Compassion isn't an affective feeling: Discuss

Thank you all for your imputs. I would suggest to put aside Actual Freedom for a while to focus on the Buddha Dharma as it is and has been for centuries. In this respect, the whole thing turns around what Dogen summerized beautifully in his Genjokoan:

"To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly. "

To study the self, or what remains of a sense of self after technical 4th path, I found that what works best from a pragmatic point of view is a broad vipassana in a way similar to zazen, with a focus on the 6 sense doors, as described in the Bahiya Sutta (in seeing only the seen, etc.).

After a few days of practice, we start to realize that the self (or sense of self) is neither within one of the streams of sense-consciousness, nor beyond them. There is just seeing, but no seer. These streams are like movie tracks flowing on their own without a doer, nor even a separate witness. We realize that what we had assumed to be our sense of self is nothing but impermanent self-aware luminous flows of thoughs, images, sounds, sensations, tasts, feelings, etc. interacting with each other through a process of co-dependent origination. Far from being nihilistic, the fruit of this observation of 'what is' is an amazing sense of ease and freedom. There there is nothing to do and nowhere to go. Sitting is just that. No one sitting. The myriad things actualizing enlightenment. Gaining deeper insights in to no-self should logically lead to the realization that there never was a self, nor even a pure Awareness beyond phenomena, in the first place. Nothing is extinguished beside an illusion.

"From vedana comes craving. From craving comes clinging. From clinging comes becoming. That is I / me / mine. To the extent that craving ceases, that is the extent to which I / me / mine cease. So say the advanced practitioners of the Pali canon. "

Just want to mention that from the Buddhist perspective as well as in my experience, vedana is not the primary (but secondary) cause of craving. Ignorance is the primary cause. Sure, craving only arises when there is a pleasant vedana to crave, or aversion only arises when there is an unpleasant vedana to have aversion for. But the way to eliminate clinging is not to eliminate vedana but ignorance.

You can have vedana with craving, or have vedana without craving. In Buddhism, unlike AF, vedana isn't the main issue and continues to arise for Arhats:

"What, bhikkhus, is the Nibbana-element with residue left? Here a bhikkhu is an arahant, one whose taints are destroyed, the holy life fulfilled, who has done what had to be done, laid down the burden, attained the goal, destroyed the fetters of being, completely released through final knowledge. However, his five sense faculties remain unimpaired, by which he still experiences what is agreeable and disagreeable and feels pleasure and plain. It is the extinction of attachment, hate and delusion in him that is called the Nibbana-element with residue left.

""Feeling," not "emotion"

Regarding the relationship between vedanā and "emotions," American-born Theravada teacher Bhikkhu Bodhi has written:

"The Pali word vedanā does not signify emotion (which appears to be a complex phenomenon involving a variety of concomitant mental factors), but the bare affective quality of an experience, which may be either pleasant, painful or neutral."[12]

Similarly, Oxford-trained Vajrayana teacher Trungpa Rinpoche has written:

"In this case 'feeling' is not quite our ordinary notion of feeling. It is not the feeling we take so seriously as, for instance, when we say, 'He hurt my feelings.' This kind of feeling that we take so seriously belongs to the fourth and fifth skandhas of concept and consciousness."[13] "

"
If you give it a whirl, please let us know either whether it has helped you, or if not, at least whether it has changed your opinion (that I / me / mine is complex rather than simple). If it helps you, perhaps you can then describe the "residue" in a clearer way than I or others have managed to."


This is the main point. The sense of self is nothing more than an illusion created by the interaction of the five aggregates making up the experience of a mind and a body, and in particular the six streams of consciousness of the last aggregate (vijnanaskanda) that in a way contains the other four aggregates.

It is a bit like a movie. A impermanent stream of images interacting with an impermanent stream of sounds create the illusion of reality to the point where we become identified with the main character. Here is it just a bit more complex, since there are six streams that also involve sensations, feelings, thoughts, tasts, smells, etc.

