unimportant and can be safely ignored – the neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant input.
This is not to say that all the neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant input is unimportant! Vedanā are just a simple first-line filter. Indeed many neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant inputs are important. Some pleasant input is dangerous – e.g. addictive substances. And some unpleasant input is beneficial – e.g. vigorous exercise or nasty tasting medicine.
Vedanā – or at least reacting positively or negatively to sensory input – is a hallmark of life. Trees bend towards the light. They probably don't they find sunlight "pleasant;" they do that because their cells grow faster in the shade than in the light. But they are reacting to a stimulus, just like they will excrete sap to cover a wound. Amoeba will go towards food and away from salt. Again, I seriously doubt amoeba are experiencing pleasant and unpleasant; for a simple organism like an amoeba, the reactions are hard wired – but their reactions are certainly basic responses to sensory input.
As life becomes more complex, the reactions and responses to sensory input become more complex as well. You can see this in your pets. Cats and dogs like various sensory inputs and they don't like others. So really, what it means to be alive is to respond to your environment. I don't think rocks experience vedanā, because they don't respond to their environment. They do respond to gravity, but I don't see a rock thinking, "You know, I don't get enough sunshine here. I think I'll crawl out and go where it's less shady." So to be alive is to experience vedanā. By the time life become as complex as humans, ranges of reactions and responses and their interplay with vedanā become quite complex. As we'll see below, vedanā run our lives.
If I ring a bell, it sounds nice – and you can't change the sound to be not nice. If I scraped my fingernails down a blackboard, you'd find that unpleasant. For sounds, it's the ratio of the overtones that matter. If the ratio of the overtones of the sound make small whole numbers, we find it pleasant. If the ratio of the overtones don't make small whole numbers, we find it unpleasant. That part is pretty much hard wired. But this is for a simple sound.
Music actually has a lot more going on than just one simple sound after another. There's the anticipation of what's coming next based on what you've heard so far. So processing music can be far more complicated. When I went to Bali, some other travelers in the guest house I was staying at said, "There's a going to be a gamalan concert in the next village tonight. We should go." I was like, "Oh, yeah, I've heard about gamalan music, We should go." And so we did.
A gamelan is like a xylophone – many pieces of metal that you hit with a hammer. The musicians started playing. And it was weird. It was definitely weird. It wasn't exactly pleasant, even tho every hammer strike produced a sound such that ratios of the overtones were small whole numbers. But they were using a different scale than the DO RE MI scale, and I wasn't familiar with it and found it weird. It took me about three pieces of music before I caught on to it. And then I really liked it! I've definitely very much appreciated gamalan music ever since.
This experience (eventually) made it clear that auditory experiences in music are more than just one pleasant sound after another. There's the anticipation based on what's come before and so forth. So when we say pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, a lot of the pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral comes from our reactions and responses to what we're experiencing.
The following is what the Buddha has to say about mindfulness of vedanā:
"And how does one abide contemplating vedanā as vedanā? Here experiencing a pleasant vedanā, one knows that one is experiencing a pleasant vedanā. Experiencing a painful vedanā, one knows that one is experiencing a painful vedanā. Experiencing a vedanā that is neither painful nor pleasant, one knows that one is experiencing a vedanā that is neither painful nor pleasant.
"Experiencing a pleasant sensual vedanā, one knows that one is experiencing a pleasant sensual vedanā. Experiencing a pleasant non-sensual vedanā, one knows that one is experiencing a pleasant non-sensual vedanā. Experiencing a painful sensual vedanā, experiencing a painful non-sensual vedanā, a sensual vedanā that is neither painful nor pleasant, a non-sensual vedanā that is neither painful or pleasant, one knows what one is experiencing."
The Pali is sukha vedanā, dukkha vedanā, and neither-sukha-nor-dukkha vedanā, which I'm translating as pleasant, unpleasant, and neither (or neutral). The basic idea is just to know what you're experiencing. So why is this important? Well, the vedanā run our lives. We go around seeking pleasant vedanā, and running from unpleasant vedanā, and ignoring the neutral vedanā.
