Why vedana is a component of nama?

Discussion
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Venerables & friends,

I can’t help but wonder why the Buddha listed vedana as a component of nama in SN12.2?

And what are name and form?

Katamañca, bhikkhave, nāmarūpaṁ?

Feeling, perception, intention, contact, and application of mind.

Vedanā, saññā, cetanā, phasso, manasikāro

This is called name.

idaṁ vuccati nāmaṁ.

The four principal states, and form derived from the four principal states.

Cattāro ca mahābhūtā, catunnañca mahābhūtānaṁ upādāyarūpaṁ.

This is called form

Idaṁ vuccati rūpaṁ

Other suttas make distinctions between bodily and mental feelings such as SN36.6:

When an unlearned ordinary person experiences painful physical feelings they sorrow and wail and lament, beating their breast and falling into confusion

assutavā, bhikkhave, puthujjano dukkhāya vedanāya phuṭṭho samāno socati kilamati paridevati urattāḷiṁ kandati sammohaṁ āpajjati

They experience two feelings: physical and mental.

So dve vedanā vedayati—kāyikañca, cetasikañca.

The sutta above goes on to make a distinction between the puthujjana and the ariyasāvaka in the sense that the later only experiences physical pain without mental pain.

SN12.61 describes a body made of the four elements:

Mendicants, an unlearned ordinary person might become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed from this body made up of the four principal states.

assutavā, bhikkhave, puthujjano imasmiṁ cātumahābhūtikasmiṁ kāyasmiṁ nibbindeyyapi virajjeyyapi vimucceyyapi

If he did not want to list vedana as a manifestation of a particular element, then he could have simply left it out of nama.

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Vedana is a part of nama because it is a mental function. The only difference between physical and mental feelings is their origin - they both occur in the mind. In modern terms, feelings actually occur in the brain as a result of signals from the body even though they seem to be located somewhere in the body. This is why phantom limb feelings occur for people who have lost part of their body. The feeling for the missing limb triggers in the brain, and it’s perceived as being in a limb that no longer exists.

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To say the vedana is a component of nama because it is a mental function is to reduce all the links in DO to mere designations. This would make it as plain as Ven. Ananda described it in DN15.

Had vedana been a mental function, then this would make the two arrows simile pretty inaccurate. To liken physical pain as the first arrow - shared by both the puthujjana and ariyasavaka - indicates that vedana is essentially physical with a potential mental suffering as a mere by-product. The ariya is spared the by-product due to mental development.

As to the brain, the 31 parts of the body skips the brain altogether and reduces it to bone marrow. Listing the brain as the thirty second indicates a latter addition.

Certain phenomena like phantom limbs can simply be explained through habit. For example, when a child tries to learn how to ride a bicycle, she would put much effort and attention at the beginning to balance her act. Once she gets the jest of it, the skill becomes a second-nature so to speak. When someone loses a limb, they will take time to readjust, that is all. It says nothing about vedana being a mental function!

A more down to earth example becomes due: when something unusual happens, resembling a dream, people use the notion “pinch me” as a reality check.

More generally, vedananupassana is a separate category from kaya and cita in the four satipatthanas.

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Why is that a problem again? :smiley:

And yet it is, in the Early Nikayas. Now, whether that matches the (or your) reality, that’s a different question. :slight_smile:

There’s arupa meditations in Mn121 that talk about transcending the body and still suffering dukkha. Therefore, it seems even though there might be a physical manifestation, the vedana is not limited to the rūpa.

Anyway, suttas often categorise all mental factors into Nama, and Vedana is a mental factor as Charles graciously explains. :slight_smile:

For example — there’s no sight without eye consciousness, yet consciousness is a completely mental factor, even though sight is an event that happens with rūpa.

Perhaps it should be noted that Vedana is not the sensation / experience / contact itself, it’s the valence we attribute to experience. “I enjoy” or “I dislike” kind of attitude we have towards the experience is what’s called Vedana. That’s a completely mental event (even if the cause is physicailty).

