One quarter
of the Buddha's teaching is based on feeling, which is
the first truth that he taught for forty-five years. It
is in not understanding this truth that we are leashed
to repetition of birth and death in one form or another.
To a lesser degree it also is one of the four
foundations of mindfulness as outlined by the Buddha in
several Suttas. An ordinary person and a more
enlightened one differ from each other in their response
to feelings. While an ordinary person, for instance,
would cling to the pleasant feeling and reject the
unpleasant, the more enlightened one neither clings to
the pleasant nor rejects the unpleasant. Rather he pays
total mindful attention to both and always maintains a
balanced mind with regard to both.
All living
beings, without any exception, feel. Not very many of
them, however, use feeling as a means of gaining deeper
insight into the reality of their experience, while
avoiding emotional reaction. Human beings who use their
mind to think and create are in a very advantageous
position. Unfortunately, however, not many human beings
use their feelings as a way to develop their humanness
or humane qualities. There are many human beings who
have not learned to use their unlimited mental capacity
and feelings for further development of their mind.
When somebody
asks you, "How are you?" You would say "I am fine." or
"I have never felt better." or "I am O.K. and how about
yourself?" or "I don't feel well today." or "I have a
bit of an upset stomach. " or "I feel miserable today."
Here you express your feelings but not any particular
reason for how you feel. If you were to perform a
psychological analysis you would make a distinction
between feelings and sensations. In your daily
expression, however, you use these two terms
indiscriminately. In order to maintain consistency in
this article, I, too, therefore, will use the term
"feelings" indiscriminately to mean both "feelings" and
"sensations." It may be better to put the difference
between these two terms on the back burner until you
have completely read this article. I am not trying to
make any neurological analysis here of how feeling
occurs. My attempt is to point out how feelings should
be used as an object of mindfulness training so that you
would be able to live with all kinds of feelings without
having a nervous breakdown.
Feeling
should be used as a mechanism for gaining deeper insight
into the reality of feelings. We know from the moment we
were born until we breathe our last breath we operate on
feelings. Feeling arises from the periphery due to
designation contact or from the deep down our own state
of mind due to impingement contact. As soon as our
senses come in contact with their objects we become
conscious of our feelings caused by peripheral contact.
Initiated simultaneously with the development of our
nervous system, feeling was present even as we were in
our mother's womb. When our mother ate hot food we felt
the heat. When she ate cold food we felt the cold. When
she was angry we felt her agitation and tension. When
she moved we felt her movements. When she sang we heard
her singing. When she cried we heard her cry. When she
laughed we heard that too. While we may not be able to
recall this, nevertheless, we felt all of them.
As soon as we
were born we cried not only because we felt sad that we
had to leave our mother's womb, or not only because we
thought that if we did not cry that people wouldn't pay
attention to us, but because we felt the change of
atmosphere. From the warm, dark and comfortable
environment in the mother's womb we were thrust into the
cool, blinding bright light and uncomfortable
surroundings with several people around us. We had never
experienced this before. From the moment we started our
struggle of life as a unicellular being, we have been
experiencing feelings. From the moment our nerve cells
or neurons began to develop we have been experiencing
our feelings. When the feeling pleases us we wish to
have more of it and when feeling does not please us we
wish to reject it. This is our natural reaction. Our
entire search--struggle, achievements, improvement,
development, inventions, working hard or not, desire to
live or not to live-- depends on how we feel. Our search
for food, clothing, medicine, shelter, sex, heat, cold,
and much more, depends on our feelings. When we feel
cold we look for heat. When we feel hungry we look for
food. When we want to evacuate we go to a suitable place
to fulfill that feeling. We have discovered,
manufactured, developed or improved many things because
of what we feel. We create and procreate according to
our feelings. Even our reasoning began from our
feelings. All that we do depends on our feelings. Our
reaction to any situation depends on how we feel. After
reacting to the situation we may rationalize our
reaction. All our emotional reactions depend on how we
feel about a situation. Repeated emotional reactions to
feelings gradually nourish our ego. When emotional
reaction becomes a habit we rationalize our emotional
reaction and defend ourselves saying, "I have every
right to defend my feelings when somebody hurts my
feelings."
When we begin
to learn the universal nature of feelings we begin to
train our minds to use it for the benefit of all living
beings, rather than becoming selfish. When we learn to
train our minds to use feelings as objects of our mental
development, we learn more about it and make the full
use of it with deeper understanding. When you
universalize your feelings you become more mindful about
not saying anything to hurt anybody. Nor can you do
anything to destroy any living being. All living beings
feel the fear of death. Of course, if you ignore others'
feelings, you may justify doing anything. Most of the
time your justification does not come with feeling. You
rationalize anything if you can ignore others' feelings.
Religious fanatics are well known for this. Some people,
while putting their own religions on high pedestals, use
abusive or disparaging language to attack people
belonging to other religions, because they ignore their
feelings.