Furthermore, there is no bright mirror, no pure unaffected movie screen behind images, no permanent pure awareness behind phenomena. Phenomena are as such self-aware, luminous and empty. This is why Hui-neng answered the 5th Patriarch with the poem showing a deeper understanding:

Originally there is no tree of enlightnment,
Nor is there a stand with a clear mirror.
From the beginning not one thing exists;
Where, then, is a grain of dust to cling?

I completely agree with Xsurf and Alex. Emotion and craving is not the primary issue, rather ignorance or dulistic fixation and grasping is the primary or first cause of suffering and co-dependent origination. I would argue the alternative analysis is a false and confused one.

Adam. edited for typo.

Can we agree that emotions are fabricated?

If so:

Now from the remainderless fading & cessation of that very ignorance comes the cessation of fabrications. From the cessation of fabrications comes the cessation of consciousness. From the cessation of consciousness comes the cessation of name-&-form. From the cessation of name-&-form comes the cessation of the six sense media. From the cessation of the six sense media comes the cessation of contact. From the cessation of contact comes the cessation of feeling. From the cessation of feeling comes the cessation of craving. From the cessation of craving comes the cessation of clinging/sustenance. From the cessation of clinging/sustenance comes the cessation of becoming. From the cessation of becoming comes the cessation of birth. From the cessation of birth, then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair all cease. Such is the cessation of this entire mass of stress & suffering."

Based on the above, would not emotions cease along with the rest of it?

And, though removing ignorance is the issue, doing so leads to the cessation of craving, etc. If you are experiencing craving, then you have not ended your ignorance.

"
Several people have recently made claims that they no longer have affect/emotions/feelings and have almost or entirely lost the sense of I/me/mine. I notice, and this is just from reading their comments here, that they appear to continue *display* affective feelings despite the claim. Several of them have freely admitted to that. There could be any number of things going on that would cause that to both appear to THEM as it does and to an EXTERNAL observer as it does. There is some anecdotal evidence that this dichotomy in perception, inside versus outside, may be common. I am referring here to Jeffery Martin's work."

I might add that I allowed myself to make use of my resources and used our laboratory of psychoacoustics to get some scientific results. some of you might have heard that voiceanalyzers are used in interviews by antiterrorforces because of their highly reliable results. now this is a kind of deluxe version, costs more than a villa in malibu and its result are far over 94%. in this case they are used in research to detect unconscious stresspatterns in psychotherapy. every emotion activates laryngeal muscles in the throat that can not be controlled consciously.

I fed it with interviews from people who said to have no ego, to find out, how a completely non-existent ego might show itself in the body. i expected that these tensions might disappear, even if i doubted it (i am quite trained) and i could already hear them with my normal ears and was aware of all kinds of unconscious selfdefensemechanisms and gestures of normal functioning psyche.

all 5 people showed a completely normal result, with clearly detectable stresspatterns when it came to problematic topics and relaxation when talking about pleasant things. also the unconscious processes like pressing the voice to overplay, stopping a bit longer when Unconscious/unpleasant, thinking longer when hiding, changes speed, high low (etc, could go on forever with details). cont.

"Just want to mention that from the Buddhist perspective as well as in my experience, vedana is not the primary (but secondary) cause of craving. Ignorance is the primary cause. Sure, craving only arises when there is a pleasant vedana to crave, or aversion only arises when there is an unpleasant vedana to have aversion for. But the way to eliminate clinging is not to eliminate vedana but ignorance.

