The Mystery of Vedana: A Key to Liberation

The contemplation of vedana, the Second Foundation of Mindfulness, provides a powerful tool to dismantle suffering; it can also reveal surprising and profoundly liberating truths about the nature of reality.

Okay, so this first week of the retreat we're going through the foundations of mindfulness, unfolding them, unfolding instructions and developing them. And so today I want to go into the second foundation, which is vedanā. But actually, before I start on the meat and the specifics of that, I want to take two steps backwards and put it in a much bigger context, much bigger. So this or these words, 'freedom,' 'liberation' -- what does that mean? What does it mean to you? Could go into this a lot, and I actually really feel like it, so I'm trying to hold myself back. [laughs] But when I think about it right now, when I think about it, it seems to me there are different kinds of freedom, there are different kinds of liberation. Even putting aside for now -- which we can't really, but -- putting aside for now social, political, economic freedoms which most people in this room just take for granted, just talking about the more internal freedoms, personal freedom, even in that realm alone, if we just artificially separate it, there are different kinds of freedom, it seems to me. Different areas or aspects of freedom.

What does it mean, for instance, to be free in one's relationship to money? What does it -- fully? What would that even mean? What would it look like? What would it mean, what would it look like, what would it be to be free in one's relationship to sexuality? I don't particularly think there are any easy or straightforward or simple answers to all this. Perhaps it's very much an individual exploration for each of us, an unfoldment, rather than arriving at something and ... I don't know. To explore. It's alive. It's ongoing. To be free socially in one's interactions with others, in what one presents to the world -- what does that mean? What does it mean to be free in aspects of how we are, perhaps, in intimate relationship? Whether we're in and out of active sexuality, of active intimate relationship, whatever, what does that mean? Free with our creativity -- what's that? What does it mean to be free in my creative expression as a human being, free to pour that out, who I am and what I want to say and what I want to express, what I want to sing? What does that mean? Am I a free thinker? Is my inquiry free? What does it mean? What does all that mean?

In a way, we could say these are all obviously connected, but in a way, somewhat separate branches of freedom, of a tree. There are branches. Now, as a human being, I have the freedom to actually inquire into all that, to explore into all that. I could approach a branch, I could look at one of those aspects that I talked about, and just direct my inquiry into the freedom around that, address it at that level. And I could also address my inquiry at a more, we could say, root level. In other words, are there kinds of freedom, kinds of understanding, that when I penetrate them the freedom that they open up is more at the root level of the tree and addresses the whole tree? Do you understand what I mean? I think, just now, where I am in my practice, I think both are important, both. We might have this or that view from whatever background we've had -- psychotherapy or this tradition or that tradition, whatever. "You just do this," or "No, it's important to do this." Maybe both are true.

So both the branches and the roots. Why am I going into all of that? Because this aspect of vedanā actually has the possibility, has the very strong potentiality of being a root, a root investigation into the roots of freedom, a root freedom. In other words, there's something here that will unfold widely in that tree. I'm actually not saying, I'm not saying that just looking at vedanā will unfold everything. I'm not saying that. Nor is it the case that I need to address every branch of this tree.

Okay. So we have these four foundations of mindfulness, and we're going through them this week. Sometimes when we unfold them, and we unfold them usually within a week and we sort of zip through, a morning on each, fifteen minutes, and there it is, and kind of there you have it. It's a lot to take in for most people. It's a lot to take in. So oftentimes what happens is the message that comes across, understandably, is sort of "just try and generally be present," just try and generally be aware to your experience, to the present moment, generally mindful, and including in that awareness some of these aspects that we touch upon, like including a sort of general awareness of vedanā or a little; you can explore it a little bit. And that of course is beautiful, just to be with one's unfolding experience, be open to that and being with everything. It's a beautiful way of practising.

But that alone, lovely and beautiful and important as it is, probably won't reveal the totality of the insights, the depth of the insights that's possible if I have a slightly different orientation to practice at times, which is more taking these foundations of mindfulness as kind of threads or avenues, and staying with a particular one and pulling on a thread, following it, following an avenue, seeing where it goes, deeper and deeper and deeper. So rather than just being aware of everything and kind of aware of the four foundations, etc., actually taking one and following it. Then the possibility, as I said, of this area of vedanā unfolding a very particular kind of liberation, a very root kind of liberation -- not necessarily a total liberation, but a very particular, deep root liberation, if I can take it as a theme, or if I have the patience and the interest and the dedication to take it as a theme. One of the meanings of -- we say Satipaṭṭhāna, usually translated as foundations of mindfulness. Paṭṭhāna also means, the root meaning means something like 'to station,' 'to stay' somewhere. It's a station for my mindfulness. I station the mindfulness, station the awareness on the vedanā and explore it, or I station the awareness on the body or something else and explore, stay with it. I take it as a theme, to use the Buddha's words.