It's almost like when we were born, we were given an instruction manual that reads
We need to pay attention to the vedanā and not get lost in the vedanā by just running after pleasure. If that was all that it took, we'd subsist on cake and candy and cookies and cocoa and only delicious tasting foods, because that gives you pleasure immediately. But no, there needs to be some more processing of the input other than, "Is this pleasant or unpleasant?" As I said, the vedanā happens in the old brain. It occurs within a 10th of a second of a sensory input. Then we process what we've experienced by identifying it, giving it a name, conceptualizing it - this sañña in Pali. Then we have all sorts of thoughts and emotions and ideas based on what we are experiencing.
The vedanā of sound we talked about a little already. For the vedanā of sight, your eye only sees colored shapes. You see the colored shapes and then you interpret the colored shapes as flower or bird or whatever. But your eye is only seeing colored shapes – the sight vedanā is the pleasantness, unpleasantness or neither of the colors and the shapes. The pleasantness you get from seeing the bird and the flowers, that's actually the vedanā from your processing of the colored shapes, identifying it as bird or flowers or whatever, and then thinking, "Oh, I like birds and flowers." Your sixth sense, the mind sense, also experiences vedanā. In fact, most of the vedanā we are aware of are the vedanā generated by our mental reactions to our external sensory input.
To work with visual vedanā, perhaps a visit to a modern art museum is in order. You look at a painting and you don't know what you're looking at. It's just colored shapes. You like those colors together – pleasant sight vedanā. You like those colored shapes but you can't conceptualize what it is until you read the little sticker. Looking at abstract art is more likely to isolate the sight vedanā from the downstream processing, which is all we're usually noticing.
I once read an interesting article that said that 80% of our mental activity is triggered by other mental activity. Only 20% comes from the outside world via the five external senses. So when the Buddha speaks of the end of dukkha, he doesn't mean that you won't ever have any pain if you stub your toe. What he means is you won't add to the physical pain by your mental reaction and getting all upset – it's just painful. Maybe you do say something, but you're not adding any more dukkha on top of it. So I suppose what is the Buddha is promising that with your non-dukkha reactions, you can get rid of 80% of the Dukkha you would have experienced. Maybe you'll even get rid of even more than that, because you'll be wise enough that you won't do things that produce five sense vedanā that are unpleasant as well.
The Buddha had a bad back. Sometimes he would give an introduction to a Dhamma talk and then he would turn to Sāriputta or Moggallāna or someone, and say, "Please elaborate. I need to lie down and rest my back." So he would go lie down, and listen to the discourse. When it was finished, he'd come back and say, "If I'd given the discourse, I would have said exactly the same thing." Clearly he was still dealing with unpleasant touch vedanā. That just doesn't go away. If he were to hear somebody scraping their fingernails down a blackboard, he would experience it as unpleasant, but he probably wouldn't think, I'm going to kill that guy, like some of us might. What we're trying to do is change our reactions.
There's the Sallatha Sutta at SN 36.6 – the Dart (or Arrow). The Buddha says an uninstructed worldling experiences something physical that produces an unpleasant vedanā. Then the uninstructed worldling gets upset, and their reaction to it produces unpleasant mental vedanā. It's as though a man were struck with a dart and then immediately struck with a second dart. But an enlightened one, if they have the very same physical experience, they do experience the unpleasant physical vedanā, but they don't get upset. They don't add to the problem with their mental reaction. It's as though a man were struck with one dart but is not struck by a second dart.
Full awakening is not going to stop your bodily aches and pains, but it'll stop you from reacting negatively to your aches and pains. You won't add a second dart; you won't add dukkha on top of dukkha. So the practice is to simply be aware of the vedanā. It's just your initial categorization that's pleasant, unpleasant or neither. So one experiences a pleasant vedanā and knows it. One experiences an unpleasant vedanā and knows it. If you can't identify it as pleasant or unpleasant, well, then it falls into the third category; thus one has an experience that's neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant and knows it.
All sensory input is going to generate vedanā. This as part of our mental processing – and when there's a sensory input, we are going to process it. The initial part of processing sensory input is an automatically generated vedanā. So why is it important to be mindful of these vedanā? In the Buddha's teachings on dependent origination, craving is said to arise dependent on vedanā. As we know from the Second Noble Truth, dukkha arises dependent on craving. From the Third Noble Truth, we know that with the ceasing of craving, there is the ceasing of dukkha. So if we can get our mindfulness in there at the point of experiencing the vedanā, we have a chance to use that mindfulness to not fall into craving. With mindfulness of vedanā, we can be mindful of conceptualizing (sañña) that sensory input and then mindful of our reaction and/or response to that sensory input. This gives us a chance to just enjoy pleasant experiences without craving for more or to keep them. And it gives us a chance to just deal with unpleasant experiences without falling into craving to get rid of them or keep them away. Plus mindfulness of neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant vedanā gives us a better chance of determining if the experience really can just be ignored.
