?Core subjects covered over the course of this series:
vedan?s
dukkha
craving
clear comprehension
wise attention
right effort
mindfulness of feelings
the three characteristics
the three poisons
the four noble truths
the five aggregates
the six sense spheres
the twelve links of dependent origination

Format, length, and expectations of this series.

?This is the first long-format teaching series that I am posting to this site since I reset my teaching blog several years ago and is the first post of a teaching on the vedan?s that will be released in several parts.

Because of the depth and nature of this series, there will be a noticeable front-loading of definitions, concepts, and P?li in the early part(s) of this series as it's important to lay a proper foundation for what's to come, but these posts will become less academic and scholarly and more practical and applicable as they goes on.

There may also be a few supplemental posts published in-between the main parts of this series to cover some related topics to support the students and readers of this series to better understand and apply these teachings to their daily practice and to their worldly lives.

As more parts to this series are posted, I will be circling-back to previously posted teachings in the series to add links and navigation aids, and perhaps to update posts to reflect any changes in the direction and coverage of this series as I continue to write it.

This first post in the series will cover: what are the vedan?s, what are feelings in Buddhism?

?The purpose of this first part is simply to define the vedan?s and to lay the foundations for the practical applications of the teachings on this topic which will come in the parts that follow.

Without a proper foundation, a common language as it were, and an understanding on the part of the student, the more practical teachings on the vedan?s that will be explored as this series progresses will not have the intended substantive or penetrative potential as we work our way toward turning Buddhist theory into the actual practice of contentment and happiness.

While this is a "concise" guide, it will not be a short one;  entire books can be written about the vedan?s and there is a lot that I will be leaving out or only mentioning in-passing that the more advanced reader will no doubt pick up on.  Having said that, there is a lot that is going to be covered nevertheless in these teachings, so be warned that their length may reflect that. 

Why is this worth your time?

Because you want to be happy. 

There are few topics more relevant than the vedan?s worth mastering if you really want to cultivate the skills and practices needed to be unshakeably, if not defiantly, happy.

If you want to understand what it means to be a Buddhist practitioner (and not just a "Buddhist") well enough to become a certifiably happy person then you have to have a strong foundation to be able to skilfully think deeply enough about these concepts in order to better understand the depth of their meaning; and most importantly: how to practically apply these teachings to your life.  This is the only way that you will be able to fundamentally shift your inner-conditions sufficiently enough to incline yourself toward a worldview re-framing of your mind that can direct you away from the deeply ingrained habits that prevent you from genuinely developing resilient happiness, sustainable contentment, and actual peace of mind – especially when the going gets tough.

Enhance your practice beyond the scope of this post.

You are encouraged to continue your reflections and inquiry into the subjects covered in this series with your own supplemental research and contemplation, after all, what you get out of these teachings will be a function of the time and effort you put into understanding these concepts and how successful you can be in weaving them into your worldview.  It behoves you to continue your learning with further exploration into the covered-topics expounded on by other published teachings (books, compendia, etc); or more directly, with a qualified Buddhist scholar-practitioner teacher such as me or those like me.

Why bother with teachers?  (this is so important)

It is worth mentioning that it is critically important to have teachers on this Path: to make sense of all of this material; to put it into context; to explain the nuances, layers, and inter-connectivity of it all; and to help you apply it in ways that can only make sense to you — because each student, each person, brings to the table their our own understandings, views, sensibilities, strengths, weakness, preferences, perspectives, and skill gaps.

The Buddha never intended his teachings to be learned or followed without the proper support and insight that only experienced and veritably awakened teachers can provide.  Fact.

The aim and teachings of Buddhism are deep, subtle, and difficult to understand... we are working with, and trying to rewire, the mind after all.

Learning without teachers means learning piecemeal from this teacher here, that book there, this retreat center here, that video there, and that is no way to make sense of the many traditions and often conflicting teachings coming from the various lineages and flavours of Buddhism today, nor is it an appropriate way to get a solid and clear (personal) roadmap for progressing systematically along the Path toward the more profound teachings that are available, which can only be understood by those who have followed the path as intended.  Nor does it take into account the gaps in knowledge and practice which develop over time that only a one-on-one student-teacher relationship can course-correct.