You can have vedana with craving, or have vedana without craving. In Buddhism, unlike AF, vedana isn't the main issue and continues to arise for Arhats:"

"If we want to advance on the path of liberation, we have to work at the level of vedana because it is here that the wheel of misery can be arrested. With vedana starts the turning of the bhava-cakka, leading (because of avijja) to vedana-paccaya tanha, which causes suffering. This is the path which ignorant persons (puthujjana) follow, since they react to vedana and generate tanha. And from here also the dhamma-cakka, or the wheel of cessation of suffering (dukkha-nirodha-gamini-patipada) can start to rotate, leading to vedana-nirodha, tanha-nirodho-the end of craving, as a result of anicca-vijja or panna, leading to the cessation of suffering. This is the path which wise persons (sapannasapanna) follow by not reacting to vedana, because they have developed anicca-bodha by the practice of Vipassana."

www.vridhamma.org/Vedana-in-Paticcasamuppada

Loco, with all due respect, I don't think it's quite scientific enough to be of any validity.

There's lots of folks claiming no ego these days - have you checked out the neoadvaita scene?

voice, eye-movements, blinking, gestures and change of bodyposture indicated in a few cases some conscious lying but that is also quite normal in such a situation. one had an unusual low overall stresslevel, which increased unusual fast in a few situations, two had normal results, one very low at all.

one has to wait for further results from FfMRIs and live testing to make conclusions, but as far as i can see it could be possible that the nonexistence of an ego is a phenomenon of 1st-person-perspective.

the unconscious as a system handling unconscious emotions (unconscious means that you can not know that you have them, is different from preconscious!!!) seems to be part of the "flesh and blood body". it could also be that only conscious affects disappear, which would explain why it feels pleasant, but indicate that one is still the dependent on unconscious affects.

"Loco, with all due respect, I don't think it's quite scientific enough to be of any validity.

There's lots of folks claiming no ego these days - have you checked out the neoadvaita scene?"

Hi mumwu, it seems our posts were produced at the same time and interfered. are you happy/ok with what I wrote in the second part?

Yes - I think there's some interesting stuff you're seeing. I am concerned with the sample, however. To have no ego has different meanings to different people. If you had done the experiment on people claiming to have ended the fetters, then I think it'd be more meaningful to this discussion.

What you quoted said "leading, because of avijja". If there is no avijja, vedana doesn't lead to tanha. When it says "work at the level of vedana" it can be taken to mean "not having avijja/ignorance/clinging at vedana".

There are two nibbanas: nibbana with remainder, nibbana without remainder.

Vedana comes into being from old kammas in nibbana with remainder, however no more new kammas are made for vedanas in future lives. It is clearly stated that arhats in nibbana with remainder still cognizes pleasant and unpleasant, etc, (I take that to be standard definition for vedana) but do not have craving, clinging, aversion, ignorance, i.e. all manners of afflictions.

Vedana completely ceases in states like nirodha samapatti, or nibbana without remainder for example. Vridhamma.org for example appears to explain vedana-nirodha as part of nirodha samapatti where even sense faculties stop functioning: "When the sense doors have stopped functioning, there is no possibility of phassa, and there is phassa-nirodhaphassa-nirodha. This stage leads to vedana-nirodhavedana-nirodha and thus tanha-nirodhatanha-nirodha. This is the nirodha-gamini-patipada, which has been very well illustrated in several discourses of the Buddha." - from your link

Are emotions fabricated? As far as I can tell, at least some of them are compound phenomena, namely a mix of physical sensations and thoughts.

A perfect example is anxiety. If we deconstruct anxiety with a focus on physical sensations and thoughts as mentioned in my above post, we notice a stream of impermanent physical sensations and a stream of impermanent thoughts. These two streams are distinct, yet interact with each other (interdependence). This interaction of unpleasant physical sensations and worrying thoughts creates a compound phenomenon that we call anxiety.

If we do not realize that there is no such thing as anxiety (lack of an inherent existence of all compound dharmas), failing to see that it is only a crystallized mix of sensations and thoughts, we cling to it, derive a sense of self from it, become anxious and act out on it.

If we take the time the investigate with mindfulness, we see the illusion for what it is. As a result we certainly show physical symptoms of anxiety that can not only be picked up by sophisticated machines, but certainly also by external observers. Nevertheless, the person does not feel anxiety subjectively, but only experiences impermanent flows of physical sensations and thoughts.