So there are different kinds of freedom, and there are different ways of practising, and it's all good, it's all wonderful. But to kind of draw the fullness, the fullness and the fullness of depth out of our life of practice, it might be good to be aware that there are different kinds of freedom, different ways of practising, and that we can move between them consciously. So I'm going to go into vedanā. We'll go into vedanā this morning. And just to say, you know, it is one avenue. It might feel like, "This has very little to do with what I'm exploring on this retreat," and that's fine. You can file it for later. File it for later. Just leave it. Or it may be that you're interested in vedanā. And this is difficult because there are so many people here -- some of you have a lot of experience exploring vedanā, and some just a little bit, and some not at all but might be interested in it. So I'm going to try and kind of go through sort of in a gradient, level by level. And just, if you're interested in vedanā, see where you're at, what you already know, and what the pitch is that you can pick up and take a little bit further.

[10:12] So this word, vedanā, second foundation of mindfulness, it usually gets translated as 'feeling,' but that's a little bit problematic as a translation, because in English the word 'feeling,' we tend to use it to mean 'emotion' -- feeling sad or happy or jealous or whatever it is. It's an emotion. A better translation for vedanā is something like 'feeling-tone' or 'sensation,' even. 'Sensation' is quite a good word. And it's really referring to something very, very simple and very, very specific -- in a way, much simpler than the level of emotion. It's said there are three kinds of feeling-tone, three kinds of vedanā -- better to keep it in the Pali, three kinds of vedanā. There's pleasant vedanā, unpleasant vedanā, and what's called neither pleasant nor unpleasant. So what's this saying? It's basically saying that all moments, all moments of our life, all moments of our experience in all the senses, inner experience and outer experience, all moments have with them a kind of tone in the texture of the experience that they're felt as either pleasant or unpleasant or kind of in between (sometimes people call that neutral).

For example, you're meditating one day in a sitting, and the breath may feel very constricted or stuck somewhere or tight. Well, the vedanā of the breath at that point is unpleasant. It's unpleasant. Or another time, maybe even later in the same sitting, something opens, and the breath feels lovely, silky, smooth, subtle, beautiful and open; the breath feels pleasant. There's a pleasant vedanā there. Similarly in the body, the body can feel tight or achy or constricted or much more open, enjoyable, light, pleasant. Take a step outside on a day like today, and maybe the coolness of the air, maybe it feels pleasant if we feel a little over-warm, or maybe it feels unpleasant if we feel already cold. Take a step, each step we take -- if I just put my hand on the carpet right now, that's actually subtly pleasant right now for me. Some of it's quite subtle. Lunchtime's coming up. You put a morsel of food into the mouth and there's an explosion of taste. Perhaps there's pleasantness there, right there woven into the experience. Or these lovely rooks that we have -- some people love 'em, some people hate 'em. What's the sound of their song, if you can call it a song? What's the sound? Is it pleasant or unpleasant? Does it change at different times? If I had very long fingernails, and there was a blackboard here, and I scraped my ... [laughter] Scraped my fingernails down it, how would that be?

Any mind object, a thought -- "I'm such a failure. I really can't meditate" -- that thought has a vedanā; it's going to be unpleasant. Or an imagination, a daydream, or a memory. We can have a pleasant memory or unpleasant, all of this. An emotion. I might have quite a complex emotion going on, but within that, part of the emotion is the texture of whether it's felt as pleasant or unpleasant or in between.

When we first hear that, or even long after we first hear it, we can say, "Well, okay, but it doesn't seem that significant. It's not earth-shaking or anything like that." Actually, when I first heard it, and maybe some of you had this same reaction, I didn't like it at all. I really didn't like it as a teaching. I thought it sounded incredibly dry, nitpicky, reductionistic, small-minded. I felt like it was dismissive of the juiciness we have as human beings, of the totality, of the richness of our heartfulness, of the depth and fullness of our emotional life. I really didn't like it at all. It took me -- I'm still working on ... [laughter] It took me a while to actually realize it's not denying our richness, this teaching. It's a particular strategy. It's not denying our complexity. Rather, it's just one way, just one way of practising, one way of looking at something that has the power to simplify, to simplify what's going on for us and simplify our experience and our relationship with experience. It's not saying "that's what we are," or anything like that, or denying anything else. It's just a tool, a way of looking, that has the power to simplify and, through that simplification, to reduce suffering -- and oftentimes drastically.

So it's a tool. And -- and, and, and, and, and -- if I take this thread that I was talking about, this theme, this stationing, if I really take it deep, it has a power much greater even than that. It can reveal an awesome mystery, an awesome truth about existence. Unimaginable turning upside down of our understanding of the nature of reality. And with that, bring a much more profound sense of freedom. So these two kind of levels, I want to go into today. The Buddha said, to quote the Buddha, "When these vedanā are understood, there is nothing further for a disciple of the Nobles Ones," a practitioner, "to do. There's nothing further to do when you've understood this." It's true that he said that about a lot of other stuff too. But he's saying something. What does it mean, 'understood'? "Okay, I get it. Pleasant, unpleasant, kind of in between." Does that mean to understand it? No, there's much more here, obviously.

