Jeanne Corrigal: Meditation - Feeling Tone: Pleasant, Unpleasant, or Neither

And so settling into, settling into a sense of the body sitting. And so settling into a sense of the body sitting. So I'll just talk loudly. So settling into a sense of the body. Is that, yeah? Okay, all right, great. So, it's letting the sensations of the sitting body be known. We direct our attention in a way towards the weight of the body on the chair, or just the sensations that you know you're sitting. And this let my words land into this embodied listening. So resting back and just no need to strive is receiving the words in this embodied way. We're going to add in the skill or the foundation, the second foundation, something we call feeling tone. And so this is the quality in every experience of the experience being either pleasant, unpleasant or neither. And this was an important, such an important place to place the attention that the Buddha gave it its own foundation. For example, a favorite meal might have a pleasant feeling tone. Or there may be some aches in the body as we sit and that might be unpleasant. Or as we have less stimulation in meditation, some people might experience that as unpleasant and call it boredom. Other people may experience it as pleasant and call it settling. And so feeling tone arises with every experience, but it can be different for different people in different circumstances. There are some lots of experiences that are neither strongly pleasant or strongly unpleasant. In these areas we tend to, we call it neither pleasant or unpleasant. Feeling tone is not an emotion. It's a mental aspect of experience that arises with body sensations and with thoughts and with emotions. So an emotion of joy might have a pleasant feeling tone. An emotion of irritation might have an unpleasant feeling tone. The Buddha gave it its own foundation because if we're not mindful of these feeling tones, it's easy for the mind to slide into reactivity. If we don't see a pleasant experience, the mind can have a tendency to try to grasp it and make it stay and never go away and we start to struggle. If we're not mindful of an unpleasant experience, the mind can tend to develop an ill will towards it and want to push it away and we struggle. And if we're not mindful of an experience in between those two, we often overlook it and we tune out of our lives. And so when we are mindful, we're not as likely to react in habitual ways to unpleasant and pleasant experiences. More able to be with experience, widening our circle of what we can be with, with wisdom and responsiveness rather than reactivity. The reactivity of pushing it away unconsciously or grasping for it unconsciously. And so in the meditation, we'll just explore the skill of being able to notice pleasant and unpleasant experiences. And so sitting comfortably and finding in your posture a balance between relaxation and awakeness can be helpful to let the attention go wide for a moment or two to receive sound as with an open receptive attitude. So letting the attention go really wide and receiving the sound of my voice, other sounds in the room. Just letting the attention be spacious. And then settling back into the home base of body or breath and just settling here for a few minutes. And now we'll add in the element of feeling tone. Just being curious about it. When we connect with any experience like the breath or the body sensations or a thought or a mood, first notice that experience as we've been doing that now instead of coming right back to the home base, take a moment to notice. Does this experience have a quality of pleasant, unpleasant or neither? It might help to use the noting softly, to name the experience and then name the feeling tone if that's helpful. Like in-breath, pleasant or anxiety, unpleasant or pressure, neither. Continue in this way through the meditation time. Noticing the experience from time to time. You don't need to do it all the time. That might get a feeling a bit busy or like it's a big project. Just from time to time, noticing the experience, especially if it's a strong experience, a thought that's strong, a mood, an emotion that's strong, a body sensation that's strong can be a good invitation. So noticing the experience, naming it if it's helpful and then noticing the feeling tone. And just checking in, just curious to see if every object, if every experience from breath to emotions to thoughts has a feeling tone. So just playing with that for several minutes and then I'll come in with another invitation. So sensing the experience and whether it's pleasant, unpleasant or neither. From a place of ease, not making it a project, we can begin just right now. What's happening now? Pleasant, unpleasant or neither? Connecting with home base of body and breath. Pleasant, unpleasant or neither? Attention moves away, comes back. Pleasant, unpleasant or neither? Just playing with this in a light way, in silence for a while. And now being curious, when you notice that the feeling tone is definitely pleasant or unpleasant, noticing if there is any mental reaction to that feeling tone or to that experience. For example, strong physical sensations or strong emotions often have a clear feeling tone. Just seeing if any kind of grasping for the pleasant or ill-will or pushing away from the unpleasant arises. In relation to the experience or if there is more of a simple kind of being with the experience. As pleasant in the body or unpleasant. No need to judge either way. If there's a grasping for something or a pushing away, a pulling towards or a pushing away. That's just a conditioned experience and no need to judge it. But we want to see it, see if we can notice. A little cringe, a little brace, a little tightness. We're just observing so that we can learn how the mind and the heart work. And if you find yourself struggling with an experience, that's a good, a good place to notice. Because there may be some pushing away or some wishing it were different in that struggle. And if there is, see if you can notice, was there a feeling tone? Or what was the