Over the years, the subjective change is likely to reprogram the entire psyche, which may explain why the fetters such as lust, greed and anger are not immediately extinguished. Even in the absence of a sense of self, the karmic seeds continue to manifest until they eventually dry out.

"At present, two kinds of teaching of the doctrine of dependent origination exist. One distorts the Buddha Dhamma, and it has existed for more than a thousand years. The other is in accord with the Buddha Dhamma, and it teaches awareness of Contacts at the sense bases to prevent Feeling from advancing to Craving. In this way, the doctrine of dependent origination can be practiced to reap the results at once. The truth is if ordinary people can practice in this manner, they can have significant achievements even without referring to the law of dependent arising. A serious practitioner should be wary of the confusion from these two kinds of teaching, and ensure that his cultivation is in accord with the Buddha Dhamma. The nature of dependent origination, as taught by the Buddha, upholds neither nihilism - for instance, encouraging people to abstain from performing meritorious deeds, be irresponsible, be troublesome and reckless - nor the concept of a continuing existence; for instance, advocating people to be extremists, to be deluded with the concept of an eternally existing ego or all forms of ego and ego possessiveness. The doctrine of dependent origination is not an exaggerated theory as generally believed. On the contrary, it entails rigorous cultivation such that when there is Contact in the sense base, Right Mindfulness is applied to subjugate Feeling, thus preventing its advance to Craving, Clinging, and Existence/Birth. In actual practice, a term such as 'dependent origination' is unnecessary. "

I would argue that by investigating the arising of vedana aviija is removed.

IMO - agreeable / disagreeable does not equal pleasant/unpleasant

I would also argue that your view is quite colored by the Vissuddhimagga - you may want to read this:
what-buddha-taught.net/Books6/Bhikkhu_Bu...Paticcasamuppada.htm

"The teachings of many mainstream schools are based on Buddhaghosa's essay. By treating Buddhaghosa's misinterpretation of the Buddha Dhamma as standard, they obscured the Truth. Buddhaghosa explained the doctrine of dependent origination based on the idea of three connected lifetimes (past, present, and future). According to his idea, ignorance and action in the past gave birth to the present; the consequences of past actions are thus experienced in the present. The process causes our vexation (due to Craving and Clinging) in the present life, while transmigration [the cyclical process of death and rebirth or samsara] delivers us to births and sufferings in future lives. Buddhadasa Bhikkhu examines such an interpretation and raises these critical questions: If the Buddha taught the absence of an ego (anatta), then what is migrating from one life to the next? If the cause of suffering is instilled in one lifetime and its consequence emerges in another, how do we free ourselves from suffering in our practice in this life?"

(cont'd)

"I would argue that by investigating the arising of vedana aviija is removed.

...."

It doesn't just say agreeable or unaggreeable, look closer at the last four words: "what is agreeable and disagreeable and feels pleasure and pain".

My point is, when avijja is removed, vedana isn't, i.e. arhats experience vedana but not avijja. Whether avijja is removed through investigating vedana is a different issue and of course I do not deny that this is possible.

Rebirth is not at all contradictory with anatta - rebirth does not need a soul, in the very same way that hearing does not require hearer, remembering what happened yesterday doesn't need a soul, or having the 'same' habits from one day to another does not mean there is a soul.

Rebirth does not require a continuing existent and is simply the continuity of a causal process, in the same way lighting one candle to the next is a causal process and not the continuity of an unchanging self-entity.

I've explained this in my "Actual Freedom and Buddhism" document: awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2009/09/...ird-alternative.html

Pleasure and pain are not dependent on vedana...

One can feel both in a PCE but they are felt as they are with no mental overlay of positive/negative.

"Pleasure and pain are not dependent on vedana...

One can feel both in a PCE but they are felt as they are with no mental overlay of positive/negative."

Precisely. Now it depends on what you mean by 'vedana' then - since the mental overlay of positive/negative belongs more to conception rather than vedana, and vedana simply means pleasant/unpleasant/neutral sensations, but I do agree that it is important to be free from that kind of mental formation or overlay.

