The end of suffering and its causes '“ NOT the end of feeling

"Keep in mind that, as I have said, observing vedana is difficult, and for a large part of my practice I confused the experience of vedana with the experience of later steps in the DO chain. "

I wanted to add a thought related to this.

I have been sick three times since my last practice shift (once sick enough to require antibiotics). Somehow, I had extremely minimal or nonexistent sensations of malaise in my body, and no obvious painful sensation related to things such as a sore throat. (I observed some indistinct sensation at the end of swallowing which indicated that I had a sore throat.)

Though I was never able to discern malaise and sore-throat pain in terms of DO (as I was not pursuing that at the previous times I had been sick), it occurs to me that, if I get sick and have minimal or no sensations related to malaise and pain, then (as so much craving-clinging-becoming has been removed from my experience) those things are probably not vedana, but craving-clinging-becoming.

The pain from a sore throat isn't vedana...the "physical" pain that aspirin removes isn't vedana...imagine that!

As far as I have found, vedana is extremely hard to observe without practice. Indeed, I was not able to clearly discern it even when I claimed technical 4th path. If you read my practice journal, you will find me talking about a long stretch of practice in which I (paraphrase) "removed affect from my body and discovered pleasant sensations underneath"...in other words, gaining some sensitivity to the vedana underlying craving-clinging-becoming.

If vedana were easy to discern, everyone would probably be completely liberated, as craving-clinging-becoming are so obviously suffering and misery compared to staying with pure vedana that everyone's mind would incline in that direction by default, and no practice would be needed.

(This is merely my understanding & experience of vedana.)

"The pain from a sore throat isn't vedana...the "physical" pain that aspirin removes isn't vedana...imagine that!"

Indeed. Consider the placebo effect. The fact that literally taking a sugar pill makes you feel better indicates thaaaat - anyone?

"Indeed. Consider the placebo effect. The fact that literally taking a sugar pill makes you feel better indicates thaaaat - anyone?"

I have been very surprised to realize how much "physical" pain is psychosomatic (craving-clinging-becoming).

The most distinctive thing for me, at the moment of my last practice shift, was not actually a sudden absence of emotions, but a sudden enormous falloff in body tension. So much craving-clinging-becoming that I never even noticed before, leaving the body as if it were never there...what a joy this is compared to before.

End,

Call me old fashioned, but for me, vedana is much simpler than you're making it out to be. Every single sense experience is registered as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. This is true for the tinniest flickering sensations, as well for more complex arisings like emotions. There's a feeling-tone there. It's a description; a base-level evaluation based on experience. I don't see why it has to be anything other than that.

You have a sense experience. It's either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. No?

Maybe I'm just naive.

-Jackson

Things look that way to me, too, Jackson. Simple.

Jackson, cmarti: craving, clinging, becoming, birth + death all certainly have their own vedana - sometimes they are pleasant, sometimes unpleasant, sometimes neutral. I think EndInSight is referring to vedana **directly from sense experience**. That is much harder (or a better word may be 'subtler') than one might think, going from my own experience of PCE (specifically, pain in a PCE). So much of what one thinks are just plain physical sensations, are actually craving/clinging/becoming. I think if one doesn't make the distinction, one is missing out.

"Call me old fashioned, but for me, vedana is much simpler than you're making it out to be. Every single sense experience is registered as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. This is true for the tinniest flickering sensations, as well for more complex arisings like emotions. There's a feeling-tone there. It's a description; a base-level evaluation based on experience. I don't see why it has to be anything other than that."

What if vedana were harder to discern than that? What would it mean for your practice if that were true?

"You have a sense experience. It's either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. No?"

The problem, as I found it, is that one also has an experience of becoming due to vedana, which imitates the vedana in some way (an experience of I-feel-this, I-like-this, this-hurts, etc.), and an experience of craving, which feels quite physical, but is experienced a split-second after vedana.

I hate to go on and on about this, but, as I have described a method to mumuwu by which one could investigate what I'm talking about (the distinction between vedana, craving, and becoming), I don't see why you appear to be so uninterested in trying it. It would make communication between us go more smoothly. And it's just a typical 1st gear practice...nothing exotic at all.

Would you like me to repost it here?

Jackson, you wrote the following essay: kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/page/Cons...Primordial+Awareness

And you ended it with this quote:

"Sophisticated arguments aside, I encourage anyone who is inquiring into this issue to really check their current understanding against their direct experience."

Well, I encourage you to check out what I'm saying about vedana against your direct experience. I will repost the method which I found helpful with respect to this investigation, if you like.

"Jackson, you wrote the following essay: kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/page/Cons...Primordial+Awareness

And you ended it with this quote:

"Sophisticated arguments aside, I encourage anyone who is inquiring into this issue to really check their current understanding against their direct experience."