So body and mind are separate categories in Satipatthanas. Would that suggest that it’s neither physical nor mental?

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Desiginations per se are not a problem, but the act of reducing is not inline with how the Buddha described DO in DN15:

This dependent origination is deep and appears deep.

Gambhīro cāyaṁ, ānanda, paṭiccasamuppādo gambhīrāvabhāso ca.

It is because of not understanding and not penetrating this teaching that this population has become tangled like string, knotted like a ball of thread, and matted like rushes and reeds, and it doesn’t escape the places of loss, the bad places, the underworld, transmigration .

Etassa, ānanda, dhammassa ananubodhā appaṭivedhā evamayaṁ pajā tantākulakajātā kulagaṇṭhikajātā muñjapabbajabhūtā apāyaṁ duggatiṁ vinipātaṁ saṁsāraṁ nātivattati .

Ever heard of reductio ad absurdum? If DO is deep, then reducing it to mere designations makes it absurd and shallow.

It is not only about matching my own experience. For example, why medicine is one of the requisites for monastics? it is to alleviate physical ailments. Testing the efficacy of modern medicine involves negating the mental (placebo).

As to categorizing all mental factors into nama, then the purpose could be uniformity or differentiating Buddha dhamma from contemporary teachings of the time. For example, MN56 differentiates the Buddha teachings from the jains through making distinctions between “rods” and “deeds” and between “mental” and “physical”. Dependent origination does not seem to be “time bound” as the causal relationships remain valid pending the presence of the conditions.

As for transcending the body where there is still suffering, it speaks to how suffering can be mental. I do not dispute that suffering can be mental, akin to imagining something bad happening and stressing about it. To conclude that vedana is mental does not follow.

Or it can be either. To simply acknowledge that it can be either raises the question as to why vedana is analyzed as component of nama.

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I see absolutely nothing in that DN15 sutta that suggests that there is elementary properties to DO that make them more than designations?

I don’t think that’s a reductio-ad-absurdum. :slight_smile: Reductio-ad-absurdum is “a form of logical argument that disproves a claim by showing that if its premises were taken to be true, it would logically lead to an absurd, impossible, or completely contradictory conclusion.”

A reductio ad absurdum is: assume P, derive a contradiction from P itself, conclude not-P. In other words, it’s a useful method to disprove something.

I think you’re just trying to say “That would be absurd”, which, again, I disagree!

Something can have no inherent properties to it, hence can only be spoken of with designations, with these designations only imperfectly applying to the real worls — and this process or the teaching of it can still be deep.

Quantum Physics is notably a bunch of designations, hard to understand, and extremely useful / valuable. No “absurdity” here with how “mere designations” can be groundbreaking. :slight_smile:

Well the suttas (again notably the Sn12.2) lists it as a mental factor. :slight_smile:

Vedana is our attitude towards contact — not the feeling or sensation itself. This aversion or preference towards the experience itself is considered a mental event.

In one way of presentation I have spoken of two kinds of feelings, and in other ways of presentation I have spoken of three, of six, of eighteen, of thirty-six, and of one hundred and eight kinds of feelings. So the Dhamma has been shown by me in different ways of presentation. MN59

Perhaps because the conceptual frameworks, our designations, all are useful for different purposes?

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Why the criteria has to be elementary properties in order to see more than designations? the sutta is titled “Mahānidāna”, it begins with Ven. Ananda being corrected by the Buddha describing dependent origination as deep.

Maybe we have different understanding of reductio-ad-absurdum. The way i understand is that if the opposite premise is taken to its conclusion, the original premise would be shown to be absurd. In other words, if feelings can be shown to be physical phenomena, then analyzing it as a mental phenomena would be a mere designation - hence absurd.

The absurd is dismissive, not worth engaging with. For example, in SN5.10, Ven. Vajirā utilized reductionism to dismiss.

‘sentient being’ is the convention we use.

hoti sattoti sammuti.