"""Feeling," not "emotion"

Regarding the relationship between vedanā and "emotions," American-born Theravada teacher Bhikkhu Bodhi has written:

"The Pali word vedanā does not signify emotion (which appears to be a complex phenomenon involving a variety of concomitant mental factors), but the bare affective quality of an experience, which may be either pleasant, painful or neutral."[12]

Similarly, Oxford-trained Vajrayana teacher Trungpa Rinpoche has written:

"In this case 'feeling' is not quite our ordinary notion of feeling. It is not the feeling we take so seriously as, for instance, when we say, 'He hurt my feelings.' This kind of feeling that we take so seriously belongs to the fourth and fifth skandhas of concept and consciousness."[13] ""

Yes - I read that on wikipedia and it clearly shows that emotions are fabricated and are also dependent on vedana (see Alex's quote above).

Are you able to clearly identify vedana in your experience? Vedana is a primal feeling. Can you feel it?

"Yes - I read that on wikipedia and it clearly shows that emotions are fabricated and are also dependent on vedana (see Alex's quote above).

Are you able to clearly identify vedana in your experience? Vedana is a primal feeling. Can you feel it?"

As I have said, there is a difference between primary and secondary cause. Ignorance is roots, the rest are just the leaves and flowers. To cure a problem you don't cut down the leaves, but go for the roots.

At this moment, no emotions - just sensations.

But I do agree with AlexWeith's post on emotions - emotions are just a compounded flow of sensations and thoughts. One has to be very observant to see what exactly it is, it is not an entity, but a process. As Alex said, there isn't even such a thing as 'anxiety' (in the same way there isn't such a thing as 'self') but because we identify and cling, 'it' becomes a problem.

(the first sentence may not make sense as I was replying to xsurf before he edited his reply)
Right - and I experience it as a reality. There is the emotion and there is the feeling tone underlying it. If you follow Kenneth's direct mode it becomes easy to identify vedana in any moment

Also - regarding aviija. I would argue it is not being ignorant of our nondual nature (see www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/bps-essay_27.html by Bhikku Bodhi) it is wrong view regarding suffering, it's causes, and it's cessation and it is a lack of skill in seeing suffering, it's causes and how to bring it to an end.

"And what is ignorance, what is the origin of ignorance, what is the cessation of ignorance, what is the way leading to the cessation of ignorance? Not knowing about dukkha, not knowing about the origin of dukkha, not knowing about the cessation of dukkha, not knowing about the way leading to the cessation of dukkha '” this is called ignorance. With the arising of the taints there is the arising of ignorance; with the cessation of the taints there is the cessation of ignorance. The way leading to the cessation of ignorance is just this Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view... right concentration."
www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca2/avijja.html

"Avijja, the Pali word for ignorance, is the opposite of vijja, which means not only "knowledge" but also "skill" '” as in the skills of a doctor or animal-trainer. So when the Buddha focuses on the ignorance that causes stress and suffering, saying that people suffer from not knowing the four noble truths, he's not simply saying that they lack information or direct knowledge of those truths. He's also saying that they lack skill in handling them. They suffer because they don't know what they're doing"
www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/ignorance.html

"At this moment, no emotions - just sensations.
"

Any vedana?

"I am concerned with the sample, however. To have no ego has different meanings to different people. If you had done the experiment on people claiming to have ended the fetters, then I think it'd be more meaningful to this discussion."

It has no scientific value and was just interesting and an indicator that things are probably complicated. It was an AF sample, because the recordings were accessible and they are said to have the lowest level of ego possible. It could have also had an outcome that there is no stress no matter what detectable and finish. but if our brain was that simple, we would probably be too stupid to understand it anyway ).

Oh - you ran it on a recording of AF claimants?

I thought it was run on some random people who claim "no ego."

Yes there's always the problem of subjective vs. observable experience.