The Vipassana Retreat

　　10. Working with Feelings and Emotions

　　It is difficult for the practitioner to make progress until he or she has come to terms with feelings and emotions, as the practice itself, at least in the early stages, can bring up intense and persistent feelings and their associated emotions. So we will consider feelings and emotions together, as while they are two distinct contemplations in the framework of the practice, they tend to merge and overlap.

　　An emotion is an agitated mind state or disturbance caused by strong feelings about somebody or something. There need be no preference as to whether they are positive or negative as they are related to as just mind states: as ordinary or higher states of mind, that is, just mental events to be noted without seeing them as significant in any way.

　　Without judging or evaluating them, emotions are monitored throughout the day by labeling or mentally noting them. This helps to develop a more non-reactive awareness toward the emotion, without the tendency to identify with them or play back into the associated story. This practice helps one to relate to emotions more dispassionately while at the same time revealing the transitory nature of mental events.

　　The clarity now that one has in relating to the emotion can then be taken a step further by tuning into the underlying feeling tone that is associated with an emotion, such as unpleasant feeling. In this way the feeling quality itself is highlighted, thus allowing for the primary feeling to be investigated as it has become distinct from the emotional content.

　　In the context of the Contemplation of Feelings we need to understand what precisely is meant by feelings. While the term ”feeling” (vedana) refers to physical sensation (kayika vedana), it also includes mental feeling (cetasika vedana) as well. The practice of attentiveness to mental feelings - not just sensations or physical feelings - needs to be stressed, because by differentiating feelings from their associated emotions, you can defuse the emotional charge once you have developed the ability to catch the underlying feeling tone.

　　Let us take a closer look at feelings and how to work with them. In the English language, we use the term ”feelings” interchangeably with ”emotions”. For example when we say, "I”m feeling delighted", we are referring to the emotion of happiness or delight. On the other hand, a Vipassana meditator would note that a pleasant feeling has arisen and that the emotion is one of delight. So in the context of the practice, the term ”feeling” is used in the technical sense of a quality of pleasant (sukkha vedana), unpleasant (dukkha vedana) or neither pleasant nor unpleasant, that is neutral feeling (upekkha vedana).

　　To make a statement of the obvious, as sometimes the obvious can be overlooked: we are beings on the sensory plane. We live in the world of the senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. It is through our senses that we experience the world and through the sense impressions at the sense doors that we experience feelings.

　　Feelings are the source of our liking and disliking. If we are not aware of the underlying feelings, we tend to automatically react to sense objects with liking or disliking, which is what is conditioning us and keeping us in trapped in cyclic existence (samsara). We ”pull in” and have attachment to what we like and ”push away”, have aversion to what we don”t like. What we then experience is coloured by “liking, disliking” - ”pushing and pulling”.

　　What tends to be overlooked and so should be looked out for is the effect of neutral feelings. For when there are neither obvious pleasant nor unpleasant feelings manifesting, the mind is ignoring feelings or at least is not aware of feeling, and the…

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