Do we really experience only one kind of feeling at a time?

Discussion
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I’ll just leave this here. Hopefully this makes sense. I dont have knowledge of technical vocabulary used in English grammar and so forth. I might be using some terms in my own way.

I would say the question or atleast the paradigm that gave rise to this question needs to be examined.

For me, ‘feeling’ is first person subjective, even in the deepest meditative state. The word ‘feeling’ should be considered like the word ‘knowing’. Knowing two knowings at one time, does not compute.

[actually for me all Nama(citta/cetasika) dhammas are first person subjective. ok, i belive they can be object of a subsequent set of nama dhammas, but that is a different story]

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Would you consider that ever present avijja suggests that we are currently mired in it (and that we are not getting the true picture of what is going on -nicca, sukkha, atta)? It takes samadhi for panna to arise, without samadhi there is no panna. Where there is samadhi it can slow down the process of perceiving and see that consciousness is rapidly sampling stimuli from various sense organs. And that when you speed it up you get the ‘mixed’ reality that is apparent to us. For all purposes it is multitasking, by timesharing. Abhidhamma isn’t all wrong and neither is everything in the commentaries (Sure, some of it might be inaccurate…). The Buddha doesn’t divide reality into conventional and ultimate - he merely talks of conventional life and rupa, vedeana, sanna, sankhara when he wants to refer to the ultimate reality. So though not named the division is still there. And we know that fie aggregates are anicca, dukkha and anatta. Objects in ultimate reality is as close as he can get to observing reality at its clearest.

I agree with @viveka that many things are going on, but that attention can deal with only one thing at a time. This is attention conditioned by samadhi, which sees things clearly.

Yes, there is. It is called impermanence of khandhas.

The Buddha didn’t deviate from his doctrine of anatta, when he spoke to uninitiated. This is an example of anicca being treated the same way.

Maybe the issue is apparent to them!

I think putting conditions that will limit your insight, is not helpful. :pray:

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Interesting question, Bhante.

Current neurophysiology might shed some light on this.
Several studies, such as Science | AAAS, indicate there is in fact simultaneious (if less efficient) processing in the brain when processing more than one task, which may include parallel processing of multiple feelings.

So multiple feelings or thought-tasks are present, processed, and “known” pre-consciously one-at-a-time with respect to each process, as conditions arising in the conditional aspect of the body called “brain.”
But, as we know, the mind is also a “seamstress” rapidly, and usually pre-consciously, weaving together many pre-conscious processes into coherent feelings or sensations that appear to be simultaneous.

The point is, perhaps both sides have a point in terms of the suttas:
What subjectively appears as “back pain at the same time as bliss”, thanks to the weaving together of waking conscious is, in fact, an illusion because of the rapid toggling back-and-forth of the two processes, which are really experienced only one at a time.

There’s only one frame at a time during a movie and if our minds processed visual stimuli more rapidly we’d see each one, one at a time. But the toggling and combining of the brain and mind see it all at once. In this sense, multiple feelings are subjectively experienced simultaneously. But, in fact, they are not so.

Assuming the Buddha’s depth of passana allowed him to see the “only one at a time, frame by frame” aspect of feelings, along the lines of the study cited above, the weaving together of conscious experience that has them subjectively appear to be simultaneous would of course also be seen into.
Usual wakeful consciousness → “simultaneous feelings”; ultra-mindfulness → only ever one at a time, which the Buddha taught as the deep reality of feelings.

Perhaps in this context the teaching was offered as a skillful way to teach people to settle down and focus their minds rather than swinging from one feeling to the next, especially as the mind can be distracted by focusing on different feelings that appear to be simultaneous in consciousness, competing for attention. But can only theorize about this…

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These are the thoughts that cross my mind…

DN15 begins with discussing vedana, categorizing it as

feeling born of contact through the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind
cakkhusamphassajā vedanā sotasamphassajā vedanā ghānasamphassajā vedanā jivhāsamphassajā vedanā kāyasamphassajā vedanā manosamphassajā vedanā

Its only later that it talks about three kinds of vedana, in relation to which might be considered as Self.

Reverend, there are three feelings:
‘tisso kho imā, āvuso, vedanā—
pleasant, painful, and neutral.
sukhā vedanā dukkhā vedanā adukkhamasukhā vedanā.
Which one of these do you regard as self?’
Imāsaṁ kho tvaṁ tissannaṁ vedanānaṁ katamaṁ attato samanupassasī’ti?

Putting the two together, it seems to me that the three feelings are being discussed in relation to each one of the sense organs. This is also in accordance with MN59 where the Buddha analyses feelings further.

