Talk:Vedanā

"Fact" check for "totality of the mental-physical phenomenon

I flagged the following existing statement from this article with a "Fact"/"Citation Needed" tag:

"Vedanā is described by the Buddha as having both mental and physical aspects; therefore, vedanā offers a means to examine the totality of the mental-physical phenomenon."

I can infer that the first part of this sentence might allude to the notion that there are six classes of vedana associated with five so-called "physical" and one "mental" sense base; or, relatedly, it could be inferred from vedana's arising from the contact of internal and external sense bases; so, honestly, I'm open to an explanation regarding the first half of this sentence and then I'd be content with removing the first "Fact" tag.
However, the phrase "totality of the mental-physical phenomenon" seems too big a leap from the first part of the sentence. Admittedly, this sounds like something that might be derived from the Visuddhimagga (and I hope to check this out in the next several days) but, using logic alone, there appears to be a large inferential gap between these two sentence halves, at least to me.
I hope this makes sense. If this is just a matter of my vast ignorance, I appreciate any effort put forth to educate me based on a reliable source. Thanks so much! Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 18:10, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Since this has gone unanswered for almost ten months, I'm going to remove the uncited material in question. (Actually, something similar to the first part of the sentence re: vedana being divisible into two parts will soon be added into an earlier part of this article -- with citations [SN 36.19, SN 36.22] ;-) ). Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 03:29, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

'Feeling' vs 'Sensation'

Feeling is the conscious subjective experience of emotion; Sensation is the first stage in the biochemical and neurologic events that begin with the impinging of a stimulus upon the receptor cells of a sensory organ.

There is a HUGE difference between the two words; hence the sentence Vedanā is a word in Sanskrit and Pāli meaning "feeling" or "sensation". in this article needs correction. - Nearfar (talk) 04:37, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Briefly, the word vedana is traditionally translated as either "feeling" or "sensation." (FWIW, I think I came across an older translation of "experience" recently.) For instance, you can see in the Pali Text Society's seminal, classic and still widely used Pali-English Dictionary's (PED) entry for "Vedanā" (on-line at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.3:1:2277.pali) that the definition is literally "feeling, sensation."

Without much thought, I think the problem is that this is a Pali word without a clear English correlate. It refers to a typically unconscious experience of pleasure or displeasure (or neither-pleasure-nor-displeasure) instantaneously arising from the contact of an object (such as light) with a sense organ (such as the eye). The immediate, raw, low-level, unmediated nature of this phenomenon is "sensation-like" while its qualitative values are "feeling-like." Hence, I believe, the two translations.

Getting back to the initial point, perhaps what this article needs is simply citations of authoritative translations that use the word "sensation" and "feeling" to document that use of these translations. Or, perhaps at this moment easier, we can add a footnote referencing the aforementioned PED entry? I'll add the PED entry momentarily and, if I remember, I'll dig up some supporting translations as well over the next couple of days as time allows.

Hope this is meaningful and, at least to some degree, satisfactory. Best regards,

Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 05:04, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

If I may just add a follow up point: I think both "feeling" and "sensation" have been used not only because each captures an aspect of vedana but also because neither is entirely satisfactory. For instance, the problem with "feeling" is that in English "feeling" often has the connotation of "emotion," which vedana does not denote. The problem with "sensation" is that it lacks the feeling quality and could thus be misunderstood to denote "perception" (sañña), which in Buddhism is a separate mental factor. (FWIW, because I disliked the misleading connotation of emotion and thought the low-level chain-reaction-like nature of vedana was worth emphasizing, I personally used to translate this word as "sensation," e.g., in WP articles; however, lately it seems to me that the majority of popular contemporary translations use "feeling" so I've started using "feeling" more consistently to avoid WP reader confusion, etc.) Just another penny's worth, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 05:18, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, last append for tonight on this. FWIW, I just did a Google search for "sensation +site:www.accesstoinsight.org" and after going through a couple of dozen articles it amazes me to see how many articles use both "feeling" and "sensation" in tandem (e.g., if I recall correctly, Nyanaponika, Ireland, Piyadassi, etc.). Overall, Thanissaro Bhikkhu clearly uses "feeling" for vedana while reserving "sensation" for "bodily sensation" or "tactile sensation." Ajahn Chah appears to prefer "feeling" for "vedana" but sometimes seems to use "sensation" synonymously. The only ATI articles that seem to solely use "sensation" as a translation for vedana were:

1. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/kelly/warder-key/index.html - an answer key for Warder's classic Pali primer
2. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/gunaratna/wheel102.html - a BPS Wheel article by a "V.F. Gunaratana" (who I assume is different from Bhante Gunaratana although Bhante G does regularly hold retreats specializing in this ATI article's topic)

Perhaps I'll get a chance to check C.A.F. Rhys Davids, Walshe and Bodhi in the next few days.