The reduction as dismissive of the absurd materialized in Mara vanishing right there! The venerable could have chosen to engage further, such as with the notion “the whole is more than the sum of its part”, but she chose reductionism to dismiss and reduce a question into “sammuti”. The same attitude is not reflected in DN15.

Thank you for stating the obvious. The question is why?

In the OP, i stated that the Buddha could have opted to leave vedana out of his analysis of nama. The fact that vedana is taught down the line as a separate nidāna - conditioned by contact as you stated - would have made contact as a component of nama of causal significance.

Back to the absurd and its relationship with suffering. One could bear the absurd by associating with the wise or by not paying attention to it. When the absurd is coupled with severe physical pain, that would be the real test.

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I’m just explaining to you what Buddhists explain in their texts. The physical sense organs are rupa, the feelings of pleasure, pain, and neither are mental. Phantom limbs are not merely habit. They drive people who suffer from them crazy sometimes. Imagine having an intense itch on a foot that isn’t there anymore! It happens to people. The feeling is in the mind, not the foot.

[later edit] Something that has occurred to me while thinking about this: When Buddhists categorize the senses, there isn’t a strict physical vs. mental divide. There are five physical senses (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body) and a mental sense (mind). There’s that division. But the way they explain sensory experience, usually, is to say that the five physical sense objects become objects of the mind sense. It’s object sense is called the dharma sense. Dharma in that usage is a catch-all that can mean sights, sounds, odors, flavors, body sensations, and mental objects like perceptions, ideas, volitions, etc. The physical sense objects are still called rupa as objects of the mind sense. Mental objects of the mind sense are mental, not rupa. So, the dharma sense is said to be both physical and mental, while the mind sense is only mental.

But with vedana, I’ve never seen it categorized as rupa. Usually what Buddhists mean by vedana is the reaction to an experience, which is felt as pain or pleasure (or neither when there’s no reaction). It occurs after the experience of the sense object, I would assume. The two things are separate mental events. Maybe something touches us - that’s a body sensation. If it feels good or bad to us, that’s vedana.

The difference between physical and mental pain in the parable of the two arrows is that physical pain is automatic, while mental pain is controllable. Last summer I had a bad tooth abscess. I was in an intense amount of pain, but I kept myself detached from it enough that I wasn’t complaining or moaning, etc about it. But I wasn’t comfortable, that’s for sure. The next day, the pain subsiding somewhat as the abscess pressure reduced. When I went to the dentist to have the tooth pulled, I wasn’t in that much pain anymore. The point being, that the physical pain is something I could do little about, but I could control my reaction to it.

The traditional way Buddhists would explain it is that the mental pain is caused by the defilements - desire, aversion, delusion, etc. An arhat destroys those defilements, so they aren’t bothered by them anymore. But they still have physical pains from having a body. There’s nothing that can be done about that but remain detached from it.

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Hi all!

I’m quite sure this is actually an Abhidharma classification. I’m not aware that it is made anywhere in the Nikāyas, but correct me if I’m wrong. As for the Āgamas, maybe, I don’t know.

I seems to be one of those classifications that are typical to the Abhidharmika approach, certainly that of the Theravadins: to try and fit every teaching into neat categories. In the early suttas I don’t see a clear mind-body separation, however. And there is little to no evidence that nāma was considered purely mental in the early days. It may sometimes be translated as “mentality”, but the word doesn’t mean that, and I don’t think there is good support for that translation. (And note that dictionaries based their definitions on later texts. No existing Pali dictionary is a dictionary of the early vocabulary, unfortunately.)

I don’t agree with the Abhidharma classification, and don’t agree that nāma is purely mental. There are various reasons for that, but we can consider contact (phassa), which is also included in the definition of nāma (e.g. SN12.2). However, to contact—literally to “touch”—some “touchable” with the body, how is that a mental thing?