The first part of the Buddha's instructions is just to simply know what vedanā you are experiencing. Then he discusses sensual versus non-sensual vedanā:
"Experiencing a pleasant sensual vedanā, one knows that one is experiencing a pleasant sensual vedanā, or experiencing a pleasant non-sensual vedanā, one knows that one is experiencing a pleasant non-sensual vedanā." The same is said for unpleasant sensual and non-sensual vedanā, and for neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant sensual and non-sensual vedanā.
So first in the instructions come just the three basic categories; then each of the three categories is subdivided into sensual and non-sensual. The literal Pali words are "with flesh" and "without flesh." There are two schools of thought on what this means. One school is what we've talked about – "with flesh" is the five sense vedanā, and "without flesh" is the mind vedanā. So the practice is to distinguish between the vedanā you're getting through your five senses and the vedanā of your reactions, the two might even be different. You hear the sound of an airplane go over. That's actually a bit unpleasant, but maybe it reminds you that, yeah, when this retreat is over, you're going to go to Hawaii, and it's going to be great there. So you have that experience as a pleasant experience, even though it was triggered by sound input that generated an unpleasant vedanā. Or you're just about to finally enter the first jhanā, and the bell rings to end that meditation period. The bell sounds nice, but you're upset because the meditation period is over, and you didn't get to the jhanā – you got interrupted, so you have an unpleasant reaction to it. It's important to pay attention to the external five sense vedanā and the internal mind vedanā of your reaction/response to the sensory input. There can be a difference.
There is another way to interpret sensual versus non-sensual, or "with flesh" and "without flesh." This is worldly versus spiritual. Worldly pleasant vedanā would arise from something delicious to eat or a nice sound – worldly, ordinary pleasure. A pleasant spiritual vedanā can arise from practicing Metta, from being generous, from entering any of the first three jhanās. So there are sources of vedanā available in the mundane world and as well as the spiritual world that are pleasant. As for worldly unpleasant vedanā, that's when you stub your toe, or there is a loud sound, or something similar. Unpleasant spiritual vedanā could arise from your sitting posture. It can be a bit unpleasant, but you don't want to move because you know that's going to disturb your concentration. Unpleasant spiritual vedanā could arise from getting a deep insight into anicca, dukkha, or anatta that is deep enough that you find it disturbing. Perhaps from a deep experience of anicca, you understand that everything is changing and there's no real source of security. That might produce rather unpleasant vedanā in your mind. From dukkha, realizing nothing is going to be ultimately satisfying might produce unpleasant vedanā. It's very useful to get those insights even though they produce unpleasant vedanā. An example of a neutral, worldly vedanā is the sensations in your foot right now, which, of course you weren't even noticing until you read this sentence. They were so neutral that you were just ignoring them. A neutral spiritual vedanā is generated by equanimity: equanimity as experienced in Brahmā Vihāra practice, equanimity as found in the fourth jhanā, the equanimity of full awakening.
I think both of these interpretations are useful. What exactly the Buddha actually meant, we don't know, because he just said "with flesh" and "without flesh." But looking at them in terms of spiritual and mundane, and looking at them in terms of five sense vedanā versus the downstream mental vedanā are both very useful. It's also very important to realize that when the Buddha promises the end of dukkha, he's promising the end of you reacting in a way that produces mental Dukkha vedanā.
[I then asked if there were any questions or comments on what I had said so far.]
Q: I think our experiences are conditioned by all sorts of things. Not everybody is going to hear a bell and hear it as pleasant, if they've had some sort of stimulus response pattern in the past, which has been negative in association with the bell.
A: The person, who finds the bell unpleasant, heard the bell and it produced a pleasant sound vedanā, but the association from the past was unpleasant, and they didn't notice the pleasant sound vedanā. They immediately got lost in the downstream unpleasant association, and that's what they were aware of. But the sound itself generated a pleasant vedanā and it's only the downstream reaction that is producing the negative vedanā. The way that your ear is set up is that it's wired pretty directly into the low level functioning of your brain, and it's going to interpret a sound that has the ratio of overtones as small whole numbers as pleasant. It's going to do that in a 10th of a second, but you're going to go immediately into your follow up processing. That's also going to happen very quickly. That processing could produce an unpleasant reaction that is going to completely override the recognition of the initial sound vedanā, and all you will actually be aware of is your unpleasant mental vedanā. That's just how we're we're wired. It's so fast that we almost always override/miss the five sense vedanā with our reactions.