At first, and in my experience teaching sort of shorter retreats, seven days and shorter, sometimes when we talk about the vedanā in the instructions, and you have groups, etc., people say, "I don't really get this. I don't really get it. It doesn't make sense to me, this teaching of vedanā." Or the opposite -- it seems really obvious at first. It seems really obvious, like there's nothing much more to say about it. But there is much more here than meets the eye, much more, and as the investigation goes deeper and becomes more subtle, much more gets revealed.

So where to start with this? Where to start? First thing is to actually get familiar with this level of experience, familiar with noticing vedanā and becoming sensitive to vedanā, sensitive to that dimension, that level, that aspect of experience. So sometimes it's extremely obvious -- you're walking, and you stub your toe, and you've got no shoes on, and that's clearly an unpleasant vedanā. There's nothing very subtle about that. But a lot of vedanā is really quite subtle. It's really quite subtle. So just look at the carpet right now. What's the vedanā? What if you take your attention to the light, the sunlight coming through the window on the curtains? So the vedanā texture of those kind of experiences is much more subtle than stubbing the toe, obviously. But every moment has a vedanā. So one piece here is to actually just really say, "I'm really interested in this vedanā. I'm really looking for it." And looking for it in all the places where I wouldn't actually even notice. Really developing my sensitivity, the subtlety of my attention to pick up on this texture of experience, spending time exploring that dimension.

[19:13] And people are different. Some people are very systematic, so they say -- and this is totally fine -- "Right, I've got six senses. Let me just spend a sitting or a day or whatever exploring the body sense and the vedanā coming and going in the body. I'll just station my awareness at the body and notice vedanā, pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, coming and going, and really get sensitive to all the subtlety, all the richness there." Or some other sense -- the sight or whatever. Other people, it's just a more general exploration. You might find that you have favourite senses, or senses where it's much easier to notice the vedanā than others. All of that's fine. You may find, as you begin to explore this, that to notice unpleasant vedanā -- and people often notice this -- at first, unpleasant vedanā seem to stand out more. They seem to be what we notice more when we explore our experience more. Why is that? Why would that be? I'll leave that for you.

So what do we notice as we begin? There's a lot to notice as we begin this exploration, very rich. First thing we notice is actually it's not really true, not really true what the Buddha said that there are really three vedanā. Other times he said that's not actually true. It's not really true that there's something called pleasant vedanā and it's a kind of block of pleasant, and there's a block of unpleasant, and there's a block in between. Sometimes it just feels like there's pleasant and unpleasant and then sort of not particularly that pleasant or particularly unpleasant. Or sometimes it's more like one spectrum. It could be three, could be two, could be one. There's more subtlety here.

Another thing we might notice, and important to notice, is that the vedanā is not in the object. It's not in the object. It's in the moment of experience. So that's a very important insight. It's not that this object necessarily automatically has this unpleasant vedanā or pleasant vedanā. Just a little bit of investigation will reveal that. "I love chocolate something-or-other." Well, is it the case that all the time it's pleasant? Today's a lovely day, but looking out, it might be one of those completely grey days, and I look out and the sight of all that grey cloud -- just unpleasant in the sight. Another day, maybe I'm in a very different mood; I feel all cosy inside, all warm. I don't feel a sense of lack, or disconnection, or depression. One looks out and the very same impulse, stimulus, gives a different vedanā.

So why is it different at different times? This is the beginning of a very deep exploration. There's all kinds of levels to it. Why is it different at different times, the same thing? If I explore the vedanā, what I really want to get into, what I really want to start to unpack is the reactions and the responses to vedanā. So, typically, what we'll notice is that when there's something pleasant, the typical sort of unconscious reaction -- sometimes even conscious -- is to grasp it, to try and hold on to it, to try and keep it or to chase after the pleasant. That's the typical reaction. And the typical reaction to unpleasant is to want to get rid of it. I say "typical" because even that much isn't always the case, and it's quite possible -- some people already in the interviews, or people who have been here for a while, reporting as the concentration gets deeper quite some pleasantness opening up in the body. We call it pīti, these waves or field of pleasant energy, pleasant sensation in the body. Very pleasant. Sometimes so pleasant that a person finds themself resistant to it -- so a very untypical reaction to the pleasant. It's not totally set in stone.

