Feelings/Vedana = pre-conscious? How determined pleasant/unpleasant/neutral?

Q & A
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22

I don’t think I did rs. I would change the phrasing a bit to when there is eyes and sights for me (which it would mean the “corresponding engagement” from the sutta you mentioned) there is eye consciousness, that is what I meant. This would also mean, obviously, what you said, when there is eye conciousness there is eyes and sights.

[The coming into range and appearing for you as something different is the difference between everything present in the sounds around you and that sound that you can “discern” more than the others at that moment, so while the ear and sounds were there or in range, only when you focus in one sound (you can only focus in one sound always, even if you try to focus in two different sources, that becomes one sound for you) is that sound for you, and hence there is ear conciousness to that sound, otherwise, that sound enables ear conciousness as that undefined sound, only, which it is for you as that undefined way.]

And, what I am saying is that these eyes and sights can only be eyes and sights for me because there is contact too (namarupa depends on vinnana and vinnana depends on namarupa, from the DO).

Do you have a sutta talking about this? Because, for now, I disagree with you that this is possible. If namarupa depends on vinnana, and vinnana depends on namarupa, according to this same reasoning, if there is vinnana there is namarupa, if there is namarupa it means there is vinnana. To say there is vinnana without contact, feelings, perceptions etc. it would mean to say that there is vinnana without eyes and sights, since there is only eyes and sights for you because you can perceive, and other many complications like a viññana without craving, since craving depends on feeling, and without feeling there is no craving.

Right, but you cannot access them without contact, so for you they don’t exist, basically.

23

I don’t think so. Why do you think so?
Are these not considered perceptions and one just needs awareness, right?

Like you don’t feel sights to see, right?
You perceive them. But there can be feelings dependent on sights.

SN47.35

And how is a mendicant aware(sampajano)?
It’s when a mendicant knows feelings… thoughts… perceptions… as they arise, as they remain, and as they go away.

MN43 talks about perceptions with an example of different colors.

“They speak of this thing called ‘perception’.
How is perception defined?”
“It’s called perception because it perceives.
And what does it perceive? It perceives blue, yellow, red, and white.
It’s called perception because it perceives.”

Yes, MN28 which I included above in the bold segment:

Though the interior eye is intact and exterior sights come into range, so long as there’s no corresponding engagement (“rubbing the sticks”, right?), there’s no manifestation of the corresponding type of vinnana.

1 “When there are eyes and sights there is eye vinnana.” is logically different from
2 “Eye vinnana is dependent on eyes and sight.”

1 would be a rule and state when there are these also this exists. (not stated by DO)
2 is used by DO and only states that if that exists, it is dependent on that. This does not imply that it must exist if its dependents exist, but means that if dependents cease to exist, it too ceases.

24

Because every experience needs contact. So, even if there are sights, if they don’t appear to you, for you, at that moment, they don’t exist, basically. If you remember something that is not in front of you, that would exist as a memory, so mind and ideas and mind consciousness. If there is no contact, there is no perception.

Yes, but there is no sight without feelings dependent on sights.

I was talking about your assertion that when there is eyes + sights + eye vinnana, it doesn’t mean there is eye contact, meaning, that there can be eye conciousness without eye contact. Your quote talks about if there is no engagement with the eye and sights, there is no eye consciousness. If you are interpreting this engagement as contact, which is reasonable, this just proves my point… By changing your quote:

Though the interior eye is intact and exterior sights come into range, so long as there’s no corresponding contact, there’s no manifestation of the corresponding type of vinnana.

Yes, that is why I clarify what I said… When there is eyes and sights and engagement, when they appear for you, there is eye vinnana, would be the first phrase. Which, I agree, it is a different assertion than if there is eye vinnana, there is eyes and sights. However, if there is no way that there is eyes, sights, engagement and not eye conciousness, they are logically equivalent.

Remember, in DO vinnana depends on namarupa (which includes contacts and feelings) as namarupa depends on vinnana, so to have vinnana is to have, automatically, contact and feelings, in the same way as to have contact and feelings is to have vinnana. You can’t just consider the namarupa depends on vinnana.