feeling tone that may have led to that push or pull? Just gently, without making it a project, being curious. Oh, if it's pleasant, is there a pull? If it's unpleasant, is there a push? Just being gently, easefully curious. There might be experiences in the mind where this feels like there might be a sense that this is a project and it's getting complicated. And, oh, that's unpleasant. And yeah, there's a pushing away, wishing, wishing I didn't, I wasn't doing this. I just want to know that. I begin to be able to identify. Or there may be an experience when I ring the bell of pleasant. Oh, and can that just be experienced and known without grasping? Oh, the bell might be pleasant. And so friends, we're going to bring this gentle exploration of pleasant, unpleasant, neutral into our eating time, meditation. Just every so often, staying with the body, but noticing every so often, is this experience pleasant, unpleasant or neither? Now, we begin to notice how the first foundation supports this foundation. Because the way that we know something's pleasant, unpleasant or neutral or neither is often through the body. So the body gives us the steadiness to be able to see clearly what's happening in this way, in the mind, in the heart. And it's also the way we know pleasant, unpleasant and neutral and neither. Often unpleasant can be felt like a little bit of discombobulation for me is unpleasant. So there's discombobulation and it's unpleasant. It can be a sense of remembering something I forgot and that's unpleasant. Or there can be a sense of the breath and that's pleasant in the body. And so we know these and the pleasant can feel like a little bit of an ease, an allowing, an uplift. Or unpleasant can feel like a tightness, a brace, a cringe. And so we know these feeling tones through the body. And the more we practice being able to see them, the more we can interrupt the slide, kind of the almost automatic slide into reactivity to the unpleasant or the pleasant. I remember one time I was at lunch at On Retreat and then I like hot tea. I find it pleasant. And I would find myself at the end, I would get up in the middle of the meal and replenish my tea because it was getting lukewarm. And I began to notice that at the end of the meal I was agitated. And I wondered why because I was on retreat. I thought I should be calm. So I looked closely and I noticed that pleasant, that experience of pleasantness of the hot tea, which then became unpleasant when it got lukewarm. And then the grasping for the hot tea made me get up and get replenishment. I enjoyed the hot tea, but the grasping for it agitated the system. And so when we are calm like this, we can begin to notice if there is a pleasant or unpleasant event and how the body, how we react to it. Gotta have it. Gotta have the hot tea. My happiness was dependent on the hot tea. When I decided at one meal to not get up and get the hot tea, by the end of that particular meal I was so happy. The mind was so settled because it wasn't grasping. And I received that greater happiness of a non-agitated mind. The greater happiness of a mind that was not grasping. And grasping, grasping and ill will are two sides of the same coin of reactivity. Grasping is where we want something that we don't have and we have to have it in order to be, you know, have a peak experience. And ill will is not wanting something and we have to get rid of that thing in order to have the peak experience. And so they're often both present. So in that example of wanting hot tea, there was grasping for the hot tea and there was ill will towards the lukewarm tea. Now, we go through our lives not noticing how much we're pushed and pulled by these small, pleasant and unpleasant experiences. And when we settle and conceive or clarify, we can support the system to not jump to the tune, to the call of Vedana, of pleasant and unpleasant. It's Vedana in Pali. There's a wonderful image of Vedana feeling tone. And it's like we're a puppet, we're the puppet and Vedana are the strings. And so there's a string of pleasant and there's a string of unpleasant and when pleasant, the Vedana pleasant moves, we move. The puppet moves. When there's an unpleasant, we move. Like the puppet moves. We jump. We get up and get the hot tea because we think we're jumping to the Vedana. When we slow down and we see, oh, pleasant unpleasant and there's the jump. There's the urge to get up to get hot tea. Well, we can notice it and ease with it, surf it for a bit. And then if we decide to get up and get hot tea, that's fine. But we're doing it from wise response and care and wanting that beautiful cup of tea rather than from the reactivity unconsciously of jumping to Vedana. So we begin to find freedom in our lives in these small ways. Freedom from the agitation of grasping and ill will in the mind. I laughed is because it's so freeing and that experience will never leave my mind of that time, that lunch where I had this deeper calm because I had been able to see and release jumping. And so we practice in tiny, tiny, small ways simply by beginning to notice pleasant, unpleasant or neither. We begin to tune in to that area of experience and then notice if there's the reactivity after. So pleasant and then is there a grasping unpleasant? Is there a pushing? Then we decide, then we do what we do. We're not, it's not about denying ourselves a pleasure. It's not about not putting a sweater on if it's cold. It's about doing it from wisdom and care rather than reactivity. And in these small ways, we cultivate a greater circle of peace in a way that expands in our lives. And so just gently as you go about having lunch, just notice every so often pleasant, unpleasant. And then see if there's a push or pull. That's all we're looking for. Enjoy lunch. Staying close to the body. The body. The body, yeah, the body. Be close to the body. And then if something rises strongly, oh pleasant, unpleasant, neither, push, pull. Stay close to the body. Thank you for listening. To learn how you can support the teachers and Dharma Seed, please visit dharmaseed.org. Donate.