But as much as we want to get familiar with the vedanā, we want to get familiar with the reactions, familiar with the responses. So how do I notice when there's aversion going on? What tells me -- for instance, aversion or grasping, what tells me that there's aversion going on? I'm having my day, doing whatever I'm doing, meditating, not meditating, how do I know when there's aversion going on? What's telling me? This is really important. I need to get really familiar with the cues of what it feels like to feel aversive or grasping. Really, really key. What does it feel like to be aversive? What tells me? And again, if I go into it, if I really pay attention, what I notice is there's a spectrum. As often in the Dharma, there's a real spectrum. So sometimes the mind is screaming: "Oh, I hate this. Get me out of here. This is terrible. It cannot be. It must go." Or, "I need that. I must have it. I'll die if I don't have it." It's very strong, the language in thought. We notice the presence of grasping or aversion through thought; it's clear, the mind is screaming. Sometimes it's more gentle in the words it uses, not so loud.

But sometimes there's the presence of aversion or grasping without any thinking. There's no thinking going on. The mind is at a much more calm, more subtle level, and there's still aversion and clinging and grasping present. How am I going to notice that? What tells me? First thing that will tell me is tension in the body. Again, that could be very strong -- I could have my shoulders up near my ears, really tensed in relationship to maybe some unpleasant pain somewhere. Could be very subtle the way tension just creeps into the musculoskeletal system, just very subtle. The body is tensing, and it's telling me something. The body is telling me something. It's telling me that there's the presence of clinging, of aversion or grasping. The body is sometimes more truthful than the mind. I might notice it here or there in the body, the tension, so it's my friend.

Maybe I'm even quieter than that. How am I going to notice the presence of subtle aversion or clinging? Maybe sometimes -- really deep -- the whole body sense has got very amorphous. It's just a kind of field of energy, very lovely. And yet into that field of energy or around that field of energy there's a slight sense of contraction. Something's just contracting in the sense of the body. It's telling me there's aversion, clinging, grasping present. Subtle. Sometimes -- really deep -- even that isn't there. The whole thing is just very still, very spacious. How am I going to know? What's going to tell me of the presence of aversion or clinging? It's the sense of the space of awareness, which might feel very expansive, has just cramped a little bit. It's just cramped. It's telling me there's aversion or clinging present. So in a way, to explore my reactions is to explore that whole spectrum and get sensitive to the whole spectrum.

What's a typical reaction when things are neutral, with so-called neither pleasant nor unpleasant? What happens then? Well, there are different possibilities people find, different possibilities. You might find, say you're with something, whatever it is in the experience, and it feels neither particularly one or the other, and there's a sense of "it's not enough," it's not enough for me, it's not enough stimulation, it's not enough to feed the ego or the self, to feed my sense of self. So in relationship to the neutral comes a sense of lack. With that lack, what happens? The neutral becomes unpleasant. The sense of lack, of not being enough, not being enough stimulation, not filling my hole inside, not being enough for my hunger, not being enough for my self-sense to be pumped up enough -- will be that sense of lack: "There's nothing in it for me." Lack goes to unpleasantness. The thing itself will turn unpleasant.

Or, "It's neutral, there's not much in it for me" -- we withdraw the sensitivity. We withdraw our sensitivity. When we withdraw our sensitivity from something, the thing will become boring. The experience will become boring. I cannot be bored and sensitive at the same time. It's impossible. So to be bored, I have to have withdrawn my sensitivity. Why do I withdraw my sensitivity? Out of the assumption that there's not enough here for me, not enough stimulation. So I withdraw the delicacy of my connection, the delicacy of my mindfulness, and the object becomes boring, the experience becomes boring. I become bored, and that becomes unpleasant. Or it's neutral, and we just very quickly lose interest, and we go off into a daydream, we space out. Maybe that goes pleasant, maybe it goes unpleasant. Or if I stay with the neutral, I might find that, because it has not much in it to stimulate, there's actually a kind of texture of calmness in it. That's interesting. If I can tune into that, I might see that the very lack of stimulation in it is actually quite pleasant in a subtle way, so a different level of pleasantness.

[30:17] So there's a lot, there's a lot, there's a lot at the level of reactivity, normal reactivity. Not to judge. Not to judge, but to explore. This is normal functioning of consciousness to explore. If I'm not aware of the vedanā in any moment and if I'm not aware of the reactions that are going on, they will go on, and I will be pushed and pulled and propelled at the mercy of my unconscious reactions to vedanā, and this can go on most of the day, day in, day out. I'm at the mercy of something that I'm not even conscious of -- "Chase that, go after this, no, no, that other one's better, this is unpleasant, I need to get away." All through the senses, inner experience, outer experience, pushed and pulled and flicked around at the mercy of something. Where's the freedom in that?

One of my teacher's teachers was a monk in Thailand, as was one of my teachers. This teacher of my teacher used to have -- apparently for a time he used to keep in his little monk's bag a little metal stick doll, stand-up doll of a man, sort of like a stick figure, and a magnet. When he was talking sometimes to a group of people, he used to take this little stick figure out, stand it up, and then put the magnet here, and the stick figure would sort of topple over this way or go that way, and then put the magnet there and it would go this way. What are we being pulled and pushed by? What am I at the mercy of? Do I know it? Do I understand it? Am I free of it?

