There are a few other things to say about feeling tones.  

First, it may help to remember that feeling tones are not emotions like anger, joy, fear, grief.  Those emotions are not specifically singled out in Buddhism but fall under the heading of the Third Foundation of Mindfulness - mindfulness of mind.  Feelings tones are simply the valance of feeling - the immediate positive, negative, or neutral tone that arises in response to a contact.

Last week we talked about feeling tones that arise from input from the body in the form of the five senses - sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and sensations.  

In addition, feelings tones can have as their contact events that originate in the mind.  Here feeling tones link us to the third foundation of Mindfulness - mindfulness of mind.  An example of a feeling tone that arises from a mind event would be when we suddenly have an unpleasant memory, or thought or imagining.  Or conversely, if we imagine how good chocolate cake would taste right now or how pleasant it would be to visit with family.  

These feelings tones are mind only events - starting with some arising in the mind that prompts a feeling tone.  These feeling tones can lead to more thoughts about the contact proliferating and expanding and taking us into more arisings that can each engender their own feeling tones, cascading one upon the next in a profusion of feeling tones each building or adding to the one before.  

These mind-induced feelings tones can be felt in the body as when the memory of an unpleasant event to come or just past is felt as an ominous feeling in the pit of the stomach.  Or the memory of the wedding of a loved one brings tears of happiness to the eyes.  

So feeling tones (vedana) link body and mind by responding to either bodily sensations through the five senses or mind events like memories, thoughts, fantasies, planning.  Whether from contacts with body or with mind, feeling tones are positive, negative, or neutral.  They arise in immediately response to an initial contact and are not under our control.  They may be influenced by situations which are under our control, but the feeling tone itself is not.  

The Buddha makes a further important distinction in our vedana/feeling tone experiences - the distinction between those which are worldly and those that are unworldly.  The basic distinction here is whether this contact and its ensuing feeling tone will lead us forward on the path - such as the pleasant feeling of deep meditation or will not lead us forward on the path such as a pleasant feeling that leads to craving chocolate.  Unpleasant unworldly feelings might include a sadness when it becomes clear to us that we are not awakened yet or perhaps when we did something unskillful we regret.  These feelings lead us forward in our practice.  Neutral unworldly feelings might be wisdom or equanimity - clear seeing and balanced view versus worldly neutral feelings of delusion or mind wandering.

So feeling tones (vedana) have an ethical component to them.  They help us know at any moment whether our thoughts and speech and actions are leading us forward on the path or not leading us forward.  It is reassuring to know that we have an ethical weather vane so close at hand.

This week we’ll listen to a different feeling tone meditation, this one created by Mark Williams, scholar, professor, researcher who co-developed Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and the new course "Deeper Mindfulness: Exploring feeling tone frame-by-frame”, an 8 week course similar in structure to Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and MBCT which I mentioned last week.  

I’ve included a quote from from the website of the course again this week:

Ancient traditions saw feeling tone (vedana) as a fundamental element of every moment of experience and a central aspect of mindfulness practice. Learning specific practices to help us become aware of feeling tone allows us to see clearly the very instant where we become caught up in pursuing or rejecting something and become entangled in a web of emotional distress. Meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein has said that mindfulness of feeling tone is one of the master keys that both reveals and unlocks the deepest patterns of our conditioning.

https://oxfordmindfulness.org/course/deeper-mindfulness-exploring-feeling-tone-frame-by-frame-3

Freedom from suffering lies within us in every present moment and it begins with feeling tone.