The Buddha taught a gradual path, a gradual path that is rarely learned by modern Buddhists today, which is why so many people feel held back in their practice; left wondering why they aren't making the progress that they think they should be making.  Perhaps you know someone who feels this way.

Nevertheless, these points that I am making barely scratch the surface, nor can they be overstated, and you are welcome to reach out to me to learn more.

If you are serious about wanting to experience the benefits of your Buddhist practice, then do yourself the best favour you could ever do yourself: find a qualified, genuinely awakened teacher and start a conversation with him or her.

Final words of encouragement.

Finally, this teaching assumes that the reader has cultivated at least a basic foundation in the core teachings of the Buddha's Dhamma, but even if it's over your head, read on, because things will get rewardingly more practical and grounded for everyday life in a bit — especially in the parts of this teaching to come, but until then, buckle up.

?Now on to Part One, the introduction of the teaching.

May this teaching add value to your understanding, to your practice, and to your life.

How important to your practice toward contentment are the vedan?s?

They are critical.

If you genuinely wish to cultivate real-life resilience, contentment, and unshakeable peace of mind, then you must invest the time, energy, and determination to understand what they are and how to leverage them in your practice and in your day-to-day life; for those who do, their efforts will be rewarded by having a significantly calmer and happier experience as a human being, full stop.  That's not something that you can put a price tag on, nor is it a hyperbole.

The vedan?s are such a "potent force" in the activation of unwanted and harmful states of mind (such as anger, fear, insecurity, and depression) that the subject gets an entire section of the Sa?yutta Nikaya (the book of Connected Discourses in the P?li canonical collection of suttas) devoted to it with thirty-one (31) back-to-back suttas on the subject; this in addition to the hundreds of other suttas and commentaries that teach on the vedan?s to varying degrees.

The vedan?s are so important to our practice toward the cessation of our dukkha (that to say, to the development of our happiness) that the Buddha made it the second of only four pillars/establishments of mindful attention and mindfulness meditation (see Majjhima Nikaya, MN 10, the Satipa??h?na Sutta).

Entire books are written on the subject and countless lectures, teachings, and discourses orbit around the very notion of the vedan?s; and the amount of time that I spend talking about this topic in one form or another with my students is a clear indicator of the relevance and importance of incorporating this practice into our day-to-day lives if we ever hope to be free of the mental qualities that make us unhappy, angry, scared, or sad.  To learn about the vedan?s is to learn about making measurable progress toward Cessation in this very life.

Let's review the questions that will be answered over the course of this series on Buddhist Feelings, the Vedan?s:

What are feelings in Buddhism?What are the vedan?s?What do we need to know in order to understand them?How are they connected and affected by other Buddhist concepts about who we are?How is it that they can influence our moods so profoundly?How can we apply the understanding of the vedan?s in ways that genuinely help us to be happy all the time? (seriously)What is mindfulness of feelings and how do we do that in real life when we are out living our lives??Can we actually avoid ever having bad days? (spoiler: yes!)
(if it seems as if I have missed a question or two within the course of this post, it only means that I haven't covered it yet – and most of these questions will get deeper coverage in subsequent posts in this series, so subscribe to be notified of new teachings as they get posted)

In regard to this last question, 'actually preventing bad days at all'; this is my approach to the teaching and practice of Buddhism — and this is what the Buddha intended with his teachings: it's not a matter of "can we" avoid bad days, but rather it's about "how to" no longer have bad days ever again, regardless of the situations, circumstances, or people we find ourselves contending with.

This is the subject of this teaching, and make no mistake, this is Buddhism.

How is this Buddhism?

In all of the canonical teachings, discourses, stories, exclamations, histories, et cetera that are found in the roughly 17,000 suttas, it is a commonly held belief that the Buddha's teachings fall into two general categories:

    1. What dukkha is.
         (e.g., "suffering," "discontentment," "unsatisfactoriness," et cetera.)
    2. How dukkha ends.