In one explanation I’ve spoken of two feelings. In another explanation I’ve spoken of three feelings, or five, six, eighteen, thirty-six, or a hundred and eight feelings.
Dvepānanda, vedanā vuttā mayā pariyāyena, tissopi vedanā vuttā mayā pariyāyena, pañcapi vedanā vuttā mayā pariyāyena, chapi vedanā vuttā mayā pariyāyena, aṭṭhārasapi vedanā vuttā mayā pariyāyena, chattiṁsapi vedanā vuttā mayā pariyāyena, aṭṭhasatampi vedanā vuttā mayā pariyāyena.
I’ve explained the teaching in all these different ways.
Evaṁ pariyāyadesito kho, ānanda, mayā dhammo.
This being so, you can expect that those who don’t concede, approve, or agree with what has been well spoken will argue, quarrel, and fight, continually wounding each other with barbed words.

So, in the examples offered

If one is to analyze these examples, there is sukkha vedana born of contact of the cake with the Tongue, while the dukkha vedana is born of contact of the cake eating thought with the Mind. Similarly, there is sukkha vedana born of Mind contact during meditation, while there is also dukkha vedana born of Body contact.

These are separate feelings (vedana) to be considered in relation to each of the separate sense organs.

One can only feel one of the three possibilities viz pleasant/ painful/ neutral feeling in relation to each sense organ at any particular time.

That does not preclude the possibility of feeling two different kinds of feeling from two different sense organs sensing different aspects of the same experience.

:pray: :thinking: :slightly_smiling_face:

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I think these type of ideas only take us backward rather than forward on the spiritual path. The Buddha has compared consciousness to a monkey that jumps from branch to branch to illustrate how quickly what we call our consciousness, mind or thoughts change.
So for me, even the mere suggestion that our feelings are mixed rather than momentary is a waste of time because it makes us forget the bigger picture which is the impermanance that is all pervasive.
With Metta

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Thanks everyone for your genuine and careful responses! I’m trying, I really am, but I’m still not persuaded. Here’s why!

You’ve just read your answer into your assumptions. What if the pleasant feeling arises and then guilt arises which continues along at the same time as the pleasure? Here’s the evidence!

It’s definitely true that “feeling” (vedanā) lies very close in meaning to “knowing”, if fact coming from one of the roots “to know” (vid). But as with Viveka’s previous approach, which shifted from feeling to attention, I’m not sure how shifting from feeling to knowing actually solves the problem. If I look out my window I see light and my mind rapidly recognizes trees and buildings, meanwhile I am aware of a sense of existential unease from unread emails. It doesn’t seem obvious to me that they cannot be simultaneous.

As I said in the original post, this argument is used exclusively as a self-evident axiom that is assumed to be a shared understanding with non-Buddhists. So any argument that requires special practices and insights doesn’t represent how this is presented in the suttas.

No-one said it was. The Abhidhamma interpretation is not wrong because it’s Abhidhamma, it’s wrong because it doesn’t make sense that understanding of Abhidhamma concepts were assumed to be shared with non-Buddhists.

Ahh, you must be new here!

I’m not putting in conditions, the context is.

Interesting article, thanks. The basic idea is that the brain can split tasks between the two hemispheres, but not more than that.

Neuroscientist Scott Huettel of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, isn’t convinced of the two-task limit on human multitasking ability. “This shows there are conditions in which you can’t add a third task, but it depends on the type of task and whether it draws on other parts of the brain,” he says.

For example, people are remarkably good at eating while doing other things, he says, because the practiced motor skills involved in eating don’t overlap too heavily with those that interpret visual cues, control language, or run other complex processes.

This is talking about simultaneously accomplishing multiple complex and purpose driven tasks, which is surely more demanding than simply experiencing two feelings at the same time.

To be clear, I don’t believe that brain processes are the same as the mind, but clearly they are closely related. And it simply doesn’t make sense to think of the brain as running on a single thread. It does all kinds of things at the same time, all interrelated in complex ways and manifesting in consciousness in complex ways.

There is a long history in modern Buddhism of saying “we are scientific”, then rejecting the findings of science that disagree with us. In this case, however, I think we have something to learn about how the mind works.

Again, this is the same problem. The position is presented in the suttas as a self-evident axiom. Any response that argues “it seems like this, but it really is that” is simply ruled out by the context.