If eye contact is the coming of eyes, sights, and eye conciousness, in the same way (and here I am only speculating), eye conciousness is the coming of eyes, sights and eye contact (?), contact between the two (?), I don’t know.

Now, there are some claims that need verification, and it wouldn’t be productive to keep going without verifying them / talking about them:

  • Is there experience for you without contact?
  • Is there a corresponding consciousness without a corresponding contact?
  • Is there experience for you without feelings and perceptions?
  • In the initial discussion, we saw that there is a corresponding feeling for a corresponding contact, which shows that pleasant feeling is rooted in contact-to-be-felt-as-pleasant, and you used it to show that in the same way, there is a corresponding conciousness for a corresponding contact. Is there a sutta that talks about this directly?

Thank you for the discussions, btw. I am learning a lot.

25

Thank you for correcting. We want to cultivate mind states (rub the sticks) that start wholesome fires. I have been reading the teaching of Ajahn Chah where he has suggested that a trained mind acts toward these states independently when they are cultivated correctly. In order to reach Nibbana, ultimately we have to put down the sticks even with jhana. An arahant does not need to rub sticks.

26

I’m glad you’re happy with the discussion. Let’s see:

How about MN148 which clearly defines contact as the meeting of the three:

Eye consciousness arises dependent on the eye and sights. The meeting of the three is contact. Contact is a requirement for feeling.

With body one experiences many contacts.
But I haven’t read in Suttas that every “experience” requires contact. Contact is specifically defined as meeting of sense fields and vinnana.

In the prior example, if you see a picture. It does not necessarily produces a contact or a feeling ‘this is pleasant/painful/neutral’. One simply sees colors.
If those colors represented something pleasant, there could be a contact and corresponding feeling which would be quite noticeable.
Of course, you could argue that maybe all colors one see produce a very subtle feeling, maybe neutral and its hardly perceptible. But then I could hardly know that.

Apart from perception, there is vinnana, panna(wisdom/understanding), attention, awareness.
Eg. do you think attention, awareness, wisdom require contact & feeling?

Actually a good way to resolve this is to consider that in DO grasping depends on craving which dependent on feeling.
Do you think it is possible to graps or crave awareness, wisdom?
Awareness and wisdom are not part of the 5 grasping aggregates so I believe the answer to that question should be no and I also don’t see how one would grasp or crave awareness.

Vinnana can be accumulated [1]. Eg. imagine a chess player that feels good when wins and bad when loses. Those feelings could be conditioned by eye or mind vinnana. This vinnana does not trigger a contact all the time, but only when the learned condition occurs (game win/loss).

[1] MN28

They understand: ‘So this is how there comes to be inclusion, gathering together, and assimilation into these five grasping aggregates.

With body one experiences many contacts, feelings and perceptions. One would have to have a solid definition on what “experience” means. If you define experience as something that is felt and perceived that it becomes a meaningless question. One would also need strong definition of without feeling/perception, otherwise one can simply answer like: wisdom/understanding, awareness (but still with body there are feelings, perceptions).

27

Not enough, I’m afraid. I would at best put this down as inconclusive if there is no sutta which says that a corresponding contact (I am talking about contact-to-be-felt-as-pleasurable etc., not eye contact etc. if it wasn’t clear) is depending on a corresponding vinnana (vinnana “pleasure” etc.). You would have to do the same thing for perceptions, since specific tastes are perceptions, the content of perceptions would also need to be rooted in a corresponding vinnana.

So… how can you have an experience without sense fields or without vinnana… This is what I am asking…

I am sorry, this don’t make sense for me. If I see a picture, clearly, eyes and sights and eye conciousness arose and met. And, if it is a random picture that has no meaning for you, it is easily a neutral feeling towards that picture.

I wonder if you could point out how your experience/idea of neutral feelings is in a way that is different from what you are talking about here.

You would have attention of what, awareness of what, wisdom about what? Without contact, there is nothing to put attention on, nothing to put awareness on etc.