When I go deeper into this investigation of vedanā and reaction, I actually see something else quite interesting, which is firstly I usually see that with a vedanā, as I said, some craving or clinging comes in response to it. But let's take something like craving for a cigarette or something else, some other addiction or compulsion or whatever it is. I begin to notice, if I really investigate it, that actually the craving itself is unpleasant. So craving itself is an unpleasant experience. There's a kind of pressure to craving -- "I want this thing, I want it." It has a pressure that's unpleasant in it, unsatisfied craving. So not only is it an object, but also the movement of reactivity itself is unpleasant.

Now, this is very important, and particularly if I'm stuck in some kind of addictive or compulsive behaviour, whatever that might be, because it's possible to see and feel the unpleasantness of the craving and feel that pressure and learn to tolerate it, to practise learning to tolerate it, and I really will see, I really will see. Craving has a natural curve to it. If I can just watch craving, if I can just open, give it space and feel the pressure of it, feel that uncomfortable pressure, what does it do? It builds and it builds and it builds. Unfortunately, sometimes we just -- "I can't take it any more!" -- we get hooked and off we go into whatever we think we need to do. But if I can just have some space, it builds and it builds and it builds, and then it peaks, and it decreases, and it decreases, and it decreases. It has a curve to it, a natural curve if I can give it space. And I see that once, and I see it twice, and I see it three, five times, and it loses its hold over me because I'm learning to tolerate the unpleasant pressure of craving. That's a huge, huge gift to give to oneself.

But I also notice, again, if I look deeply into all this, if I look comprehensively into all this, I begin to notice all kinds of chain reactions, all kinds of chain reactions and feedback loops. There's a stimulus, whatever it is -- maybe some taste or whatever it is; there's a reaction that comes to that, trying to grasp at it or pushing it away. But very easily, thought comes in, and that starts mixing everything, adding to the reaction, doing something with the reaction. Thought very easily goes into papañca, this kind of proliferation of story and complexity and selfing. So some years ago -- I just remembered this last night [laughs] as I was trying to think of an example. Some years ago, I used to go to this retreat centre near here, and they have a system where teachers get called in twice a week, I think, and they get a list of questions. Sometimes you get the questions in advance, and sometimes you just get them when you're there. This was one instance when I got the questions in advance and I went over. You sort of go through the questions. And I couldn't make head or tail of this question when it arrived to me in the email. It was something about porridge and spirituality. And I'm, "What?" [laughs] So I got there and met this guy, and he was in really quite a state, really, really agitated.

So at this retreat centre, like here, one of the offerings in the morning is porridge, and he really, really, really was upset about the porridge. "It shouldn't be that there's porridge. Why do all these retreat centres have porridge? What's so spiritual about porridge?" Good question! [laughter] "There needs to be more to it," etc. Got into all this stuff about what he needs and views of spiritual traditions and a whole big mushrooming of this whole thing. So we had this conversation which, actually, if my memory serves me right, didn't actually turn out to be that helpful for him, so. But what happened? Sight of porridge, taste of porridge, you know -- there were other things, so he could have put stuff into it, you know; it's not that bad when you mix ... [laughter] Come on. What happens? There's sight, there's smell, there's taste, the initial vedanā. And then what's happening? All this thought, belief and papañca about self and my relationship with spiritual centres and spiritual da-da-da. All that was coming in, and it starts feeding back on itself, and we've got a huge mess.

Now, if he could have just put that aside -- and maybe there are some good questions in there; I don't know, but -- maybe if he could just stay with the taste, the smell, the sight of the porridge, put a little jam or whatever else, nuts and stuff in there, just stay with the taste -- don't even have to do that, but. Is it really such a big deal? Something's feeding back, causing such a great reaction. It's coming from an initial stimulus, and the thought -- what happens with the thought when it gets mixed in with the reactivity? Or a much simpler example: I'm sitting here, there's a pain in the body, pain in the knee. Very easily the thought comes in, "Oh, it's probably cancer of my kneecap" or whatever it is. What does that do to the whole thing, the whole experience? I had a very complex example, but I'll leave it. It's probably too complex, although it's very interesting. I'll leave it for another time.

[38:40] All right. So given that thought and reactivity complicates things and tends to make things worse if it's unchecked, one possibility is: can I learn, can I practise staying right at the vedanā? Could he have stayed right at the taste, right there? It's just neutral. It's just neutral if it's porridge, or it's just unpleasant. Maybe the glutinous texture he didn't like, I don't know. It's just unpleasant. And just stayed right at the vedanā, kind of concentrating on the vedanā. When I do that, in a way, then I'm staying there and it's not taking the next step into the reactivity. Or perhaps I'm seeing the reactivity, but I'm staying at the vedanā, and it's just dropping the reactivity over and over, just staying right at the vedanā. That's a practice. That's a practice that we can develop. It's a kind of concentration. When we do that, we're not building reactivity. We're not letting the reactivity, the papañca, build. If you know about dependent origination, we're kind of stopping the tracks of dependent origination going into the next phase. What I'll find is, if I can stay at the vedanā like that, the suffering gets less. The suffering gets out of experience to some extent. And if you know, similarly, the second arrow -- there's not a second arrow in the first unpleasant arrow. There's not the second arrow of the reactivity and the thoughts and the papañca. Okay?