So the "some sort of stimulus response pattern in the past, which has been negative in association with the bell" is part of the mental processing. But the bell sound vedanā is pleasant – and missed.
Q: Some teachers say that if you pay enough attention to what you think is neutral, it'll move off that center mark a little bit. It's just that it's not that interesting, so we find it boring, or just it just doesn't need to be noticed.
A: Maybe. But the Buddha is not teaching metaphysics. Working with vedanā is working with your subjective experience. Sure, if you want to really pay attention to neutral vedanā and see if they are actually a tiny bit pleasant or unpleasant, that's fine – you'll really know your vedanā as the Buddha instructs. But whether or not you dig that deep, it's going to be your subjective categorization that matters as to how your processing unfolds after the sensory input and its vedanā.
Q: I remember when I was first learning about vedanā, there were a couple teachers who said, you really can't teach vedanā, because it happens so fast that it's very hard to notice, because the mental association that follows is usually so strong
A: It is possible to teach vedanā, and it is possible to experience vedanā prior to the downstream mental processing – if you're concentrated enough. Ayya Khema didn't start trying to teach me about vedanā until I was skilled at all eight jhanās. And then she said, "Come out of the eighth jhanā and listen and notice every sound, as to whether you're categorizing it as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Notice this prior to even interpreting what the sound is (sañña). You have to sit there at the ear door. And when a sound comes along, just catch the vedanā of the sound prior to interpreting what the sound is as well as prior your thoughts about your interpretation of what it is."
At first after I could only do it exiting jhanā eight, I didn't have the concentration necessary to do it without that if I just sat down and tried to do it. But having worked with vedanā for some time now, and having actually experienced the mind generating vedanā, I get it. I can now catch the vedanā, even if I haven't been meditating. If I am not deeply concentrated, it is not possible to catch it in exactly the same way as it goes by, but it is possible to remember the whole sequence clearly enough to pick out the vedanā of the sound as distinct from the vedanā of my reaction.
It's also possible to notice that the identification (sañña) of the sound was happening after the sound (obviously), as well as after the vedanā of the sound, but before my reaction happened. If I'm not really concentrated, I can only do it, more or less, in retrospect. I only was able to do so after I had practiced it sitting there with post jhanā concentration and listening and actually having a mind that was quiet enough and quick enough to pick up the vedanā by itself. I think this is such an important aspect of the Buddha's teaching that it's worth me putting my interpretation out there. It's a really good practice to do after you're well concentrated. It is possible to begin to pick up the vedanā even after access concentration. If you're really concentrated, it's definitely possible to pick it up, but it takes some work.
Q: We have the teaching that in seeing, there is only seeing, so would catching the vedanā with just seeing, be what the Buddha was pointing to in the teaching to be here?
A: I don't think so. I think the Buddha was instructing Bahiya to experience the world prior to conceptualizing what he was seeing. So it's really a practice about sañña, which is usually translated as "perception," but I think "conceptualizing" is a much better translation. So in seeing, can you just see seeing, rather than seeing objects? Because the seeing of objects is the conceptualizing. Can you just see the visual field? Vedanā isn't really addressed in that teaching.
Q: My dog just barked loudly, and it echoes. So the first vedanā is just the loud sound, but the second kind of source of vedanā is the reaction to the dog, the conceptualizing what that sound actually was. So you're actually, getting two rounds of vedanā.
A: Yes, exactly. There's the ear vedanā and then the mental processing of the sound vedanā (the mind vedanā). It's actually sound vedanā, and then mental vedanā, and then maybe another mental vedanā and more mental vedanā. So there's unpleasant sound vedanā because it's loud. And then there's identification dog barking, and then there's wondering what he's upset about. "I wonder if the mail has arrived? I'm I'm expecting something (pleasant vedanā). No, it's too early for the mail. I wonder if that's somebody trying to break in (unpleasant vedanā)?" So you're getting all sorts of vedanā from your mental processing, And you never really noticed the vedanā of the barking sound, because that's over with, and it's all your mental processing that's catching your attention now. And like with visual input the brain is totally conceptualizing the input and then reacting/responding to that concept.