Anything you see as awareness or wisdom is the five aggregates or a set of it. Also, grasping depends on craving, and cravings depends on feeling, but in this case, not because there is feeling there is craving. The relation of each link on dependent origination is not the same. Even in your interpretation that X being dependent on Y means if there is X there is Y, but not necessarily if there is Y there is X (if there is contact, not necessarily there is feeling etc.), you cannot deny that for vinnana and namarupa, for example, they are equally dependent on each other, so if there is vinnana there is namarupa, and if there is namarupa there is vinnana.

Also, I’m still waiting for you to explain how do you understand vinnana ↔ namarupa, at the same time that you say that there can be eye consciousness without eye contact, of contact without feeling.

You are just saying if there is no this specific experience, there is no this specific contact nor vinnana. I didn’t get your point.

Can you define experience-for-you without vinnana? without contact? without feelings? without perceptions? Awareness of something would imply that there is something for you that you access through contact and perceptions etc., so it cannot be awareness. You don’t need necessarily to define, you can use examples. But, in your explanation, for an experience without vinnana, for example, you would have to explain an experience where there is only vinnana or many vinnanas, but there cannot exist no contact at all, and so on.

28

As my understanding, the key to solve this problem is how the viññāṇa actually is at the stage sight + eye → viññāṇa. That viññāṇa is not simply a bare one without baggages.

That viññāṇa is conditioned by nama + rupa while nama itself includes [vedanā, saññā, cetanā, phasso, manasikāro] as SN12.2

The following examples might help to illustrate such conditioned viññāṇa in the case of a person tasting durian:

Influence of rupa: viññāṇa will be conditioned very differently based on that person’s health or age or tired or being on medicine.

Influence of vedanā: viññāṇa will be conditioned very differently based on previous or immediate current feeling that person is having, such as in pleasant bliss of meditation or in unpleasant hot environment.

Influence of saññā: viññāṇa will be conditioned very differently based on his stored memory about durian or how he perceive correctly/incorrectly this is a durian or a jackfruit or something else.

Influence of cetanā: viññāṇa will be conditioned very differently based on the situation this person is willingly eating the durian or being forced down his throat.

Influence of manasikāro: viññāṇa will be conditioned very differently based on this person is currently focusing his attention to something else or totally absorbed into eating this durian.

Influence of phasso: viññāṇa will be conditioned very differently based on previous or immediate current contact on all 6 fields, such as the smell of durian.

Such a conditioned viññāṇa together with objects + eye, those 3 together, then give rise to a specific kind of contact.

This specific kind of contact is what determines the following vedanā belongs to a specific category as [sukhā/dukkhā/adukkhamasukhā]. For example, a specific kind of contact called ‘contact that gives rise to neutral feeling’ will only then give rise to neutral feeling.

So, in summary, this is not unconscious or pre-conscious or automatic. Instead, viññāṇa is required to determined the specific category of feeling [sukhā/dukkhā/adukkhamasukhā] but viññāṇa itself is conditioned by many other intertwined things before it comes together with objects + eye to give rise to a specific category of contact. Such a specific category of contact is the one that determines a specific category of feeling.

29

MN59 talks about happiness apart from pleasant feeling.

It’s possible that wanderers of other religions might say,
‘The ascetic Gotama spoke of the cessation of perception and feeling, and he includes it in happiness. What’s up with that?’
When wanderers of other religions say this, you should say to them,
‘Reverends, when the Buddha describes what’s included in happiness, he’s not just referring to pleasant feeling.
The Realized One describes pleasure as included in happiness wherever it is found, and in whatever context.’”

I think if one attempts to include too much into the five grasping aggregates: eg. truth, peace, wisdom, faith, etc, one will arrive at quite many contradictions when closely reading the suttas.

An interesting sutta for understanding vinnana is MN138 when it mentions how vinnana can be “scattered and diffused externally”.

How is vinnana said to be scattered and diffused externally?
In this case, when a mendicant sees a sight with their eyes, and vinnana follows after the features of that sight—tied, attached, and fettered to gratification in its features—vinnana is said to be scattered and diffused externally.
When they hear a sound with their ears …

30

One of my first comments says that we would reach a complication when talking about the highest formless attainment, cessation of perception and feeling.