I also don’t think vedanā is the “(dis)like” attitude towards experience. It is the intrinsic (un)pleasantness of the experience itself. It’s what’s pleasant (sukha), painful (dukkha) or neither.

And as Bundokji already said, there is such a thing as “physical pleasure (kāyika sukha)”. Consider also DN22:

And what is pain? Physical pain, physical unpleasantness, the painful, unpleasant feeling that’s born from physical contact. This is called pain.

And what is sadness? Mental pain, mental displeasure, the painful, unpleasant feeling that’s born from mental contact.

So there is both mental and physical vedanā. I mean, it’s literally called physical/bodily (kāyika) vedanā.

Now, why is vedanā included in the “definition” of nāma? I don’t think “because vedanā is mental” is the answer. Even if vedanā were mental, what exactly would such a definition teach us? And why then use the obscure word nāma instead of citta or alike?

Instead, I think the parts of the definition of nāma underline specific things that consciousness depends on. As taught in Dependent Origination, without nāma(rūpa) there can be no consciousness, and vice-versa. The inclusion of vedāna in nāma therefore teaches that consciousness cannot exist without vedanā, and vice-versa.

However, more importantly, the “definition” of nāma is likely a later addition to the teachings of Dependent Origination. The concept of nāma(rūpa) existed first. As to the core principles of DO, it’s more important to understand what the word nāma itself meant to people of the Buddha’s time, and how this relates to consciousness. Only then should we consider the “definition” that includes vedanā.

I think it would be wrong to see the list of factors as a literal definition of what nāma is. (Perhaps that’s what Bundokji was getting at when he said “reduce all the links in DO to mere designations”.) Rather, it teaches us how to reflect on nāma, and consciousness.

I’ve written about all this more extensively here, for those who are interested.

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Nāma in nāmarūpa refers to the mental side of experience - the processes by which experience is cognized, interpreted, categorized, and given meaning. In SN 12.2, the Buddha defines nāma as vedanā, saññā, cetanā, phasso, and manasikāra.

From this perspective, vedanā belongs to nāma because it is not the physical event itself, but the mind’s affective appraisal of experience as pleasant, painful, or neither-painful-nor-pleasant. The sights, sounds, bodily sensations, and neural activity belong to rūpa; the felt valence of those experiences belongs to nāma.

One way to think about vedanā is as the “score” the mind assigns to experience: positive, negative, or neutral. It is a mental categorization of what is experienced. In that sense, vedanā is part of the naming, interpreting, and organizing side of experience - the side the Buddha calls nāma.

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Hello again bhante! I find these two statements hard to reconcile. :slight_smile:

I’ll give the example of alcohol. People drink alcohol and enjoy it, until when they get sick of and stop drinking altogether.

So, the alcohol, or the actual experience itself hasn’t changed. Yet, what once was sukha is now dukkha. With this, we can apply the same principle to the rest of the sankharas, no?

Intrinsic might be a loaded term. :slight_smile: But even if we play along with it, the only thing that could cause something intrinsically dukkha to feel sukha, in the terms of vedana-function, could be a delusion.

Thus, seeing “Sukha” when there’s “Dukha”, feels like a completely mental process to me. :slight_smile: Of course, just as intrinsically is a charged word, so is completely, but, you get my point. :sweat_smile:

Is that evidence enough to suggest that it’s a physical process, rather than a process about the physical?

In other words - if what we suggest that vedana as a mental event was correct, wouldn’t it be still wise to distinguish “mental / physical vedana”, precisely because one if “Vedana regarding mental events” and “vedana regarding physical events”? :slight_smile:

I can’t help but think of AN 6.63:

Greedy intention is a person’s sensual pleasure.
The world’s pretty things aren’t sensual pleasures.
Greedy intention is a person’s sensual pleasure.
The world’s pretty things stay just as they are,
but the attentive remove desire for them.

Somehow it feels linked, that it seems our intentions are what causes us to delight in things. Hence, the defense for mental vedana. :slight_smile:

:lotus:

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Thanks for sharing those thoughts. It lets me organize mine better.