With metta,

Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 05:54, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. If you consider the word and its associated experience carefully, craving is part of affective feeling (for eg., Anger is both an affective feeling and a product of craving/aversion). Thus, the phrase attachment to vedanā leads to suffering in the article appears absurd; partially it reads like attachment to craving leads to suffering. Don't you think? This is exactly why I think, despite PED's anaysis, the translation of the word 'vedana' is fundamentally flawed. - Nearfar (talk) 12:52, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Nearfar,

I think I understand your thoughtful analysis. For me, it highlights one of the limitations of using the word "feeling" for vedana. I think it is essential that vedana refers to the immediate, unelaborated upon pleasant or unpleasant (or neither pleasant nor unpleasant) sensation arises when a sense organ has initial contact with a sense object. When we talk about things like "anger," anger is not part of vedana. From a Buddhist technical standpoint, anger falls more within what is referred to as "mental formations" or "volitional formations" (sankhara) and bodily experiences.

Let me provide a mundane experience. If you meditate, it would be useful to get in a meditative state when contemplating an example like this in your actual experience. This example will involve a dog bark. It will follow part of the chain of dependent origination.

1. You have an ear. In Buddhism, this is your internal sense organ (ayatana).
2. A mile away, a dog barks. The bark causes air vibrations. These are external sense objects.
3. The air vibrations touch upon your outer ear which funnels the vibrations into your external auditory canal where they impinge upon the eardrum. The three small bones of the middle ear turn air vibrations to mechanical vibrations that in turn strike the inner ear's spiral cochlea. Inside the cochlea, there are 15,000 hair cells that convert these mechanical waves into neuronal transmissions along a cranial nerve that enter the lower part of your brain. In Buddhism, we now have contact (phassa).
4. Immediately, before most people are even aware of it, in an emphemeral moment, you will have a pleasant or unpleasant or neutral experience. Perhaps it is your dog who has barked and it is a happy, joyous bark; so you thus may have a pleasant feeling/sensation -- for this instance. Perhaps it is an angry bark and you were recently bit by a pit bull; you will then likely have an unpleasant feeling/sensation. Let's return for a second the first scenario -- your own dog's joyous bark. You have the pleasant feeling/sensation. A thousandth of a second later, you realize that your dog is away from you and you thus have an unconscious desire to be with your dog; from this unconscious mental experience, now an unpleasant feeling/sensation arises. A split second later, your heart rate slightly increases, your lungs let out some air, your head turns so your ears can better hear the sound and your eyes are cast downward. You are sad. This sadness is an "emotion" (not vedana). These latter experiences – the split-second thoughts and associated emotions – are primarily, in Buddhism's five-fold aggregate model, mental and bodily formations.

Now someone versed in the Abhidhamma would likely scold me for presenting such a simplistic example. I think from the Abhidhamma view, what I above refer to as vedana is actually tens of thousands of conscious moments of vedana, many inscrutible to consciousness. But, practically speaking, for those without the concentrated awareness of one on the path to Enlightenment, this is sufficient.

If what I write makes sense, I hope it is seen that vedana is a very low-level "feeling" but is not an "emotion." Applying the word "feeling" to vedana has value but also, as we both identified above, limitations -- as does the English word "sensation." This is likely why most authors on ATI (Acccess to Insight) probably chose to use both "feelings and sensations" or "feelings/sensatons" to actually translate the word.

Unfortunately, I have to run. (No time now to even check for typos!) Hope this is of some help. If you like, later, I can try to explain more about the relationship between feeling/sensaton and craving and attachment. Best wishes,

Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 14:23, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

You said, If what I write makes sense, I hope it is seen that "vedana" is a very low-level "feeling" but is not an "emotion.". Oxford dictionary gives 7 meanings for the word feeling. 1 an emotional state or reaction. 2 (feelings) emotional responses or tendencies to respond. 3 strong emotion. 4 the capacity to feel. 5 the sensation of touching [seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting] or being touched. 6 a belief or opinion. 7 (feeling for) a sensitivity to or intuitive understanding of. Among the seven, which do you think fit the word 'vedana'? You can take your dog bark example.

In my considered opinion, vedana fits no. 5 alone. 1-4 denotes emotion (or affective feeling) and as such is a product of craving. See this for the clarifications on that last sentence.