Well, I encourage you to check out what I'm saying about vedana against your direct experience. I will repost the method which I found helpful with respect to this investigation, if you like."

Interesting progress on Tommy's thread at the DhO in his latest post, which seems to relate to perhaps not wanting to look a little closer:

www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discu...ards/message/2087724

I would like to point out that I have spent so much time trying to have a phenomenological conversation about this subject, but many of the people here (who have the strongest reservations about what I'm saying) seem dead-set in wanting to have a theoretical conversation and not to talk about phenomenology.

What is going on?

EDIT: To throw in some phenomenology...in the moment I experience vedana, my body has no borders, no outlines; the sensations are suspended nowhere in particular, and they bleed into the external environment. The lack of clear boundaries is deeply peaceful. I have occasionally wondered whether such an experience could really be what Buddhism intends to promote, as it seems like I'm getting away with something, to have such freedom at my fingertips. The pleasantness (it is usually quite pleasant) feels formless, not about me, not my pleasantness, not experienced in relation to anything, not even important, a matter of unconcern, just there.

In the moment after I experience vedana, there is a perception of the sensations being "here", in a body, which is (compared to the previous experience) clearly bounded and separated from the environment. This is a kind of constriction. It is felt as mental tension, but only in comparison to the previous experience. When I have such an experience, especially if it's negative, I can ask myself "shall I react to this experience?" but it occurs to me that by generating this experience out of the previous one, I have already reacted.

"I would like to point out that I have spent so much time trying to have a phenomenological conversation about this subject, but many of the people here (who have the strongest reservations about what I'm saying) seem dead-set in wanting to have a theoretical conversation and not to talk about phenomenology.

What is going on?"

I might have contributed, by answering to the theoretical stuff instead of reporting in phenomenological terms. So, here is what I find:

Generally, I don't have to look far to find tension. The tension is unpleasant. So one could say it has unpleasant vedana. But, doing this exercise, I seek to understand it better. It seems, overlaid on this tension, is a sense of that tension being there. I understand this to be 'becoming'. Underlying the 'becoming' is the really hard tension, which I call 'clinging'. Underlying that, there is a soft tension, which seems to spring into the hard tension - this i call 'craving'. And really, really underneath that, looking so closely... there is some kind of hard-to-tell-what-it-is sensation.

So I seek to cultivate the jhana factor of piti and sukha by suffusing my body with pleasure. I direct it to the spot I'm looking at. Pleasure starts forming, though mostly it is of the craving kind - an overlay on the pleasure, which also forms a sense of there being something overlaying that pleasure. But if I up the pleasure and focus on just the pleasure, and not anything arising from it - the there is this sense of really pleasant, un-heady, sensation in that part of the body. Spending time looking at it just this way seems to starve off the craving - the tension subsides - the sense of there being something there dissipates. That more elemental pleasure, I think is the vedana EIS is referring to, though there might be something underlying that too.

What do you guys find?

"What do you guys find?"

I should also add that, focusing in this way seems really productive. All kinds of tension on the body suddenly becomes easier to bear - as I am essentially not being caught up with it as much - so at first it will intensify and tension and pain-things will appear all over the body, which will then subside from lack of sustenance.

Most importantly it seems that my mind can slip into a kind of mood where colors are just a bit richer... things move around and tension lessens and such... seems like good stuff.

What you just described is simply to replace tension with pleasure. In essence, to re-engineer your experience. There are drugs that will make that a lot easier for you

I decided to repost my method of investigation in order to bias this conversation towards description instead of theory.

***

If you observe your breath in such a way as to make as intense of a pleasant experience as possible, and you observe the place on your body that has the most prominent instance of becoming ('being'), you will notice

1) A sensation that is actually, genuinely pleasant; wholesome; pure; like ambrosia (vedana); unrelated to self-conceptions of any kind.

2) A "blob" of becoming ('you') hovering over it, distorting the experience into I-feel-this or I-like-this, which is garbage compared to the experience of pleasant vedana.

3) A temporally short pang of craving (tension-pain) sandwiched between the two.

***

My experiences of craving and becoming are grossly attenuated compared to what they once were, so others may have more elaborate or complicated experiences concerning those phenomena.

The place that has the most prominent instance of becoming is probably the place that your attention rests by default in the moment. (There is a connection here.)

With respect to Chris' comment, I have found that no amount of jhana-pleasure can replace or alter craving in the moment it's experienced (as craving is a reaction to jhana-pleasure or any vedana).

"What you just described is simply to replace tension with pleasure. In essence, to re-engineer your experience. There are drugs that will make that a lot easier for you "

No, it is not so straightforward as that.