Would this attainment be considered an experience? I don’t know. At first glance, my idea is that this attainment is no experience at all, it is no-experience, and no-experience is beyond sukha, dukkha and asukha-adukha, it is the highest pleasure, the happiness.

Well, I’m not trying to include these things because it doesn’t make sense to include these things. However, when we are talking about “experience”, we cannot remove the five aggregates or see these things as apart from the five aggregates, that is, it can be experience outside them.

My whole point is that to say that there is experience without feeling means to say that there is experience without craving for a puthujjana, for example (not just for the Arahants where for them there is no experience at all since there is no “them”, but let’s not enter this as I’m sure you would disagree with me), and a puthujjana without craving is a puthujjana without ignorance and that can’t be the case.

Any moment, the smallest you can accept it, without ignorance for a puthujjana is impossible, since if he hadn’t ignorance he would be at least a sotappana at that moment, and this would also imply that one can be a sotapanna and beyond momentarily (as any view that interprets PS as something in time implies) and this is also impossible.

Also, MN 102:

The Realized One understands this as follows.

There are ascetics and brahmins who assert a self that is non-percipient and healthy after death, describing it as formed, or formless, or both formed and formless, or neither formed nor formless.

But if any ascetic or brahmin should say this:

‘Apart from form, feeling, perception, and choices, I will describe the coming and going of consciousness, its passing away and reappearing, its growth, increase, and maturity.’

That is not possible.

SN 35.93:

Contacted one feels; contacted one intends; contacted one perceives.

Anyways, I don’t think there is much for us to talk about anymore. Since the only experience you could brought up without feeling and perception is basically a no-experience in my understanding, it wouldn’t make any sense to keep talking about this.

I hope you are well and looking forward for next interactions in other topics :wink:

31

Although it initially makes sense the idea that viññana comes with a “baggage” outside of namarupa, that is, past behaviour can “change” viññana somehow is still strange to me.

Viññana being dependent on namarupa I can only interpret as namarupa as it is right now, not past namarupa. So, whenever you describe an aspect of namarupa in the present (the current component of namarupa), it makes total sense, but when you use “stored memory” or previous experiences things start to get a little confusing, like you did in phasso, vedanā and sañña.

Although it resolves the issue at first glance, if viññana depends on namarupa, that namarupa is still the same while that specific viññana is manifested, and that contact with the coming together of the external and internal senses cannot be different from the contact present in namarupa.

Why? Because viññana depends on namarupa and contact depends on viññana and while there is viññana that namarupa still exists, and so contact still exists, and so it doesn’t make sense in talking about two different contacts happening in the current moment, it’s just one contact.

So, as I understand it, viññana dependent on namarupa and contact dependent on viññana talks about the same experience in two different ways. Let’s not forget that viññana depends on namarupa, but namarupa also depends on viññana at the same time, and contact dependent on viññana sounds exactly like that namarupa dependent on viññana.

My point is that namarupa being a condition for and conditioned by viññana at the same time makes viññana and feelings simultaneous phenomena instead of one being first than the other coming afterwards.

Obviously, for an experience of feeling to be discerned there needs to be a viññana, but I am not convinced that viññana “creates” or somehow “define” feelings. Namarupa and viññana seems to have their own domain happening independently in the same way that each component of nama, for example, has their own domain (the only thing that feeling does is to feel feelings, so feeling cannot feel a perception, for example), but it can only be discerned as experience when they are together.

I am not sure of this interpretation though.

32

Yea, be well too! And indeed, your definition of experience and “no-experience” is quite unique.

I am not sure about this because there is the similie of the infant in MN64. But I know that this one states that the lower fetters are not given up by not simply being present right not, but rather to give them up one got to understand/give up any underlying tendency to them.

PS: I found an interesting Sutta MN115 that talks about knowing and seeing the sense fields and vinnana and doing so one is called “skilled in the elements”.