In any any case, it seems the word 'feeling' has two classes of meaning: emotions and sensations. I think it is important to point out which class of meaning does the word refer to in the article - Nearfar (talk) 15:18, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Nearfar -- very interesting integration of information from the OED. Thanks so much for referencing it!

I think your inference is highly reasonable, that, of the OED definitions provided, if we had to select one, then definition 5 fits best here. My only caveat is that definition 5 as provided here (does the original really include non-tactile sensory experiences?) could also relate to a sensation of "hot" or "hard" or "rough" or "color red," etc., which are not vedana but more akin to the Buddhist notion of perception (sañña) in the aggregate model. Associated with such sañña could be vedana of pleasant, unpleasant or neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant, but they are different mental experiences. (Some contemporary teachers [e.g., I think from handouts I've seen perhaps Andrew Olendzki] would indicate that vedana and sañña are independent but potentially parallel processes while others [e.g., some of Trungpa Rinpoche's writing] would indicate that vedana precedes sañña.) So, for me at least, there is even a difference between vedana and OED definition 5.

I suspect there's no perfect one English word that captures the Buddhist technical term vedana. This is possible, yes? I think that the English words "feeling" and "sensation" have some of the above mentioned benefits and problems when used to represent in English the Pali/Sanskrit word vedana. Perhaps the most accurate translation would be "that which arises spontaneously from the contact of sense organs and sense objects and that has the quality of being pleasant or unpleasant or neither and is sense-organ specific and that if not mindfully attended to leads to craving...." Given that in translations of this frequently used Buddhist term one word would be far more elegant, it appears that 100+ years of translators have chosen to alternate between or conflate "sensation" and "feeling."

Perhaps all this could be stuck in a footnote in the article but, for me, such would be problemmatic in terms of WP's commitment to "reliable sources" (WP:RS) and common knowledge. In fact, your suggestion and OED-related information made me reconsider my own recent inclusion in a footnote a statement about the possible basis for "sensation" and "feeling" being included. I do think such observations could be instructive but again, per WP standards, I'd have trouble including such after such thoughtful consideration. (I also think that this demonstrates once again how, in WP, often the most elucidating information is left on the talk pages :-) )

Also, I think your observation that "emotions" arise from "craving" is right on! Certainly consistent with the Buddhist notion of Dependent Origination.

I think we're in agreement more-or-less about what vedana means, and perhaps even have similar reservations about the widely used translation of "feeling." While for the above reasons I personally would not add the OED-related associations, I could understand your desire to do so and FWIW I personally would not attempt to counter your doing so. Please let me know if I've misconstrued or overlooked anything you've stated, etc. And thank so much for exploring this term in this matter with me; for our discussion has deepened my own appreciation. I wish you much happiness,

Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 18:34, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

One quick additional thought: To add the clarity we've discussed regarding the distinction between vedana as "feeling" but not "emotion," I do vaguely recall there being a passage in a Trungpa Rinpoche text (e.g., "Glimpses of the Abhidhamma"?) that underlines this distinction. Perhaps it would be worthwhile if I dug this up and then we considered including it in a footnote or somewhere in the main body of the text? Just let me know if you'd like me to pursue this. Best wishes, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 18:42, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Larry, The main reason for my interest in clarifying the translation is this: Many clueless practitioners on reading texts which equate Vedana to feeling, subliminally mistake emotions to be Vedana and goes on with the (wrong) intent of seeing 'emotions' and 'craving for emotions' as two different things. Emotions ARE craving. As elucidated by Sariputta, the fetter is the craving that arises on dependent on Vedana. But if one misunderstands that very vedana to be craving-emotion (wikipedia itself considers feeling to be the emotion), that translation has not served it purpose well. I think, your idea of finding a reliable source (Trungpa Rinpoche?) that elucidates this distinction and including it in a footnote or in the main body of the text is a good one.