That seems to be how I (and others on DhO and KFD) usually do jhana - generate pleasure and form becoming over it, then get more + more absorbed. This is different. This is using the pleasure as an anchor, not craving the pleasure, not clinging to it, not using it to feed further becoming - but attempting to stay close to that sensation, in order to investigate ignorance leading to craving, in order to put a stop to that chain of D-O. Essentially stop the mind feeding some part of the 'self' so that the 'self' can be more easily observed and fetters weakened.

Actually the pleasure is not necessary at all. But it seems to make the process easier since I don't have to fish around as much for pure-vedana in that area (especially hard when there is a large blob over it.)

And hey, drugs might make it easier. Much like jhana makes insight easier. But drugs/jhana alone won't lead to liberation.

I'd be interested in seeing how you understand these terms (vedana, craving, clinging, becoming) if you choose to do this exercise. I don't think commenting on what others are doing without trying it yourself will lead to much insight for either side, though.

Not taking this all so seriously, is actually quite healthy. YMMV, of course.

"... In essence, to re-engineer your experience. ..."

I notice that some seem to have aversion to trying to do anything to 'change' experience - as if being mindful and practicing doesn't change experience in any way. I'd like to point out that sometimes, when observing a system, it is useful to change the parameters of the system to see how it reacts. I think far more information can be gained by playing around with the parameters and seeing what happens, than by leaving them totally static and just observing.

The goal is insight, of course.

"Actually the pleasure is not necessary at all. But it seems to make the process easier since I don't have to fish around as much for pure-vedana in that area (especially hard when there is a large blob over it.)"

Indeed, it makes for a very powerful method if one wants to practice mindfulness of vedana, as (if enough pleasure is generated) the vedana separate themselves from craving-clinging-becoming in a profound way.

One also sees (in that separation) the value of freeing oneself from the misery of craving-clinging-becoming.

"But drugs/jhana alone won't lead to liberation."

I believe jhana alone (i.e. as the sole meditation method) will lead to liberation.

If one does only this practice (maximizing concentration, maximizing the prominence of vedana so that they constantly separate out from craving-clinging-becoming, ignoring craving-clinging-becoming as much as possible), that is mindfulness of vedana; that is powerful discernment; so long as you have Right View (etc.) working in the background, are you really going to do better outside of jhana?

In any case, the suttas emphasize jhana for a reason, and in my opinion, this is the reason.

"Absorption jhana" does not easily lead to liberation, which is why most people around here who are advanced never talk about practicing it and rarely recommend it (except perhaps in context of vipassana). Funny, that.

For reference, I will repost the similes: www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca...a-samadhi/jhana.html

These are full-body, paroramic-attention experiences (even 1st jhana!), without absorption, not anything like the method of concentration we have practiced in the past.

Now, back to your regularly-scheduled programming.

"
Not taking this all so seriously, is actually quite healthy. YMMV, of course.

"

Hehe yes, you are right. Your comment just rubbed me the wrong way. I was not so much offended by the reference to drugs as to what I perceived to be a total dismissal of anything I had to say (as well as what I perceived to be a misunderstanding of what I was doing). Definitely something for me to look at! I am definitely more jovial in different settings...

To clarify craving-clinging-becoming further, and to give another pointer as to what I'm talking about...

In the case of non-meditators, the solidity of experience is taken for granted. It usually requires a reasonable amount of time for them to decompose their solid experiences into vibrations. Often they are quite surprised when this happens. Often (as I have seen) they are quite skeptical that any such thing is even possible before they do it, as experience seems quite obviously solid to them.

Similarly, vibrations can be decomposed even further...not in terms of the rate at which they're perceived (we already know how to do that), but in terms of their internal structure. They have a "head" made of vedana and a "tail" made of becoming, with craving-clinging in the middle. (Imagine some kind of comet.)

For me, the easiest place to distinguish the head and tail is on the skin. The skin often has electrical or tingly sensations running through it...the pleasantness is vedana and the "spark" or "prickle" is becoming. There is a transformation occurring which takes vedana as input and ultimately yields becoming as output.

Note that in the Dark Night, when the "off" phase of vibrations is more prominent, what this means in terms of the internal structure of vibrations is just that the experience of the becoming tail is exaggerated while the experience of the vedana head is minimized. There is a connection between this fact and the fact that the Dark Night sucks...as becoming sucks. (Discerning this is relevant in my opinion to Right View.)

One more thought. Where are "vibrations" in the suttas? Our community has typically associated them with the impermanence characteristic of phenomena...however, this is (and has always been) perplexing to me for two reasons:

1) Descriptions of impermanence in the suttas are always of a very gross type; phenomena never remain without changing; for example, one closes one's eyes and visual phenomena have changed; one walks through life and every single experience changes at a very gross and easy-to-apprehend level, and one can recognize this whether or not one experiences "vibrations".