True, the analysis does proceed from the six senses in DN 15. But not in MN 74; and even in DN 15 it is presented inside the larger analysis as a self-contained argument. It doesn’t say, “if talking to someone who believes feeling is self, first establish the fact that there are feelings that arise based on six senses, then infer from that that only the same kind of feeling can arise in one sense door at one time”.

No, it says (paraphrasing): “obviously only one kind of feeling can arise at a time”. The more I hear complex arguments explaining how to infer this or reason it or experience it in deeper meditations the more I become convinced of my original point, which is that it is far from obvious.

Again, the sutta does not make this kind of distinction about overlapping domains.

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If we are asking how an Iron Age non-Buddhist Indian would understand it, does it make sense then to discuss physiology, neuroscience etc? Perhaps it would be better to look at something more like Samkhya.

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The momentariness of feelings depends on the faculty that perceives them. If a perceiving subject is at the distinct end of the spectrum - applying will, focus, attention, direction - then the feeling will appear as arising and falling, as momentary. Because the perceiving subject relates itself to time in a distinct way. This is obviously the “vipassana perceiver”.

On the other end of the spectrum we have the naive perceiver, not concerned with dhamma, philosophy, or even hyper-effective work/concentration. This subject relates itself differently to time, it is not too distinct from the unconscious - which is structured as a field, not as distinct elements. The field-nature of the unfocused consciousness allows more complexity and chaos. And like in a painting, a daydream, a poem, a symbol, or flavors in complex wine, many emotions exist simultaneously - not as distinct units, but blended into a field-like experience with smeared time and proximity to the unconscious modality.

And many of our every day experiences are somewhere in between, with a more or less differentiated subject, with a more or less precise relation to time, with more or less distance to the unconscious field-modality.

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Once again, I’m not asking for an explanation of momentariness—which I understand just fine, thanks—I’m asking how a naive observer with no meditation practice can simply be assumed to understand that only one feeling is experienced at a time…

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I think if we are to accept this passage as not simply mistaken, then the best way to take it is in a generalized sense that understands the context of the argument. After all, as you have said, this is meant to be a clear argument that is not super technical or meditation-specific, let alone Buddhist-Abhidhamma-technical specific.

So those who say ‘feeling is my self’ regard as self that which is evidently impermanent, a mixture of pleasure and pain, and liable to rise and fall.
DN 15

The main context is that feelings obviously come and go, and so to treat them as one self is quite odd. Part of this seems to be that “because they come and go, they change into a different feeling.” So the idea is that a general feeling tone arises, and it will go away and turn into a different one, and thus specific feelings are unreliable.

I think that if we take this as primary context along with the idea that this is meant to be straightforward, this generalized statement holds true. There are obvious exceptions. I think part of what @josephzizys said applies as well that we should understand vedanā as the tone for a whole experience. If we are sitting down in meditative bliss and feeling back pain, still, we are going to regard that whole experience generally as a pleasant one, a painful one, or neutral.

If we are experiencing the bliss of meditation but have bodily pain for instance, I’d say that’s probably a generally positive feeling — otherwise it would be difficult for there to be the bliss from samādhi. There is some discomfort, sure, but the experience as a whole when we step aside from technical analysis and division of feelings is just generally pleasant. If we could categorize it as “the experience of having back pain while also experiencing mental bliss,” we could say “that’s a generally pleasant experience.”

I find that this more generalized sense of the word makes sense when we question its usage and all experience generally. Do we ever experience pure pleasure, pure pain, or pure neutral feeling and nothing else whatsoever when having sensual experiences? It seems each chunk in our stream of consciousness is full of different contacts, but overall, even with diversity, we experience this part of the stream as something good, bad, or indifferent.

I also think this section of the sutta, in the same part on feeling and the self, contributes to this notion:

‘Feeling is definitely not my self. My self does not experience feeling.’ You should say this to them,
‘But reverend, where there is nothing felt at all, would the thought “I am” occur there?’”
“No, sir.”
DN 15

I’m not sure how obvious this is either if we take vedanā to mean a specific localized sensation. Perhaps we should re-evaluate how we relate to the word vedanā itself if we find that this usage does not conform to how we use the word ‘feeling’ in English. Maybe there are some underlying connotations or associations being overlooked that this nuance helps us capture.

If you say “okay, your self does not feel, but if you felt no sensations (of pleasant, painful, neutral), would you even have the notion of ‘I am’?” It seems to me that most people would say “… yes.” Especially if they think “the self does not feel” lol. Who cares if there are no sensations?

