This week we move to the critically important second foundation of mindfulness - mindfulness of feeling tone or Vedana in Pali.
Feeling tone is our very first response/reaction to a contact through our 6 sense doors. Remember the Buddha considered the mind the sixth sense door. So through any of these portals, we can receive a contact - a sight, a sound, a physical touch, smell, taste or some mind event - a thought or memory or mind state. We immediately get feedback through these feelings tones about that contact. A large percent of these contacts are registered as neutral which for most of us is nothing at all. Others register as pleasant - the scent of flowers, a gentle breeze on the face, deep blue water, a spring bird call. And still others register as unpleasant - a loud screech of brakes, too bright light as we emerge from darkness, a sewer smell, hitting our funny bone. This initial feeling tone is most often a conditioned response - except for the more elemental ones such as loud noises or maybe funny bones. And it is followed by other reactions.
Feeling tone occupies a unique position in our inner world - linking the information, the input from the outer world which is felt by the senses in the body (and mind) with our mind’s ability to receive and know the positive, negative, or neutral reaction that arises in response. I call it a reaction because it is immediate - occurring in the first micro seconds of contact - and without moderation. When our minds register feeling tone, they kick into gear. If the feeling tone is pleasant, the mind wants more and instructs the body to get it. When the feeling tone is negative, the mind doesn’t want and, depending on the strength of the negative feeling tone, moves the body away faster or more slowly. When the feeling tone is neutral, the mind registers it as nothing much and looks for happiness elsewhere.
The important aspect of the reactions and responses laid out above is that the feeling tone, while a conditioned response, is automatic. The response that follows - even as immediate as it is - is a choice. The choice is largely based on habitual patterns of attempting to satisfy our wants and cravings with immediate actions to obtain something, avoiding unpleasant contacts with evasion or direct opposition, or becoming distracted when it is unclear with mind wandering, fantasizing, searching for something pleasant - delusion.
Mindfulness gives us a different choice.
When we experience a pleasant bird call sound, we also experience and respond to the pleasant feeling tone that arises. Then we begin to want, to crave, to take action to get more of the bird call and that pleasant feeling. We stop and listen, cup our ears, hold our breath, and sometimes follow the sound deeper into the forest. What we often fail to do is to turn inward and investigate that pleasant feeling. Where is it arising the body? How does it feel? Expansive? Soft? Happy? We may fail to notice the pleasant feeling turning into craving, even greed for more.
Once that pleasant feeling has turned into wanting, the enjoyment has become anticipatory and in the future. The pleasant feeling we initially had in the present moment of the sound has been transformed into a subtle suffering.
In meditation, we can sit and notice the pleasant feeling of listening to the bird call and see how it turns into leaning forward into the silence for the next bird call and the feeling of disappointment when it doesn’t come right away. With mindfulness we can enjoy the pleasant feeling, notice the beginning of the leaning in, release it and linger longer with the pleasant feeling. We can be with the silence without the leaning forward for something to happen. If the bird call returns, we can enjoy it. If the silence remains, we can be content with silence and let it deepen.
If the craving has progressed a little farther, we can notice the wanting and striving for more, the leaning forward, the tightening in the chest and we can let go right there. Mindfulness can track these initial movements from expansion and softness to tightening and constriction and then mindfulness can investigate, learn how the suffering arose, then sit back, relax, and let go.
Mindfulness can be introduced at any point in our experience. But no where else are the forces of greed and aversion and delusion as weak as when they are first arising. It is here at the feeling tone arising, the first breath of vedana, that mindfulness can be most effective, can interrupt the automatic habit patterns of suffering.
When I learned this on retreat at IMS many years ago, Guy Armstrong explained that vedana or feeling tone was a critical choice point in the chain of reactions that lead to suffering. Recently, its importance has grown in the field of psychology and mindfulness study to the point where Mark Williams, well known meditation teacher, researcher, and co-founder of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for prevention of depression, has created a new course which puts vedana squarely at the center of our investigations into the causes of suffering. The course is called "Deeper Mindfulness: Exploring feeling tone frame-by-frame”, an 8 week course similar in structure to Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and MBCT.
This paragraph from the website of the course helps illuminate the quality and importance of feeling tone:
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
Tonight we will listen to Ven. Analayo’s guided meditation on feeling tone*. This meditation deepens and widens with repeated listenings. Once the meditator has become familiar with the guided meditation, it is beneficial to go through the meditation without the guidance taking time where time may be needed to explore more deeply the different arenas of feeling tone in the body.
Freedom from suffering lies within us in every present moment and it begins with feeling tone.
*The mediation on Feeling Tone can be found on the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies website under Resources>Bhikkhu Analayo Resources.