The words sukha and dukkha are used in various ways, I’ll give you that. Sometimes they refer to a subjective evaluation. A good example of that is SN35.136:

I think the translation ‘suffering’ here misses the point somewhat. Maybe ‘unpleasant’ would be better, or, more freely, ‘undesirable’. But you get the idea. And it supports your idea of the evaluative (like/dislike) mental function. Other examples of “evaluative” dukkha and sukha are AN4.49 and AN6.101.

However! These texts aren’t mentioning vedanā. When we are talking about sukha vedanā and dukkha vedanā, the words sukha and dukkha don’t refer to an evaluative mental function. The meaning of these words depends on context.

I can probably find a lot of examples to show that vedanā doesn’t refer to a mental function of (dis)like. For now, consider SN1.38:

If the Buddha was not bothered by this pain, then he would have been beyond like and dislike. Yet, he still had painful feelings. How would you explain that?

Whatever is “enough” evidence is up to you to decide. But it is some form of evidence, since it is the easier interpretation.

(But to be precise, I’m not arguing that what is called “physical feeling” is a completely physical process. I’m just arguing against the idea that it is purely mental.)

Consider also again SN36.6 mentioned by Bundokji, but which I don’t think was addressed sufficiently. The unenlightened “feel two [painful]* feelings: physical and mental”. (dve vedanā vedayati: kāyikañca, cetasikañca) The enlightened feel only one [painful] feeling, namely that of the body. But they don’t get upset by it, so don’t have mental suffering over it.

* In this context vedanā has, as the PTS dictionary notes a “special application [meaning specifically] painful sensation, suffering, pain”.

If this verse (which is almost surely a late addition) occurred in the sutta’s section of feeling, you might have a point. But it doesn’t, and it doesn’t mention vedanā either, so I don’t “feel” :wink: the link.

But what you say here shows a problem with the translation “feeling”. In English, we can feel a certain way about something, evaluating it in a certain way. The Pali vedanā and vedayita are never used in such ways. It’s other words like sammannati that are used in such ways. Hence I usually translate vedanā as ‘sensation’.

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To be honest, all i can see is an imposition of the term “phantom” to conclude that feelings are mental. For example, in SN12.37 we read:

"Mendicants, this body doesn’t belong to you or to anyone else.

"Nāyaṁ, bhikkhave, kāyo tumhākaṁ napi aññesaṁ.

It’s old deeds, and should be seen as produced by choices and intentions, as something to be felt.

Purāṇamidaṁ, bhikkhave, kammaṁ abhisaṅkhataṁ abhisañcetayitaṁ vedaniyaṁ daṭṭhabbaṁ.

Describing the body as old deeds is indicative of habits. For example, we can say that old deeds come to haunt us and then use the word “haunt” to conclude the existence of ghosts. In other words, phantom limbs do not tell us what the mind is, let alone that feelings are mental. When the mental reaction coincides with the loss of limb, it proves that the cause is essentially physical - where the “mental” reaction is merely a manifestation or a by-product where the “mind” acts as filling the gaps.

The six senses are conditioned by nama-rupa. As a model describing experience, listing the mind sense last is hierarchical or value driven, not necessarily categorical or substantive.

If you allow me to revisit the idea of habits. Imagine you see someone obese, which is a sign of his eat habits. You look at his beer belly and sagging breast and you tell him not to eat too much. In this instance, you utilize the division between body and mind to insinuate autonomy that is based on the unity of his bag of skin. In this case, you would be acting as a “mind” in the sense that you words are “corrective” or “restorative” and where his “ear” is merely “receptive” and “dormant”. We could say that the persistence of his old habits would determine his future actions as to whether he would follow your advise or his old habits.

This distinction of the ear and its relationship to the mind is hinted at in SN12.61. If i understand the pali correctly, assutavā is someone who is incapable of hearing the teachings - where the Buddha is the mind. The ariyasavaka on the other hand is capable of hearing the teachings - by virtue of being receptive or “lending ear” - hence learned.