??(for more on the subject of dukkha, please see my suggested readings of the Four Noble Truths on my links page).

In support of these Four Noble Truths, we are taught that everything — absolutely everything — physical or mental, material or immaterial, has the innately inextricable qualities of impermanence (anicca), of unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), and of being without-Self (anatt?) — collectively, these are referred to as the Three Characteristics or the Three Marks of Existence (pañcakkhandh?? ti-lakkha?a?). While the Three Marks are beyond the scope of this teaching it is worth spending some personal time looking into and exploring these notions. And while the teachings on the vedan?s are separate from the teachings of the Three Marks of Existence, they are tightly interconnected to impermanence, dukkha, and nonself (just as all concepts within Buddhism invariably are) as they also possess these qualities; after all, as I wrote above, everything possesses these three characteristics, even (especially) feelings.  This will be helpful to keep in-mind, as becoming free of unwanted emotional states of mind will depend on your understanding of their impermanence, their inherent dukkha, and the "non-'You'-ness" of them (more on this practical practice of this in the next parts of this series).

?Nevertheless, while the vedan?s can easily be a subsection of a larger teaching on these Characteristics, I will focus on how we can understand them in ways to help us break the self-inflicted chain of dependently arising events that lead us down the road of our own discontentment; a far too frequently travelled upon road that ultimately leads us to having bad moments, negative perspectives, unwanted experiences, and conflicts with others, which cumulatively propel us into to having bad days, weeks, months, or even years (or from a more deeply Buddhist perspective, into a continuous cycle of birth, sickness, ageing, and death [sa?s?ra]).

In order to properly address vedan?s, it's worthwhile to briefly cover some other supporting Buddhist fundamentals at a high-level, starting with the Five Aggregates, of which the vedan?s are a constituent (number two, in fact).  We will then follow that with the Six Sense Spheres and the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination (number seven on that list, and arguably the most important one on that list).

It would also be appropriate to review teachings on dukkha, the five sense organs, the seven mental factors, and the twenty-two faculties, as well as a few other numerical topics in order to properly teach on the vedan?s, but one thing at a time and I will do my best to keep the scope of this teaching as narrow as I can while still doing service to the primary subject.
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Briefly, the Five Aggregates "subject to clinging" are the five constituent components that what make up the psycho-physical personality; the psycho-physical personality is what we consider to be an inherently existing "me," "myself," or "mine" which in return creates a sense of a self-identity: a substantial "Self" and a real "I," which in turn becomes the container for our Ego.  (While it's entirely outside of the scope of this series, it's worth spending some time contemplating and understanding that if you are ever feeling anything other than contentment, that it's solely your Ego that is at the soft-chewy center of your misery; but that's the fodder for an entirely separate teaching series of its own.  Contact me if you wish to learn more.  Now back to the Aggregates.)

Of these five aggregates, one is a physical aggregate (khanda) and the other four are mental aggregates; and they are broken down as follows:

The Physical Aggregate:
    1. Form (r?pa)

The Mental Aggregates:
    2. Vedan?
    3. Perception (saññ?)
    4. Volition Formation/Thought (sa?kh?ra)
    5. Consciousness (viññ??a)

??Teacher's note: keeping in mind that this teaching is focused on just one of the Five Aggregates, the vedan?s, we will have to leave a detailed explanation of the other four aggregates (forms, perceptions, volitional formations, and consciousness) for another series or post. With that out of the way, let's continue our exploration of the vedan?s.

Now, looking at that list above, did you notice how I left "vedan?" (#2 on the list) untranslated in the P?li language? That's because "vedan?" is usually translated from P?li into English using the word "feelings." This is a poor word-choice at-best, because it obscures the underlying mechanism of the concept and does a disservice to the students and practitioners who strive to clearly understand them.