“But sir, how is a mendicant qualified to be called ‘skilled in the elements’?”
“There are, Ānanda, these eighteen elements. The eye element, sight element, and eye consciousness element. The ear … mind consciousness element.
When a mendicant knows (jānāti) and sees (passati) these eighteen elements, they’re qualified to be called ‘skilled in the elements’.”

33

Maybe it’s the time to review SN12.67 to see if ‘at the same time’ is really a meaningful way to interpret?

It’s not the same contact. Because you are stuck with ‘at the same time’ so you thought that I was talking in circular by referring to same contact; however, I didn’t talk in circular and I didn’t mean same contact.

The illustrated example I gave for contact with other among 6 fields like the smell of durian via nose while a person is eating durian with his tongue should have already clearly shown this is not same contact.

Sañña itself is not of the distant past that jumped from the past through time-travel to current to interact but instead, the sañña now that is conditioned by the past namarupa-vinnana and therefore talking in loose term as ‘stored memory’.

It’s quite a delicate point here: vinnana does not create or define feeling, instead, a specific kind of contact is the one that does that job. SN 35.129 and SN 35.130 should give you solid ground to stand on this matter.

I’m not sure but it seems that you got influence from the idea of ‘simultaneous’, ‘at the same time’, ‘same experience’ like there is a hidden agent standing behind it all.

Maybe it’s time for you to double check your own assumption whether such idea comes from your own or others’ saying or really comes from a solid sutta?

With metta,

:folded_hands:

34

Suppose there were two sheaves of reeds leaning up against each other.

In the same way, name and form are requirements for consciousness.

Consciousness is a requirement for name and form.

This seems pretty clear that viññana and namarupa are simultaneous to each other. No viññana arises without namarupa and no namarupa arises without viññana. So, while your example covers how viññana is dependent on namarupa, the namarupa dependent on viññana came after, which it cannot be.

Let’s suppose that each moment is a number. So NR1 is different from NR2 because NR2 came after NR1 in time.

So, in your interpretation, NR1 conditions V2, and now V2 conditions NR3, and that does not represent the two sheaves supporting each other (NR1 <—> V1, and not NR1 —> V2 —> NR3).

I know you didn’t mean the same contact, and that is why I pointed it out as a problem in how the relation of viññana and namarupa should be seen. If there is contact, let’s say C1, that C1 is part of NR1 which is conditioned by and condition for V1.

Your interpretation is C1 (NR1) —> V2 —> C3 (NR), but since there is no viññana without namarupa and no namarupa without viññana not even for a moment, C1 —> V2 is already a problematic idea, since for that small moment NR1 is alone untill V2. So, past namarupa cannot be the base for present viññana, only present namarupa can be the base for present viññana.

Now, viññana is dependent on sankhara, which are three, kayasankharo (breathing), vacisankharo (directed and sustained thought, vitakka-vicara) and cittasankharo (perceptions and feelings). Again, while V1 is present, S1 is also present. If SX changes to SY, VX changes to VY.

So, while we have V1, there is NR1, and while there is V1, there is S1, which is comprised by somethings including perceptions and feelings, which it is not different from the perceptions and feelings on NR1.

My general point is to say, in the end, that this “conditioning” of namarupa and viññana is much less direct than the examples of this thread seems to give them (the amount of things we can do to experience the aggregates differently is much less than we think, otherwise it wouldn’t be not-self). And that “viññana is required to determine the specific category of feeling”, untill now, has no support in the suttas. Only that when there is viññana there is a specific kind of contact to be felt as a specific feeling, and that contact directly determines the feeling felt.

The idea that past experiences can change the aggregates and change how an experience is experienced implies first that there is something fixed that experience that same experience differently (e.g. the knowledge of a durian changes how viññana arises) which it cannot be true, and secondly that there is an specific experience that when experienced won’t give rise to ignorance and craving. However, the “knowledge of durian” will add to the experience of eating-a-durian right now, so it is not the same experience anymore, now it is eating-a-durian-with-the-knowledge-of-what-a-durian-is, and there is no experience that only experiencing it will give rise to wisdom.