All these are
but a few examples of how much you suffer from your own
feelings. If you look at your feelings with
understanding, you would not be very upset to see
somebody different from you. You won't get annoyed if
someone speaks a language you don't understand. If you
understand the nature of feelings you can listen to
somebody's complaints of pain without yourself
complaining. If you don't understand feelings you may be
very obnoxious, arrogant and insulting, and later suffer
for this behavior.
When you
train yourself to have mindfulness of feelings your
whole attitude will change and you will feel more
comfortable in noticing differences in the world. Notice
your feeling--pleasant, unpleasant or neutral--focus
your total attention on it without thinking or saying,
"Ah! My head aches," or "My leg aches," etc. Unless you
pay total attention to your feeling, you won't know what
is behind it. Pay total attention to your own feeling
and begin to notice the pleasant feeling behind your
unpleasant feeling. Only by giving total attention to
something can you notice what is behind that thing. If
you have enough patience to observe your feeling, you
will also notice that it is changing. You would not
notice this change in feeling if you did not pay
attention to it. It is your attention, not the word,
that brings things to the surface of your mind.
Suppose you
feel depressed. If you pay total attention to this
feeling without adding any other emotion to it, you will
notice your depression gradually diminishing. Of course,
you may make your depression more miserable and even may
have manic depression lasting for several days if you
become attached to it. Or you can get rid of it very
quickly if you learn to accept the reality of change
that takes place during every moment of your feeling.
Fortunately for you even unpleasant feelings are
impermanent.
Suppose you
wake up one morning with a terrible headache.
Immediately find a reasonably quiet place in your house
or apartment and spend some time quietly sitting down,
closing your eyes and watching your headache without any
presumption or worry, but paying total attention to it.
Soon will you notice your headache diminishing slowly.
But if you worry about it, you may make your headache
worse by adding more tension or pressure to it, because
you add another feeling--worry--rather than dealing with
just one feeling--headache.
Suppose one
night or for several nights in a row you cannot sleep.
Following morning you wake up and you feel a little
uncomfortable. If you begin to worry about not sleeping
you may have more uncomfortable feelings. Now it is this
worry, not the sleeplessness that makes you feel greater
discomfort. If, on the other hand, you take it easy and
don't worry about not having a good night's sleep, you
feel better. This means that you can use your feelings
to make you feel either comfortable or uncomfortable,
depending on how you deal with your feelings.
Suppose one
day you feel very peaceful, joyful and happy. Look at
that feeling as it is and try to pay total attention to
it. As long as you feel peaceful, joyful and happy, try
to pay total attention to it and let it fade away when
it fades away. Don't try to make it permanent. If that
feeling disappears, don't get upset; simply accept the
disappearance. Welcome it as it is. By accepting it you
allow yourself to recreate it in your mind at another
time. If you worry about its disappearance you won't
permit it to come back. What you are really doing by
accepting the disappearance of your pleasant feeling is
learning to relax and be comfortable with the change in
your own feelings. You cannot force any feeling to stay
with you as you wish. It slips away from your grip. The
harder you try to keep it with you the quicker it
disappears. If you simply accept it as it comes and let
it go as it goes away, you maintain your equilibrium and
this permits you to relax.
By the same
token, if an unpleasant feeling arises in you, don't try
to reject it or push it away prematurely. It takes time
for any feeling to go away. You have to cultivate
patience with unpleasant feelings as well. If you lose
your patience with it, you lose the pleasantness that
can follow the unpleasantness, and even magnify it. When
you "take it easy", you make things simple and more
comfortable for yourself. Simply pay total attention to
your unpleasant feeling. You may have certain unpleasant
feelings due to a chemical imbalance in your brain. You
must admit that whether you like it or not, things in
your body and mind change all the time. If you
experience certain unpleasant sensations due to a change
in hormone balance, you may prolong the imbalance by
worrying or by being impatient. If you relax and pay
total attention to the hormone imbalance your mind
generates better and more positive hormones to transcend
the imbalanced state.
Inadvertently, you cultivate a certain mental attitude
towards numerous things and persons. This attitude can
cause you pleasant or unpleasant feelings. When you
mindfully look at your own state of mind, you will see
that it is your own attitude that has created that state
of mind which results in one feeling or another. Feeling
does not come from the object that you perceive but from
your own state or mental attitude. This is why when
several people look at the same object they can have
several different feelings, several different opinions
about the object.
If you
mindfully watch your own mind and feelings, you can see
very clearly and unequivocally that what you feel is
your own creation and that you are totally responsible
for it. Mindfully watching the continuous change of your
own feelings can make you abstain from emotional
reactions and make you see the truth of your own
feelings. Mindfulness of feelings will not cause you to
think obsessive thoughts or abusive thoughts or harmful
thoughts. By unmindful thinking you abuse your mind. The
abused mind always generates abusive feelings, which
always is painful.
Bhavana
Newsletter Vol. 11. No. 3 July - Sept. 1995
|