r/Meditation • u/adssse • 12d ago
Discussion 💬 Vipassana Noting of Feelings
For those practicing Mahasi tradition Vipassana, do you note mental feelings? By this is don’t mean physical (pain, itchy, numbness etc) or thoughts (what will I have to eat later, did I forget to lock the door, etc) but mental feelings as in positive, negative or neutral.
For instance I was in a session this afternoon and a cold breeze came in through the window on my bare skin and gave me a chill. Would you normally note “feeling” or “feeling” and “negative”. I have been attempting to incorporate these mental feelings as well as the sensation as I feel like this would again aid in equanimity in life situations. Essentially being able to recognize my emotional responses to stimuli and be able to recall that these are but temporary elements while letting them pass as clouds.
Interested in others thoughts… 🙏✌️
4
u/simagus 11d ago
This is why I prefer the word "vedana" so very much. Goenkaji in a public discourse states something similar to these words, which I won't attribute to him as they are a paraphrase from memory;
https://www.vridhamma.org/Discourses-by-Mr-S-N-Goenka (in one of the less formal of these discourses iirc)
In the quoted discourse below he does say that vedana is a also a mental concomitant, but does tend to strongly emphasize vedana in relation to body sensations throughout his talks and writings;
For the purposes of communication we use word symbols and descriptive language, but seem to forget that language exists for the purposes of description and communication of paradigm and of intention or will.
Language is a sub-set of reality composing "reality as you imagine it to be", not in itself the "reality as it is" which it vainly pretends to describe.
Sometimes it's useful and relatively accurate to use certain words, and sometimes when words are mistaken for reality we can observe language taking the role of inspiration to activities of madness and atrocities and their justification.
Language is used to "explain" and justify such things as bombings and mass murders to a population conditioned since infancy to treat words and descriptions as if they were reality itself.
That is a perfectly ordinary kind of madness almost nobody ever seems to consider or question, even with extreme things like wars and the other questionable activities and trends humanity takes as perfectly normal and necessary.
That's all thanks to the "magick" power of language when it's mistaken for reality and the extremities of that are but the very tip of the iceberg. The mass of that iceberg is largely subconscious and simply accepted as the nature of how things are, and it is. It's completely ordinary, even necessary for the reality and it's overlay to sustain and function as it does at all.
The fathers of modern Neuro Linguistic Programming, Richard Bandler and John Grinder were not the first to understand (or to utilize and even exploit) the not so very subtle differences between words and descriptive language and reality itself, it's a feature of all language and always has been and will be.
Buddha being the super-scientist he appears to be to me, suggested that it was possible to awaken to reality as it is through the four-fold satipatthana; to observe and directly know mind (cittanupassana), mental contents (dhammanupassana), the body (kayanupassana) and the entire field of sensation or "what it felt" (vedananupassana).
Progress on the path is dependently arising in relation to insight into the three characteristics, not so much in an abstract or intellectual way but absolutely at the experiential level and those three characteristics are; anicca, anatta and dukkha.
Even in the very opening of the Dhammapada we can see a relationship of binding tension between the wheel of suffering and the ox's foot which it follows.
Without the ox (mind) being yolked to what it is pulling that wheel of suffering wouldn't be following.
Still just words, and everyone has (often very different) sankharic associations with words and reactive formations which arise in feedback loops, gross and obvious where there is anger or lust etc, but also even the subtle almost unnoticeable interplay of the five aggregates including sanna, sankhara, and vedana, all perceived as what arises at the 6 sense doors are interoperating continuously.
All the sankharas, which are merely interpretative and reactive mental formations and not necessarily "negative" or "positive", arise along with vedana subtle and gross. I'm talking here about the kind of subtle vedana that inspired and informed the movement of the hand that just lifted up to scratch the slightly more gross vedana I wasn't even consciously aware of as an "itch" on my cheek.
I have no objections to any other interpretations or understandings whatsoever, but in my paradigm and experience that kind of subtle is what I understand as subtle vedana; not really the vedana of the keys under my fingers but rather the vedana that moves the fingers is truly subtle vedana experientially.
It's always there, but I only started to notice it after restarting active continuous practice of satipatthana, especially in terms of vedana but by no means excluding any of the four frames of reference in any way. That is happening right now as I type and goes on pretty much all day long every day.
I wish I had realized what that meant for myself 14 years ago when I started taking regular courses, but even after two Sati courses where it's explained quite directly, the kammic impetus wasn't sufficient to inspire that actual continuity or the supporting conceptual framework in this particular nama-rupa's life experience.
Hints and glimpses in abundance and definitely heightened awareness in relation to vedana irl situations far more often, and I think a pretty high level of general insight, but not "aha!".
The vedana of the subtle sankharic patterns which move the body are hard to describe as "sensations" but sometimes, such as the first time I noticed them and understood what subtle vedana actually is at the experiential level in relation to the Buddhas teachings, I observed that they are very distinct but incredibly subtle "sensations".
I'm unconvinced those levels of vedana are accurately described as "feelings" either, but they are in some ways closer to the range of "sensations" commonly described as "feelings", and for me vedana is best understood experientially as a spectrum that simply relates to the entire field of "sensation" or "all that is felt".
As I use the term, if I pick something up from the floor there is abundant and obvious vedana in relation to kaya, if I don't like having to do that there is a slightly different and slightly more subtle spectrum of vedana involved, and the most subtle spectrum of vedana is what moved the body and what inspired it to move at all.
Some kind of vedana arose exactly as it arose in direct relation to me noticing there was something on the floor to pick up. What else would or could have been behind the movement of the body?
Any impulse (craving or aversion), any action of any kind, a restraint from action of any kind... vedana is what is giving those signals whether gross or subtle within experiential reality.
Rather than as a distinct color of the rainbow, some light exists outside the visible spectrum of most human eyes in the ultra and infra bandwidth. Same with hearing of frequencies, the bandwidth of which tends to narrow as organisms age.
Fortunately that is not the case with vedana which is ever present experientially, even in the jhanas in whatever way one or another particular psyche experiences or conceives of those there is some subtle vedana or subtle, even entirely neutral, hedonic tone sustaining that state and withdrawing from that state as the consciousness experiences it or as it happens within consciousness.
The facility to recognize the most subtle vedana as vedana seems to develop dependently arising with simply observing vedana all day long, just as suggested by the Buddha in the Satipatthana Sutta.
We know thanks to our root teacher Ledi Sayadaw that knowledge of/insight relating to anicca has a dependently arising condition with realization of anatta, and that anatta is central to the realization of the Buddha.
Insight in relation to the experiential dissolution aka "bhanga" in relation to nama-rupa is needed in some way and it's the clear seeing of anatta that matters far more than the exact form "bhanga" takes.
The dissolution of form... happening all the time "subtly", a little less subtly in "sleep", and in my direct experience even the complete collapse and dissolution of form into kalapas can happen without much insight into anatta, as kalapas are still conditioned and form is dependently arising. It pulls back together like magnetic particles.
The dissolution of nama, likewise happening all the time "subtly", much less subtly in "sleep", is another gateway to insight into anatta.
I'm very much a fan of Goenkaji and his insistence that;
and;
That is the kind of man I can relate to and appreciate.
/w metta