“May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease.”
~John O’Donohue
“Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
“Desirable things do not provoke one’s mind. Towards the undesirable one has no aversion.” ~The Buddha. Connected Discourses, 1265, Bhodi trans.
Dear Friends,
I am back East from the great state of Oregon—Go Ducks! Travel is a wonderful way to notice our habits. When we lose our routines and possessions that insulate us, we often find ourselves anxious and fearful of what is coming our way. It can be humorous to look at all the ways we protect ourselves from the unwanted, all the ways we move and adjust our bodies, the temperature, and our surroundings to minimize discomfort. Dharma teacher Jack Kornfield (2013, 2016) notes that “It would be interesting to notice how many of our actions during the day—even small changes of posture—come about through an effort to avoid unpleasant feeling” (p.83). The unpleasant feelings are not usually the things we tell ourselves we are avoiding because we unconsciously equate pleasure and displeasure with what is outside ourselves. This is mistaking vedana (the second foundation of mindfulness) for the thing itself.
Vedana is sometimes translated as feeling, which can be confusing as the third foundation of mindfulness [cognition/objects of the mind] consists of the activities of the mind, including thoughts and emotional states. Former Forest monk, Buddhist psychotherapist, and meditation teacher Akincino Marc Weber has done extensive scholarly research on vedana. I’ve learned from him that vedana is never merely sensation or to be confused with emotion. Vedana is the quality of “hedonic feeling tone,” meaning that it contains that instant hit of liking, disliking. Even in the space called “neutral,” there exists a subtle flavor of pleasure and displeasure, too quiet to perceive. This is true even for enlightened beings, who still sense what is sweet and sour, but without the pull that drags us towards or away from.
Vedana is the awareness of the automatic like and dislike that comes from living in a body that has a built-in threat detection system. We see this easily with food. We are designed to like sugar, fat, and salt because those ingredients help us survive. Sugar and fat have the biggest caloric bang for our buck and salt is the essential mineral we need to sustain homeostasis. Most of us have very pleasant vedana when confronted with these tastes—and this is where it can get confusing—we believe that pleasure lives in the chocolate cake, or the bag of chips when it’s really pleasant vedana which comes and goes. The first potato chip tastes very different than the last as we finish off the family-sized bag and the chocolate cake isn’t at all appealing when we have a stomach virus.
In the groovy city of Portland, OR, we visited pods of food trucks and I noticed how I was drawn to certain items, smells, physically pleasing images, and tastes I associated with pleasure. I could sit back and watch the vedana show from all the six sense doors, sights, smells, sounds, the quality of touch, tastes, and the mind’s perception.
I saw my expectation shattered and the pleasant vedana I associated with an item shift abruptly when the tofu taco was watery, or the coffee was tepid. Instant dislike. I had to remind myself that I wasn’t reacting to the thing itself—I had slid into the third foundation of mindfulness [cognition] and was feeling disappointment. And I didn’t want to confuse my dislike and the disappointment with the actual thing.
A good example of confusing the thing for the vedana comes from the founder of Nonviolent Communication and admirer of Buddhist thought, Marshall Rosenberg, who uses the experience of waiting for someone who is late to demonstrate how we blame the external situation and other people for our own emotional state. We have all had the experience of waiting for someone and believing their lateness is the cause of our irritation. We can easily move into judgment and say they are inconsiderate. We can label them as chronically tardy. And my favorite pastime while waiting, to strategize how to never wait again, by being purposefully late in the future. When we confuse the unpleasant vedana for that specific person in that specific situation, we may say, I hate waiting, or I hate John. He’s so disrespectful. We don’t take responsibility for our own mental formations and emotions that are conditioned by our unpleasant vedana.
Marshall Rosenberg offers a second scenario. What if we are waiting for someone and it’s our first chance all day to rest—maybe we have been looking for an opportunity to check our email, or we just need a break. Or we are late ourselves and arrive fifteen minutes late. When our person shows up seventeen minutes late, we are actually glad they are so late. In this example, we see that lateness is not the cause of our anger. It’s our vedana and mental formations that create our happiness or unhappiness with the situation.
This week I invite you to look at the things you like and dislike—things you are drawn towards or move away from. What is the mental formation and vedana in that situation or thing that is pulling you? When we imbue something with a permanent fixed identity, we can be jerked around by the automatic response of vedana. Whenever we have a judgment, that is a good indication that we have mistaken vedana and our emotions for the thing itself and we are believing what we think
We can still have a favorite dessert—and it might taste even better when we let ourselves enjoy the experience of pleasant vedana, knowing that all vedana is fleeting and conditional. Practicing with vedana, we can get some clarity and use this awareness as information. Knowing our experience as it truly is, shows us the impermanent and constant flickering nature of pleasant and unpleasant. Recognizing the tireless pulse of liking and disliking for what it is can give us the clarity we need to choose our path instead of being dragged along by our senses.
May we all trust our light,
Celia
Reference:
Kornfield, J. (2013, 2016). Mindfulness: A practical guide to awakening. Boulder, CO: Sounds True.