2) The suttas are very explicit in terms of descriptions of the things that they find important to the path, so it is strange to think that this important feature of experience has simply gone undescribed in anything but the most cursory and simplistic way.

I would no longer say that I experience "vibrations" in the sense in which I used the term before...rather, I observe vedana-->craving-->clinging-->becoming in the cases in which I would have talked about vibrations. ("Vibrations" is no longer a suitable phenomenological description for me, now that I have increased my mind's resolution to such a degree as to decompose them further.) It appears to me that the suttas have indeed described "vibrations" quite explicitly, albeit at a level of resolution and detail which seems to have gone unappreciated, and which not everyone is able to discern or (while able to discern) has turned their mind towards in an attempt to discern.

(N.B. Experience may change rapidly without the experience of "vibrations" in that change, and this is important to keep in mind. Rapid change occurs in a PCE as ever before...I simply have never noticed any craving involved in it (and thus no clinging and becoming). The impermanence characteristic of phenomena remains valid as ever before.)

"Vedana, as I understand it, is our birth right as humans. Even the buddhas have vedana. Vedana is built into every physical sensation. It is not to be gotten rid of. The cause of suffering is not vedana, but tanha. (See the 4 Noble Truths.) Tanha (thirst or craving) is what happens when vedana is not observed with mindfulness. Tanha is the next link in the chain of dependent origination AFTER vedana. In the awakened experience, vedana remains, but tanha does not arise."

I missed this the first time around, and wanted to say that I agree with all of it (apart from the mindfulness bit).

Here is an excerpt of a sutta that elaborates on this.

"Just as when boys or girls are playing with little sand castles: as long as they are not free from passion, desire, love, thirst, fever, & craving for those little sand castles, that's how long they have fun with those sand castles, enjoy them, treasure them, feel possessive of them. But when they become free from passion, desire, love, thirst, fever, & craving for those little sand castles, then they smash them, scatter them, demolish them with their hands or feet and make them unfit for play.
[...]
"You should smash, scatter, & demolish feeling, and make it unfit for play. Practice for the ending of craving for feeling[...]for the ending of craving, Radha, is Unbinding."

www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn23/sn23.002.than.html

(The entire sutta, as well as Thanissaro Bhikku's note, is worth reading.)

Stepping back from the issue of dependent origination and taking a larger perspective on this conversation...from this sutta I have come to believe that, to the extent that one has a personal stake of any kind in the continuance or non-continuance of vedana, that is an indication of where more work needs to be done.

Why do this work? It depends on one's goals...but, the ending of craving is nibbana.

"Stepping back from the issue of dependent origination and taking a larger perspective on this conversation...from this sutta I have come to believe that, to the extent that one has a personal stake of any kind in the continuance or non-continuance of vedana, that is an indication of where more work needs to be done.
"

This might also relate to why some, including myself, have talked of 'losing affect'. When I first heard about such a possible occurrence last year, there was a great revolt felt within 'me'. How distasteful the loss of affect!

But it was also indicative of how much attachment there was in me. This was post MCTB 4th path. It seems only when a yogi has confronted this fear and distaste can they even let go of that fear. One must question, uproot and let go of every attachment that goes unquestioned, including attachment to affect, to progress onwards. In a way, it acted as a skillful means in my case. It made me seriously delve into and question the deep rooted attachments I had that were deeply ingrained beliefs which conditioned what I did and didn't do and what I feared losing.

QUOTE: "When it's no longer hungry or thirsty, it just stops. And when it stops, everything else stops. That is where you let go of everything, even the path, even the discernment that got you there. This is how we understand fabrication. This is what insight is all about. Not just watching things arising and passing away but realizing the extent to which the mind causes them to arise and to pass away.

You've got to dig down into this deep level. That is why we work with the breath because the breath goes really deep into your awareness both of the body and of the mind. When you are close to the breath you are close to the sources of fabrication that is where you can see how these things come about. As you manipulate them you get a sense of their range. How far they can go and how far they can't go.

This is why all of the great meditators of the past where not people who just got really tired of things and got really world weary and just stopped with a sense of depression. That is not how enlightenment is found or awakening is found. They really actively pursue it. How far can you go. What can you do to bring about true happiness. They used their ingenuity, they used the powers of observation. They actively explored. That is what brought them to the edge of fabrication and how they got beyond." END OF QUOTE

From Exploring Fabrications (Dhamma talk by Thanissaro Bhikkhu) dhammatalks.org/Archive/110829%20Exploring%20Fabrication.mp3