So that's one possibility, and it's very important, very present as a possibility. So here the vedanā is a kind of given: any experience, there's a vedanā to it, pleasant, unpleasant. It's a kind of given: "That's what it is." But I can cut off the excess reactivity just by staying at the simple, bare vedanā, and staying there. Really powerful. But the vedanā there is a given reality. I should just throw in here, sometimes when you hear about papañca and the sort of cycles of what happens with vedanā, thought, reactivity, it can be very easy to -- it sounds like something happens, there's a stimulus, and then all this train of reactivity, and it sounds like I need to really catch that moment before it goes into the reactivity. Just stay at the contact, catch the bare moment before it goes into the reactivity. Sometimes I'll be able to do that. Sometimes you'll be so mindful, so present, you actually catch the initial impulse, and that's it. It hasn't gone. But then I need to do it again.

If I miss that, though, all is not lost. If I miss that initial moment, I'm hooked, here's the reactivity, here's the suffering, here's the papañca, it's not just the case that all that is available to me is a kind of postmortem on suffering. That's not the case. I can actually at any moment, at any time, tune into the vedanā level of experience, no matter how crazy the mind has become, no matter how crazy the madness, the papañca. The vedanā level of experience is always available to me as a simple level, as a simplifying level. Here is all this stuff, it's absolutely nuts; let me go to the body, and perhaps the unpleasant vedanā in the body that goes with all that craziness, and that's much simpler, and it will simplify out the whole experience. It will soften the whole reactivity that's happening. It will reveal something.

Okay? So I could stop there. We could stop there, draw a line there: that's it, that's vedanā, that's what you need to explore. You need to see what it is, get used to it, watch these reactivities, see if you can cut the reactivities, stay at the vedanā, etc. And that's great. Wonderful. And that usually takes a person quite some time to unfold. And fine.

But occasionally, throughout the teachings of the Buddha, you come across quotes which seem to be pointing at something way beyond that. For example, this is a quote I found. He's talking to a bunch of monks. "Monks, when an ordinary, uninstructed person makes the statement, 'There is a bottomless chasm in the ocean ...'" Everyone know what a chasm is? Yeah? In the ocean floor where it goes suddenly down really deep -- a bottomless chasm would be as if that had no bottom to it. That's called a chasm, and bottomless would be like it has no bottom. Yeah? "Makes the statement, 'There is a bottomless chasm in the ocean,' if a person makes that statement he is talking about something that doesn't exist." Okay? But then listen to this. This is the Buddha. "The word 'bottomless chasm' is actually a designation for painful bodily feeling."^[1] Isn't that a strange statement? He's basically saying painful bodily feeling is unfindable. It doesn't exist. It's something that doesn't exist. And other times he says there are three kinds of vedanā and you should be very mindful of the three kinds of vedanā.

Now, of course it would be appropriate and, you know, any good teacher, to be talking at different levels at different times. You have to, to be skilful in the teaching. You have to be talking at different levels at different times. It's appropriate to talk at one level, and it's appropriate to talk at a much deeper level. So this is a little bit what I want to go into in the remaining part of the talk. If there is a whole deeper level to this -- which there is, and which the Buddha's pointing to here and in other quotes, etc. -- what is it that I can do that would reveal for me that whole deeper level, that whole more mysterious level? "It's actually something that doesn't exist." What does that mean? What would reveal that for me as a practitioner? There are actually many possibilities, and I'm only going to go into just a few at the most. Many possibilities, but they share in common -- going right back to the beginning of the talk -- the fact that they're only available if I station my inquiry on vedanā, station and follow a certain thread. They probably won't be so available if my practice is just the other kind of practice, just more open, probably.

So just some. One possibility, once I've gotten used to vedanā and all that, and I've gotten used to seeing the reactivity, and I can stay at the vedanā, all that, is I could say, "Okay, let me stay at vedanā, but be really interested in the fact of its impermanence. I know about vedanā; what I'm really interested in is seeing its impermanence. Change, change, change, change, change, moment to moment, almost so fast I can barely keep track of it." If I do that, what should happen is the seeing of the change, the seeing of the impermanence, brings an organic letting go. That's the function of seeing impermanence, of tuning into impermanence. Staying and stationing at vedanā and stationing at the impermanence -- change, change, change -- brings a kind of letting go, and freedom comes, a sense of freedom in the moment in relationship to all this vedanā. It's changing so fast I don't even have to think about it. It's changing so fast there's no point hanging on. Freedom, a level of freedom.