It is worth noting that it's not always easy to accurately translate languages from one to another, and when it comes to the ancient P?li language, all the more so, with translators often having to do the best they can.  Unfortunately, there are many instances where P?li words (which are often more like concepts than words) simply have no direct translation that can take into account all of the underlying cultural inferences, deeper meanings, and ancient philosophical perspectives that don't have contemporary counterparts or modern linguistic cognates.

With that said, when I teach to my students, I frequently leave vedan?s untranslated because vedan?s are not feelings in the sense of emotions or even in the sense of the general states of our minds.  Feelings are results, while vedan?s are a mechanism; and, translating "vedan?s" into "feelings" leads to a deep misunderstanding of the very nature of the vedan?s.  As a result, those who seek insights from their explorations of Ego Identity and Nonself through the study and contemplation the Five Aggregates are often held back in their intellectual understanding of the Five Aggregates as a whole, and thus their efforts directed at exploring and observing their own vedan?s are ultimately misdirected and flawed.

?We can't properly get an accurate reflection of who we are if all we have to work with are funhouse mirrors.
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?Simply put, the vedan?s are a submental response that is that more akin to a subconscious judgement of like-and-don't-like, of want-and-don't-want; they are the initial categorisation of a sensory input (i.e., a sight, a sound, an aroma, a taste, a touch, or a thought) as being either:

     1. Pleasant
     2. Unpleasant
     3. Neither-Pleasant-Nor-Unpleasant / Neutral

(cetasik? sukh?-vedan?, cetasik? dukkha-vedan?, or adukkha-m-asukh? vedan?, respectively).

These three categorisations are directly linked to, and a reflection of, what is referred to in Buddhism as the Three Poisons (akusulam?la) — the three poisons are greed, hatred, and delusion; sometimes referred to as attachment, aversion, and ignorance.

Greed-and-hatred, and attachment-and-aversion can usually be  further reduced and referred to simply as "craving" (ta?h?).  And what is craving?  Craving comes in two flavours:

     1. Wanting to have that which we find pleasant
          (greed/attachment)
     2. Wanting to not have that which we find unpleasant
          (hatred/aversion)

Take heed and pay attention to the three poisons of wanting, not-wanting, and delusion.  Do you notice how they drive much (if not all) of what you think, say, and do?  When you truly recognise that, you will want to get good at catching how they drive your actions; because when you get better at being mindful of them, you will begin to notice that any time you can unhook from those poisonous undercurrents, what you are left with is contentment, genuine contentment; a rewarding sense of skilful equanimity of mind and body that serves as both the foundation (and the end-goal) of the spiritual path.

Just to reiterate before we move on: the vedan?s are simply a mental response that judges sensory inputs as being either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.

However, as it often is with simple things, it can be all too easy to overlook or carelessly neglect their inherent depth, and in the spirit of not falling into that trap, we are now required to dig deeper still.  In order to do so, we now need to briefly review the Six Sense Spheres of conscious awareness.

?And, down the rabbit hole we go!
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Venturing deeper into the depths of the Dhammavinaya, it is helpful to know that the vedan?s do not manifest on their own; they don't arise out of nowhere: they are a response — or, as we say in Buddhism: they are conditioned.  But conditioned by what?  They are conditioned by sense-contacts.  When a sense-contact is made, a vedan? is created.  Conversely, when that sense-contact ends, the corresponding vedan? dissolves.  

What exactly is a "sense-contact"?

Briefly, a sense contact is anything that we experience through the six internal sense bases of our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, body, and mind. Sense contacts produce sense-objects; sense objects are the things that we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and think (i.e., sights, sounds, aromas, tastes, touches, and thoughts).

?Because vedan?s are the immediate conscious and subconscious mental reactions and categorisations that occur the moment a conscious sensory contact is made, without some form of sense-contact, there are no conditions for a vedan? to arise; hence, they are "conditioned."
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The following is very important (and to the right student, potentially profound): our vedan?s are tightly interlinked with the third aggregate of Perception (sañña), and sense objects are often times processed through our perception aggregate and our perception aggregate can intensify or even reverse the initial categorisations of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral vedan?s.