The Buddha’s teachings are often described as “the language of the mind” or as H.H Dalai Lama once described it as “the science of mind”. In a world that is preoccupied with the material, the teachings are complementarian - addressing what is often overlooked or left out. To deny that feelings are essentially physical is to provide tanha as a viable alternative where being sparred the second arrow is the reward of the learned. Presenting cases of senior mendicants who used the knife when confronted with sharp pain is both sympathetic and rational.

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I noticed that in SN12.2, the lord analyzed vedana into six:

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.

I am not sure if this categorization makes the applicability of DO is limited to kama loka or extends beyond it. Vedana as a “score” as you described it seems to resemble musical notes where the Middle is linked to knowledge/ignorance as per MN44:

Neutral feeling is pleasant in the presence of knowledge, and painful in the presence of ignorance.

adukkhamasukhā vedanā ñāṇasukhā aññāṇadukkhā"ti.

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I try to stay away from these high-end philosophy threads, but while looking for something else found this…

Venerable Analayo always seems very thorough.

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Hello Bhante,

In SN22.82, namarupa is described as both hetu and paccayo:

Name and form are the reasons why the aggregate of consciousness is found."

Nāmarūpaṁ hetu, nāmarūpaṁ paccayo viññāṇakkhandhassa paññāpanāyā"ti.

In the same sutta, the aggregates of feeling, perception and choices are dependent on contact whereas the aggregate of form is dependent on the four elements.

I can’t help but wonder if there can be any meaningful distinction between hetu and paccaya without nama? Otherwise, what justifies presenting contact and feelings as two separate nidanas when both are components of nama?

Another question comes to mind as to the exact difference or the relationship between hetu and mula. If avijja is the first nidana, do we have any suttas that describe it as hetu or mula?

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Maybe we can learn something from the secular viewpoint and research.

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Bhante, firstly, I and other practioners i speak with consistently rejoice when we see your youtube talks. Thankyou

The first above paragraph: the question about touching with the body and how is this a mental thing. I like this question, i have no answer at all, but i ask questions like this a lot.

there is the MN 18 honeycake sutta explaination given by Bhikku Sujato in 2025

The body meets tactile sensations, this is the condition for body consciousness to arise . The meeting of the three is contact, contact is the condition for feeling, what we feel …

Above paragraph no reference, my clumbsily substituted words, very excited, how wonderful!! So my point: do we need to parse this causal process out into the physical and mental? for me, even considering and applying dhamma principals, such as yonisomanisacara and sense restraint around considerations/contemplations of the abovementioned causal process has been lifechangingly fruitful.

Sahdu bhante!

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Sensations or Vedana is obviously Rupa, feeling the sensations with the mind is feeling with Nama, it’s the mind that feels the sensations and every thought manifests with a sensation on the body, unless you have the faculty to feel sensations it doesn’t make much sense and people think feeling emotions is vedana or a general feeling is vedana, if you get to experience it with out any evaluation it is easy to understand. Time and time again on this platform people deny this reality without ever understanding it

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That might be your understanding, but the suttas paint a different picture. :slight_smile:

MN9 explains vedana under nama:

But what are name and form? What is their origin, their cessation, and the practice that leads to their cessation?

Feeling, perception, intention, contact, and application of mind—
Vedanā, saññā, cetanā, phasso, manasikāro—

this is called name.
idaṁ vuccatāvuso, nāmaṁ;

The four principal states, and form derived from the four principal states—this is called form.

The word comes from the root √vid, the meaning of which includes “to know” along with “to feel”.

So, “sensation” wouldn’t necessarily be wrong, as long as we understand the sense of ‘sense’ in exactly the broader sense (the very example here! in the sense).

So vedana encompasses more than bare contact, we could say the recognition & valence of the said contact.

It’s hard to explain vedana as any of the four elements; rather, it’s explained that vedana is a result of contact, with or without form.

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