So that's great, that's really powerful. And yet there's more. Because if I'm just looking at change and seeing things coming and going, coming and going, I might without even realizing it draw the conclusion that things are changing randomly. It seems that way. Pleasant, unpleasant, it just comes and goes. It's all very random. I'll just let it go; it's just random change, so I'll let go of it. It's great, but there's something deeper there to unfold, to discover. In the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, there's a sort of refrain. After every one there's like a chorus. And one of the lines in the chorus that he says about each of the foundations of mindfulness is to contemplate the samudaya (it's a Pali word, samudaya). Oftentimes that gets translated as the impermanence of something, the coming and going of something, the fact that it arises and passes, etc. But actually what it means is why, how something arises and passes. We touched on this much earlier a little bit: why is it that this vedanā is unpleasant? How did this unpleasant vedanā, how did this pleasant vedanā come to be? That why and how begins to unfold much more of this deeper mystery, much more of this deeper freedom.

[48:55] So it's not the case that things are random. Understanding how they come and go, why they come and go, unlocks something truly radical. Some of you are doing samatha practice, concentration practice. Part of this, part of developing concentration, is actually learning to gather, to cultivate and enjoy pleasant feeling in the body. When it gets to a certain level -- not at first, but when it really starts to get humming -- some pleasantness starts to come in the body. Because the body feels pleasant, the mind wants to stay there. The pleasantness is in the service of deepening the concentration. So then a big part of deepening samatha practice eventually becomes about discovering: how can I gather, how can I increase pleasant feeling? So if I have a pleasant feeling in the body, how can I make it more pleasant? I'm really asking, I'm really questioning how. If there's unpleasant vedanā, rather than just saying it's unpleasant vedanā and putting up with it, or letting it be and just being mindful of it, how can it decrease? I'm actually interested in the dynamics of vedanā. How can I get it to decrease? There's all kinds of interesting -- a plethora, a whole host of interesting discoveries, really interesting discoveries to make about the magic of all this.

[50:41] For example, with the unpleasant, what happens? Here's some unpleasant sensation in the body. What happens when the awareness is much more spacious around unpleasant vedanā, rather than getting sucked into unpleasant vedanā? What happens to the degree of unpleasantness? It usually gets less unpleasant, and oftentimes a lot less unpleasant. Why? What's going on there? Why? These actually turn out to be really, really fundamentally important questions. It's not obvious at first. They turn out to be fundamentally important questions that have a real bearing on the nature of reality. It's not obvious at first.

If I have an unpleasant, is it possible to actually turn that unpleasant into pleasant? The answer is yes, with a lot of practice. But how and why? Are there different kinds of pleasant? Maybe a subtler pleasant is actually more fun than a sort of "whoopee!" pleasant. So what we're doing there, whether it's with samatha practice or other kinds of practices, we're experimenting with different ways of seeing vedanā, different ways of conceiving vedanā, different ways of relating to vedanā. That's what insight is. We're experimenting with different ways of seeing, different ways of relating, ways of looking at something that free something up, that tell me something about that something. Of course, those of you doing mettā, this is also relevant, because when there's the pleasantness of the mettā you also bring that pleasantness in to be part of the mettā. You want to mix it in, include it very much.

Insight practice, one way of saying what it really is is a way of relating to and seeing phenomena -- in this case, vedanā. And all those ways of seeing that turn out to be fruitful for insight to go very deep have one thing in common. All the deep ways of seeing, all the deep ways of relating to something in terms of insight meditation at least, have one thing in common, and that is that they relax clinging. In one way or another, they relax clinging. So the question is, is it possible and how is it possible to relax clinging in relationship to something? Let's go back to what I said earlier about, how do I notice when there's clinging in the first place? I said you might notice there's tension in the body. So the clinging causes the tension in the body. But it's a funny thing. If I then relax the tension in the body, it sometimes works backwards -- this is often the case with causality, that it works both ways. Sometimes I relax the bodily tension that was caused by the clinging and lo and behold, it relaxes the clinging. So that's one way of relaxing clinging, is going via the body, and just keep relaxing the bodily manifestation of the clinging and the tension.

Second possibility is I could also emphasize a kind of quality of allowing or welcoming and really put the emphasis of the practice on allowing and welcoming, rather than on the precision of the mindfulness, for instance. Really on the allowing, really on the allowing. So this moment, whatever it is, if it's unpleasant, really allowing it. If it's pleasant, really allowing it. Really making sure that is the primary thread that I'm following, really allowing, welcoming. Really as 110 per cent as possible, accepting. I mentioned impermanence before. When I contemplate impermanence, that's also a way -- because things are impermanent, I see organically I should let go. That's what it should do. If it's not doing that, there's something a bit off balance in the way I'm doing it. Should be letting go of the clinging because it's impermanent. There are many more ways. I won't mention them now.