Ajahn Brahm has translated vedanā as ’experience(s)’. This was indirectly discussed some already with mention of the root vid-, gestalts, etc. There are plenty of faults with this as a translation, but it does seem to me that this captures something in the understanding and usage of the word. If we say “yes, but if you didn’t even have any experiences (which can be generally pleasant, painful or neutral), you wouldn’t even have a notion of ‘I am’.” This I think people can get behind and it makes a lot more sense. It is what I mean by how a “chunk of the stream of consciousness” is experienced in such a way generally. There is nuance, but this is an obvious, clear, way to relate to our experience and to the concept that also seems to match the context and the understanding of the scope of the word at the time.

Also, I’d note that there are:

  • Suttas which define consciousness as that which cognizes, and the say what it cognizes is pleasant, painful, and neutral vedanā
  • Passages which say that consciousness, feeling, and perception are intertwined
  • Passages which say that perception-less beings exist, and thus perhaps saññā does not account for all experience generally. Note too that the nirodha samāpatti specifically includes the cessation of saññā and vedanā

I think these points contribute to the above understanding of the word/concept of vedanā itself.

Would love feedback especially on this second point of the scope of the word. Hope this was helpful. And to repeat myself some: this is if we accept the passage, not that we must :slight_smile:

Mettā :pray:

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But here you assume that naive observers were addressed with such a teaching. This isn’t the case. The context implies an understanding of just-before conditionality. Or, in DN 9 the samaye is applied to all jhanas.

Such an audience doesn’t need a transfer from daily experience to philosophical psychology - they have done their homework.

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Whether or not only one kind of feeling (such as bodily feeling) at a time we experience is not essential, according to SN 36.6 = SA 470. The key issue is how to overcome mental feeling, which is negative emotion (i.e. repulsion, desire, and ignorance in response to the three bodily feelings):

Pages 109-111 from The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism Choong Mun-keat 2000.pdf (231.4 KB)

However, I do consider it is likely more than one kind of bodily and mental feelings at a time we experience.

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Or perhaps the Upanishads or other Vedic texts have shared the idea of exclusivity of feeling too, Bhante @sujato :thinking:

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Greetings Bhante,

This clip you posted as evidence didn’t really gel for me and has been percolating in the background…

I don’t think it is evidence for 2 simultaneous feelings. I think it shows the conflict of 2 desires, with one desire winning out and the result being incongruent/dissonant because, where one would have expected pleasure to arise, unpleasant feeling arises while indulging - because the other desire is thwarted at the same time. This is pretty common I think… Desire to eat ice-cream (in this case probably as a mental soothing/distraction in relation to some dukkha as I can’t see any indication of relishing the taste). Simultaneously is the desire to not eat it (probably in order to be thin/attractive). The desire to eat ice-cream wins out and that volition takes over… but the feeling generated is not pleasure at fulfilling that desire, but rather unpleasant in response to going directly against the other desire of not eating ice-cream in order to be thin/attractive.

I don’t see any pleasure in the eating in that clip. Just the action/volition of eating (based on one craving) and suffering feeling (based on another craving) at the same time… LOL quite like wanting your cake and eating it too… impossible so the issue here is in being led by the nose by craving and you eat your cake while crying because then you can’t have it too.
Least skillful and least satisfactory outcome… It’s just all tangled up and results in lose/lose for the person.

This is quite a clear example, but there would be many where the conflicts in desire and the resultant dissonance in feelings would be harder to see. Being aware of the desire is an important step.

To be a bit more explicit, in this case if we want to use a DA sequence to analyse, then there is the initial contact with a mental object that generates a feeling of dukkha, the volition is to move away from that by engaging in a distraction/soothing activity (eating ice cream). This however, immediately triggers a feeling of dukkha since it is contrary to the desire of wanting to be thin. However, that desire isn’t as strong as the initial one and therefore one continues in the volition of eating, while attention is on the second craving and therefore witnessing ones own out of control volition results in more dukkha and unpleasant feeling.

If one had more insight, then there would be the ability to either shift attention from the second craving that is being thwarted and back onto the first and enjoying the activity, or one would over-ride the first volition with the second, would stop eating and would feel pleasant feeling as a result because that would satisfy the second craving.

For me this just reinforces the pivotal role of attention in perception.

So this is probably over-kill for most people :smile: but for me it is an important step in being able to see things according to DA, the conditional nature of how the khandas operate. And yes I do love satipatthana

:pray: :slight_smile: :sunflower:

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I am really glad that you brought this up. It’s something that’s been bugging me for years.

I’ve been thinking about this the last few weeks and was listening to a book on the experiences of neurodivergent folks, including synesthetes. The topic of mirror neurons came up; where some people will actually feel physical pain when seeing it happen to another person. Maybe not an everyday experience for most but an example, which has been measured scientifically, which shows that we don’t experience sense in isolation.