That point, casually-made (though emboldened), is a critically important and often-overlooked nugget of information that will be important to tuck away in your mind for later, because this is the springboard upon which we can start to reframe the resisted and the unpleasurable into their corresponding opposites, the embraced and the pleasurable — this is the bread and butter of actual Buddhist practice, the practice of actually transforming dukkha into the Path.  However, it's not just the "bread and butter" of actual practice... being able to reframe the unwanted into the wanted at-will is a measurable result of skilful practice in accordance with the teachings; one of the rewards along the Path, if you will.  (But, I am getting ahead of myself here; more on this in the next parts of this series.  Back to the vedan?s and their dependence on the Six Sense Spheres:)

While all vedan?s are inherently a mental fabrication, they are not always produced by the mind as some vedan?s do in fact originate via touch and form, that is to say, via the physical aggregate of the body (r?pa) and some of those physically-originating vedan?s needn't be processed by the mind before being assigned a pleasant, painful, or neutral categorisation, such as hitting your thumb with a hammer or touching a red-hot stove.

Other vedan?s, those which originate from the other sense-bases (i.e., our ears, nose, eyes, and mouth), are usually received by the sense-organ as Neutral, but then get assessed through the lenses of the mind (i.e., saññ? and sa?kh?ra) and assigned a category or good, bad, or neither-good-nor-bad. This can be confirmed by considering how over-time we can come to enjoy things that we initially didn't like (e.g., certain people, places, flavours, aromas, colours, et cetera).

By contemplating these universal qualities of our sense experience, we can rightly conduce deep insights into the subtle and powerful underlying truth that sense-objects don't actually possess inherent and universal qualities of good, bad, or neither-good-nor-bad... that we in fact arbitrarily or judgmentally assign these undisciplined categorisations to them and then attach ourselves to these illusionary assignments.  It's worth thoroughly contemplating how these empty assignments ultimately lead to the formation of dukkha-causing biases, opinions, preferences, and identities.

?As I often tell my students: attachments-and-aversions, desires-and-biases, wants-and-don't-wants make the mind very narrow; and the narrower your mind is, the more fragile your contentment is.

?There are, however, a few caveats to the process of vedan?s getting amped up by our perception aggregate, such as in previously mentioned examples of extreme r?pa contacts which immediately get processed by body and mind as being good or bad... and there are even caveats to this caveat, because as our practice becomes more integrated into our moment-to-moment awareness, and the more advanced we become as truly mindful Buddhist practitioners, leveraging the deep power of Clear Comprehension (sampajañña), the more we will begin to overcome the fundamental root-cause of our dukkha: the strength of our attachments to the things that we want and the strength of our aversions to the things that we don't want; and as we develop our skill in un-attaching from, and not self-identifying with, the sources of our dukkha, the less often we  will assign unnecessary and un-beneficial categories to our naturally neutral sense-contacts and the less power these sources of dukkha have over us and how we feel.
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??In order for us to understand how to turn that understanding into a springboard for happiness, we need to learn how to not react to our vedan?s. Reacting to these vedan?s is the juice that creates so much of our painful and unwanted mind-states.  ?Put simply:

We must learn how to stop mindlessly reacting to our feelings.

Learning how to actually integrate that into your daily experience is some really powerful stuff, and when you genuinely cultivate insight into this understanding, this is when you have achieved what I refer to as the foundation of advanced practice in cessation, the cessation of dukkha... or in other words, in your progress toward actual (and literal) nibb?na (i.e., nirvana).

While this is going to be the focus of the next parts of this teaching series, I want to spend a bit of time with this before wrapping up Part One.

This point about advanced practice is very important to understand, because it means that through the development of your practice, that is to say, through skilful determination-and-discipline, study, applied effort-and-energy, wise attention to what is experienced (y?niso manasik?ra), real-time mindful awareness (satisampajañña), contemplation of the Dhamma, pure meditation, and an honest process of self-inquiry into the nature of your ego and your dukkha you can start to see through the illusions of your suffering and start to see more clearly what is and isn't actually real; that's ultimately the only foundation for veritable progress along the Buddhist Path.