It is always time for someone do that. Since I am still a puthujjana every view will come from others. Only a sotapanna and beyond has knowledge dependent on their own. So, if you are a puthujjana too, I’ll extend the advice for you as well.

35

That is what you thought my interpretation were but why don’t you try to look at my interpretation as:

… [(V1) <> (NR1)] → [(V2) <> (NR2)] → [(V3) <> (NR3)] …

The arrow → indicates where external objects present to 6 fields.

Also the idea of simultaneous is quite problematic, maybe it’s your choice of wording but the better word should be ‘mutual dependence’. I don’t see in Pali canon mentions such word in the sense you presented. You should go back to SN 12.67 and use a dictionary to look up the Pali words there.

But that doesn’t lead to an automatic assumption that the person you are talking with is the same as you. Instead, it leads automatically to the conclusion that your understanding might very well still missing something.

This is what we agreed based on sutta.

36

The problem with this is that external objects is also part of rupa, as the suttas describe it as the four principal states and form derived of it. The MN 28 is a good sutta that discusses this in detail. So there is no [(V1) <> (NR1)] separated from the external objects presentes to the 6 sense fields. I mean this is all detail, is not important to the main discussion.

Anyway, what I am arguing is that I don’t see how the [(V1) <> (NR1)] of the suttas can give rise to the interpretation of V → C (which is not wrong, but the fact that only this relation is emphasized, and not something more in line of V <> C), which, based on the previous argumentations on this thread it gives rise to basically viññana defining the kind of contact, that defines the kind of feeling to be felt. Since NR <> V, that is, they are mutual dependent on each other, than C <> V are mutually dependent on each other, in this way when there is viññana from eyes and sights, for example, it means there is already phasso related to that viññana, eyes and sights, and there is already feelings and perceptions related to that exactly viññana that arose from eyes and sights. So, I see NR and V “independent” of each other (meaning that one did not came first for one to come second).

As an example of what I am trying to convey is when I look at something, there is no eyes first, and then sights, and then vision. As soon as I look at something, eyes and sights are mutual dependent to give me vision.

Although I agree that the kind of feeling arisen is not unconscious, pre-conscious or automatic, I tend to see it as something simultaneous of consciousness (or if you prefer, as mutual dependent of that conciousness) Not as something like conciousness is conditioned by namarupa, but namarupa can also be conditioned by viññana, which it is what I interpreted your example, which it would be more like V1 > NR2 > V3 > NR4, and so on.

I don’t think it is a problematic idea, and for me, mutual dependence implies simultaneous phenomena (but, not only that) both being present at the same time to support the other. It would require a different thread to discuss the idea of simultaneity vs. mutual dependence, but I don’t think just a discussion of the word existing or not as alternative translations would be much appropriate before discussing the idea first. To put it bluntly, when there is craving, the feeling that arose that craving, the contact, consciousness etc. are also there, simultaneously with that craving. Which is different from the idea that craving is caused by feeling, implying somehow that at that moment there is only the craving, or that feeling is caused by contact and somehow that contact is not there while that feeling is persisting.

I don’t know why you think I have this assumption, but a good way for a puthujjana to know is to discuss the Dhamma, which is what I am doing. In no way I claimed that my understanding is not missing something, since if you read the previous threads, in many occasions my conclusions were admittedly undefined. However, if I think something is contradicting the suttas I will say so and if someone is willing we will discuss it.

37

First, that sutta is talking about the five lower fetters, but I’ll give you that. However, the chain of DO is very clear, if there is being/bhava, there is craving, there is ignorance. Right?

The underdeveloped mind of an infant don’t have the capacity of having the lower fetters present (or even the higher ones), but they don’t even have a sense of self either. So, they are not even a person yet, anyways. So, they wouldn’t even enter the category of puthujjana.

However, I do agree that there’s not because the fetters (or the hindrances for that matter) by not being present means you are free from them. But, can ignorance not be present? What would that experience look like?

Also, this would open a discussion of what is ignorance. The most common definition is not understanding the Four Noble Truths, so one is ignorant while one doesn’t understand, and there is no situation where one wouldn’t be.