Q: It makes a lot of sense to me, the idea that certain impulses are just hardwired into our brain as either pleasant or unpleasant. But is there any evidence or reason to think that for some people, positive vedanā or negative vedanā of the five senses are just hardwired more strongly for certain people; that it can vary from person to person, or is the variations just an overlay that happens at the mental level for the mental vedanā?
A: I don't really know. I suspect everybody is kind of the same, roughly speaking, in terms of the intensity of their vedanā for the five senses. It's mostly, if not exclusively, at that second (mental) stage that it differentiates. I don't really know how much five sense vedanā differentiation there is from person to person. Some people are more sensitive to sounds. Is that due to their processing of the sounds, or is it due to just the sound itself? I don't know. This would be an interesting thing to research if you want to go get a PhD to try and find out. If I had to guess, I would guess that the processing downstream is where the difference really lies, rather than just in the actual five sense vedanā, but I'm just guessing here.
It is possible for vedanā to change. Think about all those horrible vegetables you had to eat as a kid. They actually tastes pretty good now. The vegetables didn't change, but your taste buds change. Now, why did your taste buds change? I don't know – maybe aging? Maybe you ate a lot of spicy food and you burned out some of the parts that didn't like nasty vegetables?
I had an example of fairly dramatic taste change happened to me the summer after my senior year in high school. I was working at a cotton experiment station in Mississippi in the weed control department. I was out in the hot Mississippi sun. It was 95 degrees and 80% humidity, not exactly the most fun job. But sometimes somebody had to go back to the headquarters building and take a message from the straw boss back to headquarters – and get the reply, of course. If you got picked to take the message, this was really good. You did have to walk half a mile or so over the fields to get back to headquarters, but headquarters was air conditioned, and there was a Coke machine in the basement.
So once I got picked and I headed out to headquarters. I went upstairs to the weed control department, gave them the message, and shortly they gave me the reply. Then I headed downstairs to the Coke machine. I got down there and they didn't have any Coke – or Pepsi or Seven Up. They only had Dr Pepper. Well, where I came from, Coke was King. I mean, if you wanted to ask somebody if they wanted a soda, you'd say, "You want a coke. What kind of coke you want? You want a Coke or Pepsi or a Seven Up?" Coke was the generic term. We also had Dr Pepper. And, well, Dr Pepper was weird. It looked like Coke, but it did not taste like Coke. I already had my dime out. I'd been looking forward to something cold and sweet for the last 20 minutes. Okay, I'll have a Dr Pepper. Now I tasted the Dr Pepper for being a Dr Pepper, not that it wasn't Coke. And it tasted so good! In fact, it tasted a lot better than Coke. I've appreciated Dr Pepper more than Coke ever since. Dr Pepper immediately went from weird because it wasn't Coke, to me actually tasting the taste of Dr Pepper, which was fine – and preferable to Coke.
So some of the weird taste things may be associated with some external situation. I do think our taste buds do change as we age. So the strong taste that we get as a child from the vegetables sort of wears out as we get older. The negative aspect of it disappears and the vegetables taste okay. Or maybe it's some dramatic change, like my Dr Pepper episode.
Q: Can you help clarify the vedanā that happens and then is that when perception come in? Is that when you perceive what it is? The perception happens right after the vedanā? That's what it feels like to me.
A: Yes. First there is contact, and contact is the coming together of three things: the sense object, the sense organ and sense consciousness. This is followed within a 10th of a second by a vedanā, and then followed by identifying, conceptualizing what it is. That's usually called "perception" – sañña.
One of the things I really like is when I go hiking in the woods, and I see something, and I can't tell what it is. I can look at it and watch my mind churn as it tries to figure out, what I am looking at. Then finally it clicks, "Oh, it's mushrooms growing on a stump." Now I can't unsee mushrooms growing on a stump, the sañña has hit. But in those two, three, four, 10 seconds, perception hasn't yet happened. But the vedanā happened. It was probably neutral. I was just seeing colored shapes over there, brown and other brown. I didn't notice the vedanā, but I did notice that I was having trouble identifying what it is I was seeing. The perception/conceptualization/sañña definitely happens after the vedanā. It's way more after than a 10th of a second in this particular mushrooms-on-a-stump case,
The perception is then followed by processing what I've perceived. I think, "Oh, I wonder if those mushrooms are edible. I wish my friend was with me, who knows about mushrooms. I could ask her. She could tell me all about these sort of mushrooms." That's all coming after I've identified it as mushrooms.