On a related note, many Buddhist writers, explicitly or implicitly, consider Vedana to be an affective feeling; quite literally - for example, Padmasiri de Silva holds that Pleasant feelings (sukhaa vedanaa) and painful feelings (dukkhaa vedanaa) are affective reactions to sensations. Further he explains, When we make a judgment in terms of hedonic tone of these affective reactions, there are excited in us certain dispositions to possess the object (greed), to destroy it (hatred), to flee from it (fear), to get obsessed and worried over it (anxiety), and so on. The affective reactions ARE greed, hatred and delusion! In my experience I am seeing two schools of thought: one that considers emotions as Vedana and one that does not. Most of the modern Buddhists belong to the former. One could contemplate this question: Are the four sublime states emotions or not? - Nearfar (talk) 17:13, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Nearfar -

Thanks for the additional information and prompting. FWIW, I love the Sariputta excerpt that you refer to. (I added information about it not only to the Ayatana article you cite but also put in an excerpt from it in the Fetter (Buddhism) article :-) )

Regarding the Dr. P. de Silva's statements, I see them as being consistent with what we've been saying. This is how I interpret what s/he writes (in the clip you've provided):

• "Pleasant feelings (sukhaa vedanaa) and painful feelings (dukkhaa vedanaa) are affective reactions to sensations." - For me, here s/he is just describing what was previously identified as the pleasant (sukha) and unpleasant (dukkha) qualities of vedana. In my mind, s/he is using "affective" to refer to these qualitative aspects, which differ for instance from perceptual qualities (e.g., "hot," "rough") of what s/he is referring to here as "sensations." Implicitly, when s/he is using the word "sensation," I see this as his/her translation here for what we previously called "contact" (phassa).
• "When we make a judgment in terms of hedonic tone of these affective reactions...." - when s/he refers to "hedonic tone," I believe s/he has moved on to describing the "craving" (tanha) that arises from the unmindful processing of vedana. After all, one of the canonical formulations for craving is that we "crave for for sensual [hedonic] pleasures, existence and extermination."
• "... there are excited in us certain dispositions to possess the object (greed), to destroy it (hatred), to flee from it (fear), ..." - I read this as possibly referring to the "existence and extermination" aspects of "craving." (The "to possess" phrasing reminds me of the Visuddhimagga's distinction between "craving" and "clinging": "Craving is the aspiring to an object that one has not yet reached, like a thief's stretching out his hand in the dark; clinging is the grasping of an object that one has reached, like the thief's grasping his objective...."). (A significant caution perhaps about my potentially overly simplistic interpretation here is that greed [moha], hatred [dosa] and delusion [lobha] are the classically identified components of the "defilements" [kilesa] which in my mind have always been deeper rooted than craving, but my dissociating the kilesa from tanha could simply be wrong. Yet another thing for me to check out one day?)
• "... to get obsessed and worried over it (anxiety), and so on." - just my two cents but this reminds me more of clinging (upadana) and the higher level mental formations (sankhara).

So, for me, I again see the chain: contact -> feeling -> craving -> clinging and other mental formations (including facets of "emotions").

This might sound particularly strange, though I think I've seen it written somewhere (perhaps by Bhikkhu Bodhi?), but I have an intuition that the Western concept of "emotion" does not map readily to Buddhist phenomenological writing. What you write about in regards to the brahmaviharas I think further illustrates this. In my mind, the brahmaviharas are "states of mind" or perhaps even "mental factors" (e.g., cetasika) [though I should check the Dhammasangani regarding this latter possibility] that one can dwell in; as it sounds like you know well, the first three brahmaviharas have faily well-recognized affective qualities but I don't think, in the Pali Canon at least, they have the strong affective component that we associate with, e.g., "compassion," etc., in the West. The brahmaviharas are selfless, bliss-inducing, radiating, boundless "mental states" as opposed to self-perpetuating, sometimes possessive or protective, unmindful "emotions."

Regrettably, because of other non-WP obligations I'm pursuing now, I can't really pursue all these interesting threads you raise. Let me, of course, perhaps stating the obvious, underline that I am certainly no expert on any of this -- I just have a verbal habit that makes it sound like I think I am. Let's asusme that 25% of what I write is wrong or misleading. :-) Nonetheless, over the next several days, I will definitely follow-up on pertinent sources that distinguish between vedana as "feeling," not to be confused with "emotion." I'll try to hunt down the Trungpa Rinpoche quote as well as someone more familiar to contemporary Theravada-leaning Buddhists, such as Bodhi or Nyanaponika Thera or Thanissaro. Best wishes,
Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 18:55, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Nearfar!