Most of the stuff that we react to, the "stuff" that causes us so much suffering, isn't actually real.  We perceive things that aren't real to be real.  Or even worse, we make stuff up in our heads that have no basis in reality at all!  We endlessly have imaginary conversations with other people in our heads, we fantasise/plot/and plan, and we relive long-past traumas over and over again within our mind's eye.  This is why the words ignorance and delusion are tossed about so often in Buddhism.  And until we truly come to understand how all of this is just an illusion that has so much potential for potent pain, we will continue to be victims of our uncontrolled and unexamined head-space.

?There are a lot of things involved and to take in account of in "advanced practice," but that is why it's called "advanced," and regardless of where you are on the spectrum of progress, be it an advanced practitioner or a beginner, it doesn't mean that you can't start developing any or all of these skills here and now. Once you begin the process of doing so, you begin to cultivate your ability to influence how these sense-contacts are labelled — the labels that ultimately influence how you feel and think (e.g., the general sense of happiness that you get to experience throughout our day) in real-time.

How is this possible?

Because these categorisations are not static, fixed, and all the more importantly, not universal, but rather they are in a constant state of change, interpretation, and are additionally conditioned and filtered by own personal experiences, views, and understandings, which are also constantly changing and subject to interpretation and transformation. This is why at one point we may like a particular taste and then come to not like it; or why we may enjoy something, while other people don't — there are choices and preferences involved, these assignments of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral aren't set in stone and they aren't universal truths. And because how we define things as being good, bad, or neutral is influenced by many variables which are also in a constant state of change, it's not uncommon for the pleasant to become a neutral, or an unpleasant to become a pleasant, especially given how much our moods, perceptions, or our levels of attention or energy can influence and affect the subconscious categorisations of the things that we experience as well.

For example, sometimes we are just "too tired" to enjoy something that we would otherwise take great delight in, such as the laughter of our children, and instead of pleasure, we find it unpleasant, "annoying," or simply unwanted in that moment.

And so it is through the subjective and ever-changing vedan? aggregate, at both the conscious and subconscious levels, that everything that we contact through our sense bases gets immediately and arbitrarily labelled as either pleasant, unpleasant, or neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant.  And because we experience these feelings without reflection, without understanding, and without mindfulness — with an undisciplined and untrained mind — we get affected and taken down by the worst of these: the negative ones.

It doesn't have to be this way.

You have a choice.

You can study, learn, meditate, contemplate, and practice.

And, you can heal.

The vedan?s are very simple: they are just a subconscious and undisciplined labeling of stimuli; these "feelings," per se, are not nearly as complex or complicated as the "feelings" that we relate to "emotions," and knowing this, we can now work with them, and hone them, and learn to condition and slope them toward a resilient sense of contentment, safety, and peace of mind, instead of any of the unpleasant opposites of those. How we do this will be explored in greater detail as we continue to progress along in this series of teachings on the vedan?s.

Please subscribe to be notified of future teachings.
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?So that's it! That's the fundamentals of vedan?s in a nut-shell.

But understanding what feelings are is only the beginning!  Stay tuned for the next part of this series to learn more.

Time for a brief plug:

This teaching series can only go so far.  We need experienced, skilled, and knowledgeable teachers to help us.  If you want to learn more about your vedan?s and how you can leverage your contemplation of them into day-to-day and moment-to-moment resilience, contentment, and peace-of-mind, you are welcome to contact me if you want to explore having me take you on as a student and to learn more about how a one-on-one student:teacher relationship with me can supercharge your practice and lay the foundation for measurable progress toward contentment, toward Buddhist enlightenment.

??May this teaching be of service to you and to your practice.
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The Vedan?s
 — Supplement Post #1 — 
?The Twelve Links of Dependent Origination
(an important supplemental post on the Dependent Arising in support of the teaching series on the Vedan?s)
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which will then followed by

The Vedan?s
 — Part 2 — 
??Turning Theory into the Practice of Happiness
(how to stop mindlessly reacting to your feelings)
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