Last week we talked about feeling tones a little and had a more open-ended practice.  This week we will listen to Mark Williams’s guided meditation on feeling tones which may help further orient us to the universe of feeling impulses that shape our actions.  

The Buddha considered these feelings tones to be the ideal place to discern the beginnings of craving and thus to abandoning the craving before it can develop into clinging and attachment.  Mark Williams (bio given below) developed a full 8 week course on feeling tones in the format of MBSR which demonstrates the importance of these early signals to modern researchers on meditation as well. 

It bears repeating that these feeling tones have an ethical dimension to them.  We can discern worldly versus unworldly feelings tones by whether they lead to thoughts and actions that lead us forward on the path or lead us into craving, aversion, or delusion on the level of bodily sensations.  

One key to distinguishing unworldly feeling tones is whether they arise out of some renunciation - turning away from a sensual pleasure or pain or a lessening of attachment to sensual pleasures.  A rather clear and not terribly subtle example might be renouncing a food not on one’s diet and feeling a temporary freedom from the temptation of that food.  This could also apply to checking texts, news feeds, etc on one’s cell phone.  

The temporary freedom from a compelling sensual desire is key.  It embodies a sense of no longer being in thrall to such temptations - at least for a time.    

I’ve included a quote from from the website of the course again this week. The course is called “Deeper Mindfulness:  Exploring Feeling Tone Frame-by-Frame:

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

Mark Williams’s short bio is here:  

Mark Williams is Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Oxford. He co-developed Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy for prevention of depression. His books include The Mindful Way Through Depression (with John Teasdale, Zindel Segal & Jon Kabat-Zinn); Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World (2011) and Deeper Mindfulness: The New Way to Rediscover Calm in a Chaotic World (2023, with Dr Danny Penman) which shows how feeling tone can be a new gateway to mindfulness.

Some of you may want to hear Mark Williams’s wonderful reading of the poem “Hokusai says” by Roger Keyes.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkTvAi9UdLw