So our first processing is to divide sense experience into pleasant, unpleasant, neutral – or attractive, repulsive, neither. Now that we've got that sorted and eliminated two broad categories, let's identify it with by conceptualizing it. We don't have to try and figure out, is it something negative, because we've already experienced the positive aspect. So we don't have to look through all the folders in our database of potential sense experiences; we just need to examine the positively labeled ones. Then we find it, it's what is called mushrooms. Then we start thinking about it, and that's all sankhāra – our thoughts, emotions, memories, intentions that arise based on it.
So the sequence unfolds in the order contact, vedanā, perception, thoughts/emotions/reaction/etc. The suttas delineate this in the HoneyBall Suttas at MN 18.
Q: So I'm a little bit confused, because I don't remember ever hearing about mind vedanā. Maybe I missed it. So I thought the vedanā was purely at the sense doors. Now I've realized mind is a sense door and mind contacts also generate vedanā. But if you smell something, and it's unpleasant, then I thought the next step was perception, where you would identify it as liking or not liking. Is this where you want to unhook between the initial vedanā before you start saying liking and not liking?
A; You smell the smell and it smells pleasant, or it smells neutral, or it smells unpleasant, Then you identify what it is – you conceptualize the smell: it's apple pie, or it's cow poop or whatever. Then you start thinking about it, "I really like apple pie," or it's coffee and you think, "I don't actually like coffee. I like the smell of coffee, but I don't like coffee itself." These thoughts are actually generating vedanā as well. The thoughts are connected to the liking and not liking. If you are really mindful of the vedanā, you can then identify the smell, and even decide whether or not you like it. But with the mindfulness active, you can like it, but not fall into craving (hopefully!). Or you can not like it and again not fall into craving for it to go away (hopefully!).
Q: But it seems like there's too many steps. I was thinking that if you just go from the pure sense vedanā, and then you don't go to, liking, not liking, you don't go to aversion, for instance with a smell, that's where the freedom lies. But if you go then into the mind, it seems like there's more, even though it all happens really fast and it seems like it's harder to unhook.
A: You want to unhook it as quickly as possible, which is probably going to be at the step of sañña – perception, conceptualizing, naming, identifying, and then not go into the problematic reaction. So you smell something; it's unpleasant. You identify it, "Oh, it's cows." And then that's it. You don't start thinking about, "Oh, the poor cows," or "I want a hamburger." or anything else. You just leave it right there. And that's the tricky bit to guard your reactions.
This is what is meant by guarding the senses. When one sees a sight with the eye, one does not grasp at the signs or secondary characteristics. It doesn't say you don't see the signs or secondary characteristics. So you see it, and you can identify the sight you're seeing, but you don't grasp at it. You don't get lost in your reaction to it.
Q: My understanding is that it's not a matter of making ourselves not experience a secondary vedanā. The vedanā, whether it's from the original, external sense input or from some other mental process, is out of our control. But we can learn to control our reaction to that sensory input. So I see a postcard, which is just colors and shapes, and I have a neutral vedanā from it. Then I turn it over, and it is trees and a beautiful forest. Oh, that's my my mental vedanā, which is very positive, because I love beautiful forests and and yet, at that point, I thought the key was, okay, so I've had this positive mental vedanā, but I can still, if I mindful of all this stuff happening, I can see, oh, that's positive mental vedanā, just like you said, initially, notice it, but don't get lost in it and and don't start craving the idea of more beautiful forest, or whatever. Just take it as it is and just move on.
A: That's hopefully what I was saying. So if I said something that led you in a different direction, I'm sorry for the confusion. So there's contact, there's the vedanā of the five senses, smelling, seeing whatever it is. There's you identifying what it is – that's sañña. And then there's your mental processing. But your mental processing is also going to generate vedanā. Now, if can you keep your mental processing away from craving and clinging, it may produce pleasant vedanā. This is not a problem. If your mental processing produces unpleasant vedanā, but if you can keep it away from craving and clinging, then you're keeping it away from going into dukkha.
The place to break the chain of dependent arisings, or one of the places to break the chain, is after the vedanā. That may be before or even after the perception step, but you just try to be mindful and avoid letting your reaction proliferate into craving or clinging.