I just remembered that I dealt with this same issue previously on the Skandha page; so, I just now copied over here the solution that I used there which was to insert a footnote (Skandha#_note-6). Satisfactory? I can understand if you'd like to wordsmith (feel free), etc. Overall though, looks like we came up with some useful additions to this article based on this conversation: changed the opening sentence's "meaning" to "traditionally translated as"; added a footnote documenting these translations with the PTS PED; and, added a footnote with Bhikkhu Bodhi & Trungpa Rinpoche caveats about the "feeling" translation. Ça va? I hope all's well with you. Best,

Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 21:45, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

The footnote you added is good enough. Thank you! I have one gripe with it though - the word 'affective' denotes emotions. Could this be a more logically consistent statement - .. Vedana does not signify emotion (...), but the bare sensory quality of an experience, which may be either pleasant, painful or neutral.? (I'm not a native speaker; so if you could come up with a better phrasing that'd be great)

This discussion lead me to think of writing an article on 'Emotions in Buddhism' (just like Rebirth in Buddhism) that would dispassionately point out the current opinions on this topic citing various sources. - Nearfar (talk) 03:32, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Nearfar -- For a non-native speaker, you are doing an amazing job! I'm very impressed with your skills.

Also, I think your idea for an article on "Emotions in Buddhism" sounds very intriguing. I look forward to reading it sometime if you decide to pursue it.

Further, I'm glad you feel that the added footnote is "good enough." More and more often it seems it is hard to find a relatively stable agreement on WP; I am glad that we have done so and very much appreciate your openness, friendliness and thoughtfulness.

Regarding the use of the word "affective" – I think I hear where you are coming from because dictionary definitions probably associate "affective" with emotion in one way or another; and yet here it is being said that these are "affective" sensations that are not "emotions." Definitely could be confusing. I'm loathe to change the Bodhi quote because, after all, it is a quote from someone respected by many, many people due to his scholarship (e.g., edited and translated a popular edition of the Samyutta Nikaya and other canonical/traditional translations), professional success (e.g., head of Buddhist Publication Society), monastic achievement (e.g., lived with and studied under Nyanaponika Thera for ten years) and educational attainment (has a Ph.D. in philosophy).

The reason why the word "affective" makes sense to me though is, as I tried to indicate twice above, in my mind, "affective" identifies particular qualities of the arisen "sensation." In other words, how would one describe the qualities of a "sensation"? We can describe a sensation physically/physiologically in terms of a presumed mental (either conscious or unconscious) experience that results from a sense organ's (e.g., the ear's) contact with a sensible object (e.g., a sound wave within 20 to 20000 Hz). But how does a conscious being knowing first-hand that a sensation has arisen? I believe it is because we experience certain qualities. So for instance, if we touch a hot stove, the sensation could be one of "hot." If we smell an onion, the sensation could be "pungent." If we drink water, one sensation could be "liquid." In the current context these would all be deemed "non-affective" qualities of sensations. This first group of qualities could be called "perceptual." On the other hand, simultaneous with experiencing the "hot" stove as "hot" we could also experience it as "unpleasant." Similarly, the pungent onion could likewise be sensed as "unpleasant," while the water might be sensed as "pleasant." These latter qualities of unpleasant and pleasant are what Bodhi and others (including myself :-) ) refer to as "affective" qualities of sensations or perhaps "affective sensations." Does this distinction between perceptual and affective qualities of sensations resonate with you at all? (If not, I assume it is my flawed thinking/communication and I apologize.) If not, perhaps we can try some more later on. I regret I need to go now.

I wish you the best, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 04:34, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Just a quick wiki-link to a WP article that might (?) provide some more thoughtful distinctions between that which is "affect," "cognitive" (which I was labelling as "perceptual" above) and "emotions": Affect (psychology). While I'm sure we can pull out different parts of this article to reinforce or muddle a distinction between these components, I found the following during a brief gloss of the article and I thought it might be of interest: "The term ‘affect’ can be taken to indicate an instinctual reaction to stimulation occurring before the typical cognitive processes considered necessary for the formation of a more complex emotion." The article actually goes on to make distinctions between "affective responses" and "feelings" -- so it would not support 100% the distinctions being made above. But, over all, I thought it might shed some more light on Bodhi's usage, if we are to assume that Bodhi's usage of "affect" has some validity. Be well, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 04:50, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh - Sorry, I did not notice that Bhikkhu Bodhi wrote it. - Nearfar (talk) 15:15, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Teaching on anger and aggression

• The Answer to Anger & Aggression is Patience by Pema Chödrön

In case anger and aggression belong to Vedanā, it would be nice to refer to the above mentioned teaching of Pema Chödrön for example.

Austerlitz -- 88.75.94.250 (talk) 05:13, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

According to Pema Chodron's own teacher, Trunga Rinpoche (as well as others), "emotions" such as "anger" are not part of vedana. See this article's section entitled "'Feeling,' not 'emotion'." I hope this helps, 24.136.229.74 (talk) 07:02, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

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