..续本文上一页link of Dependent Origination: "Feeling conditions Craving" (vedana-paccaya tanha).
The feeling that arises from contact with visual forms, sounds, odors, and tastes is always a neutral feeling. Pleasant or unpleasant feelings do not always follow in relation to these four sense perceptions; but when they follow, they are then an additional stage of the perceptual process, subsequent to the neutral feeling which is the first response.
But bodily impressions (touch, pressure, etc.) can cause either pleasant or unpleasant feelings.
Mental impressions can cause gladness, sadness or neutral (indifferent) feeling.
Feeling is one of those mental factors (cetasika) which are common to all types of consciousness. In other words, every conscious experience has a feeling tone, even if only that of a neutral or indifferent feeling, which also has a distinct quality of its own.
Feeling by itself (if one could so separate it) is, as it was already said, the bare sensation noted as pleasant, painful or neutral. The subsequent emotional, practical, moral or spiritual values attached to that basic feeling are determined by other mental factors that subsequently arise in relation to that feeling, but, by way of classification, belong to the Aggregate of Mental Formations (sankhara-kkhandha). It is the quality of those other mental functions that makes the co-nascent feeling, too, to be either good or bad, noble or low, kammic or non-kammic, mundane or supramundane.
Feeling may stop at the stage of bare sensation in all weak states of consciousness, but also when there is mindful control of feelings. In such cases, there is no evaluation of these feelings, emotionally or intellectually.
The Discourse-grouping on Feelings (Vedana-Samyutta)
1. CONCENTRATION
"There are, O monks, these three feelings: pleasant feelings, painful feelings, and neither-painful-nor-pleasant feelings."
A disciple of the Buddha, mindful,
clearly comprehending, with his mind collected,
he knows the feelings[1] and their origin,[2]
knows whereby they cease[3] and knows the path
that to the ending of feelings lead.[4]
And when the end of feelings he has reached,
such a monk, his thirsting quenched, attains Nibbana."[5]
2. HAPPINESS
"There are, O monks, these three feelings: pleasant feelings, painful feelings, and neither-painful-nor-pleasant feelings."
Be it a pleasant feeling, be it a painful feeling, be it neutral,
one”s own or others”, feelings of all kinds[6] —
he knows them all as ill, deceitful, evanescent.
Seeing how they impinge again, again, and disappear,[7]
he wins detachment from the feelings, passion-free.
3. GIVING UP
"In the case of pleasant feelings, O monks, the underlying tendency[8] to lust should be given up; in the case of painful feelings, the underlying tendency to resistance (aversion) should be given up; in the case of neither-painful-nor-pleasant feelings, the underlying tendency to ignorance should be given up.
"If a monk has given up the tendency to lust in regard to pleasant feeling, the tendency to resistance in regard to painful feelings, and the tendency to ignorance in regard to neither-painful-nor-pleasant feelings, then he is called one who is free of (unwholesome) tendencies, one who has the right outlook. He has cut off craving, severed the fetters (to future existence), and through the full penetration of conceit,[9] he has made an end of suffering."
If one feels joy, but knows not feeling”s nature,
bent towards greed, he will not find deliverance.
If one feels pain, but knows not feeling”s nature,
bent toward hate, he will not find deliverance.
And even neutral feeling which as peaceful
the Lord of Wisdom has proclaimed,
if, in attachment, he should cling to it,
he will not be free from the round of ill.
And having done…
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