There's the external sense input and its vedanā. And if the article I referenced was right, then we're going to have four times as much mental processing of what came in, each of which is going to produce a vedanā. Hopefully the mental processing doesn't run off into craving and clinging, but whatever it is, it's going to produce vedanā as well. It could be that the craving produces pleasant vedanā: "I'm going to get this. It's going to be so great when I get this."
Craving can initially generate pleasant vedanā, and then the letting go can also generate pleasant vedanā: "Oh, that pie is really nice, but I know that the person who fixed it is making it for the party tomorrow, and I can't have any. I hope they have a fun time at the party." There's the disappointment of not having the pie, but because no craving set in, there is not a problem. So when there's a sensory input, there are probably multiple vedanā being experienced. There could be multiple vedanā generated by the external sense inputs, if it goes on for a bit. And there could be a lot of different response vedanā – mental vedanā. Or there could be just a one simple input from the outside and lots of response generated vedanā. Or you could be really concentrated and you hear a sound and it's neutral and nothing more happens. You didn't even bother to identify what the sound was.
Q: I'm trying to process what you were saying and it seems the most important thing is that this is kind of a tool to deal with cravings and reaction, so you don't get stabbed a second time. So when you are talking to somebody unpleasant, on seeing your reaction, you can actually receive it as a reaction and let go, right?
A: Yes, this is the practical aspect of it – don't get lost in your vedanā. Don't go just running after what's pleasant and running away from what's unpleasant. Pay attention to your reactions. And notice that when we get pleasant external sensory input, we have a tendency to want to run towards it. Sometimes that's a wise thing, and sometimes it's not. And the same with the negative reactions, sometimes running away is a very good idea, and sometimes it's not. And all that we can really control is our reaction to our sensory input. The vedanā are happening in the old brain that's outside of our control, but we definitely can control the reaction, and that's the key point right there. Don't stab yourself the second time.
Q: I have a question based on some previous experiences of mine. Most of my sitting experience has been in the Zen tradition, and there the sitting tends to be very strict, like once you sit, you take your posture, you don't move. If your knees start to ache, you just sit. And I had a lot of pain, and the teachers would say, "Don't worry, it'll self liberate." I would sit for a week, no self liberation. Then I came back again to do another week and no self liberation. It became extremely frustrating. I have done it for years, but eventually, actually something like they describe as self liberation of this pain happened. Now when I get some tension, some pain in my knees, if I'm in a relatively concentrated place, it seems to me that it takes on a neutral, sometimes weirdly, even a positive quality. But I take it from what you presented, that in this paradigm, we would understand that that's actually just a change in my mental vedanā. I haven't done anything to change my hard wired response to that. And if I continue to practice this attention to vedanā, I would be able to see more clearly the underlying physical quality, because right now, just in my own experience, it almost seems like it's taken on a positive quality. But I suppose that's just a mental phenomenon.
A: That would be my guess – that it's mental. When I was very first introduced to vedanā, the teacher said, "Look at the unpleasant, the pains of your sitting, and just see them as unpleasant vedanā rather than pain. Get back to the raw experience, and you'll find that it's not a solid thing. There's some vibratory quality to it." So I begin investigating that. And in so doing, the aversion to what was going on dropped away, and then I was left with just, "Oh yeah, this is all this sort of tingly stuff that's kind of unpleasant, but it's not so bad." It's the reaction that makes it much worse.
My massage therapist is really good, meaning she really gets in there. And there are times I want to scream, "Uncle!" What I found was that the best thing was to put my full attention on the painful pressure and just go delving into the exact nuances of it. Whereas if I just sort of left it in the background, then my mind would try to squirm away from it, which, of course, didn't do any good, because then I'm wiggling on the table and she's not getting the knot out or anything. So yeah, a lot of the negativity to physical pain is our reaction to the physical pain. As long as it's not causing damage, then it's possible to look at it and see, "Oh, this is just these multitude of minor discomfort things that just aren't going away. And if I'd stop having an adverse reaction to it, try, stop trying to squirm away from it, then it's much more bearable."
In closing, a quote from Science Tech Daily:
Yale Researchers Uncover Brain’s Secret Filter for Decision-Making
| Back to Leigh's Home Page | Site Map | Site Search |
Leigh Brasington
/
/ Revised 05 Nov 25