I was listening to Ajahn Brahm teach on a similar topic the other night and it occurned to me that this teaching can be understood; that each sense experience doesn’t persist.

Re-reading the passage in MN74 this afternoon I read the passage within this context, rather than the abhidhamma mindset I’d been unconvincingly brainwashed into. If each of our 6 sense has an experiences which is pleasant, painful or neutral and that particular sense ie. touch, is only of one kind, such as pleasant, but other senes could be experiencing other experiences, then that is more inline with our common everyday experience. We can have a pleasant tactile sensation but an unpleasant odour. They may arise at the same or different times and cease at the same or different times. This following paragraph seems to be clarification that the Buddha wasn’t talking about seperate mind-moments, but instead the changeable nature of sense experiences.

Pleasant, painful, and neutral feelings are impermanent, conditioned, dependently originated, liable to end, vanish, fade away, and cease.

I feel like this fits the criteria. Am I missing something Bhante?

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The fact that we only have one thought moment at a time not only has empirical evidence but can be realized through contemplation.
Regarding empirical evidence, see the following references:

Regarding contemplation, think of the following: Think of how the last year was in the past, the next year is in the future and the current year is the present year. We can narrow this analysis gradually and talk in terms of past, present or future months, weeks, days, hours, seconds, milliseconds, and can even continue this division infinitely to smaller units. This contemplation enables us to see that our experiences change every micro-moment - it is NOT that two things occur together. We think everything happens at the same time because we haven’t developed sharp mindfulness.
(By the way, I deleted my earlier reply as I realized that you do not like the abhidhamma!)

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@Daya These articles are about the ability to pay attention, which because of signal transmission speeds, integrating inputs from neurons and glial cells and establishing equilibrium, have a built-in minimum time for switching attention effectively. This is related to what @Viveka was talking about. Conscious attention is a different issue than different little parts of the brain doing their own thing in parallel, which goes on constantly.

It seems that implicit in the idea of momentariness is that all of these thoughts and feelings are being deposited in and recognized by some central vault or processing unit - like a Self.
Why is momentariness necessary? Feelings are just felt and when their magnitude is above some threshold, they are consciously recognized as felt. Momentariness is a hypothesis, so it requires a justification for its introduction. What exactly will go wrong if two feelings or thoughts arise in the mind at exactly the same moment? Especially if there isn’t a single fixed experiencer?
I am really not understanding the basis for this theory. Seems like I am missing something.

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Hi trusolo: You are talking about concepts from the third-person perspective analyses (e.g. ‘glial cells,’ ‘signal transmission speeds,’ ‘ability to pay attention,’ ‘parts of the brain’). In Buddhism, we are talking about moment by moment changes in experience of oneself. Perhaps read the Chachakka Sutta (MN 148), which clearly explains moment by moment manifestation of experience (e.g. attention happens when three things come together). These issues are things that need to be understood within our experience and through meditation - not by looking at brain research (which is about third-person analyses). Through mindfulness, it is also possible to see that we cannot know two things at the same time - in normal living, experience happens so fast that we think that everything happens together. Also check the contemplation method I mentioned towards the end of my earlier post (i.e., past, present and the future, gradually reducing the time length). You might also find the following article useful to understand the difference between first-person and third-person experiences: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244015583860

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The point I was making was that the three papers you cited as evidence are not at all about having one thought or feeling at a time. Nowhere in any of the three papers it is claimed that we can experience only one thought at a time. The claims are about minimum time of forward sweep and perceptual recognition, which is precisely about neurons, glial cells, and their time scales. Also, in the third paper, participants are hooked up to EEG machines, along with answering Yes or No questions by clicking a button after seeing a picture for up to 500 ms. How is that a “first person perspective”? It is not even a singular event — a whole bunch of things happen between seeing something for a few milliseconds and pressing a button to answer a question about what you just saw.

Also, it still does not answer my query: why is it imperative to have one thought at a time?

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Regarding your question: ‘why is it imperative to have one thought at a time?’ - we are not talking about what is imperative or not - we are talking about what HAPPENS in experience - the Buddha’s teachings are about that. The papers I posted indirectly suggest what I am saying - you need to contemplate them as well as their findings and methods deeply. But if you don’t agree regarding the papers, you can have a look at the other parts I wrote in my above post, including the sutta, as well as the contemplation regarding what we refer to as the past, present and the future. Please also read the article in the link I posted. Best wishes.