They all have in common the factor that in this moment, in relationship to what's going on, I'm deliberately relaxing the clinging. I'm practising relaxing clinging. And what do I see? What do I see if I do that? Well, I begin to see that the suffering of an experience, with an experience, is, I'd say 99.9 per cent in the relationship with the experience. It becomes crystal clear: the suffering with this or that thing is in the relationship with this or that thing. That needs to get really, really, really obvious. We say this thing, this experience even, this pain even, this phenomenon, all phenomena are empty of problem. By themselves, they cannot be a problem. They're empty of problem. Only in the relationship can there be a problem with a phenomenon. I have to see that so often and so deeply that it's etched into the cells of my heart, into the cells of my body. I know it. I've seen it again and again and again. Seeing it once won't be enough.

It's true we've glimpsed that even the other way we were talking about, just staying at vedanā, for instance. You will see that. Just seeing that craving is unpleasant, craving is unpleasant when it's hooked into an object let's say, I will see that, as I said before. I will see that. Really filling out the truth now. But what else will I see? If I really station myself in this and I really pursue it, I'll start to see something much more mysterious. The vedanā at first, the range of vedanā starts to kind of shrink into neutral. That which is unpleasant begins to become less unpleasant. The pain in the body begins to become less unpleasant. What happens to pleasant? Maybe it gets more pleasant. You'll have to see. Maybe it gets more pleasant. Maybe it opens up. Maybe it gets more pleasant and then more neutral. But there's a kind of collapsing of the range. Vedanā gets less intense.

But it doesn't stop there. It goes beyond neutrality. Let's say I have a pain in my ankle, and I really follow this, and I really follow this, and I get skilful at doing this, and the pain becomes neutral. It might even get pleasant for a while and then go to a deeper kind of neutrality. After a while, even the sensations will stop appearing to consciousness. They will fade, they will dissolve. While I'm paying attention to that part of the body, looking right at it, and it goes through this transformation, this metamorphosis, by virtue of me exercising a certain kind of relationship in the way that I'm looking at it. While I'm paying attention; it's not a matter of getting distracted or covering it over with something else. While I'm looking at it. All I'm doing is conscious of the relationship, transforming the relationship, letting go of the clinging. I'm looking at it, looking at it, looking at it, letting go of the clinging, and something happens to it. What does that imply? What on earth is going on there? Is that an important thing to question?

Something so mysterious and radical right there. The experience, not just the vedanā but the experience -- remember, vedanā also has this translation of 'sensation.' The experience is dependent on my clinging. So when we use this word samudaya, what are the origination and dissolution factors (the technical words), what is it that gives rise to something or not? Usually, in the commentaries, they just say, "Vedanā comes from contact." In other words, whenever there's a contact of the mind with something, of the senses with something, there's vedanā. Basically it's saying whenever there's an experience there's vedanā. Is that the total truth? No thing, no experience exists independent of the mind and independent of the way the mind has built it and has built it through its relationship to it.

[1:00:08] If I look even more -- where are the boundaries, where is the dividing line, between the vedanā and the clinging, if I really look at this? At first, like I said going right back to the beginning, at first it seems obvious: this is the vedanā, this is the reaction. When I go really deep, where is the boundary line? Is there a boundary line? Are we really dealing with things in the world that are separate? Are there really such things as separate things? For a thing to be a thing, it needs to be a separate thing. Are there really separate things? I begin to see: of course the clinging depends on the vedanā; I need to be clinging to something. And yet the vedanā depends on the clinging. There's a mutual dependency there. Which comes first? How deep can this go, if I really let this get more and more subtle? It's possible as I let go of clinging things get calmer and I can pick up on subtler levels of clinging and let go, and let go, and let go. How deep could this go? Actually the whole structure of our world, the whole structure of our experience begins to unravel -- time, space, objects, the whole thing. How deep could this go?

You know, I've been reading a lot recently about modern physics. I'm really, really finding it so touching and beautiful and delightful and exciting. I'm reading about atoms and the investigation into the nature of atoms. And of course atoms are an idea that goes back millennia, the Greeks and even ancient India, etc., the idea of physical matter being, you know, fundamental building blocks of matter, the atom. And then finally they found them, they found atoms, Rutherford and all these people at the beginning of the twentieth century. Found atoms. Great. And then they began to go inside atoms. What's the real, fundamental reality? They said it's got a nucleus and it's got electrons that orbit round the nucleus. Great. And there was a model for the atom. It seems, "Okay, these are real things. They're real."

And then they go a little bit deeper, and suddenly, suddenly it's a lot more mysterious, a lot more radical, the nature of the reality, the nature of the truth than it first seemed; it's not that simple. Proton, neutron, electrons -- actually not even a thing. We can't even talk about it as a thing, as an object. Cannot actually say it has this real position or this real location or this real momentum or this real mass, even, or energy or duration or at this time or whatever -- none of that independent of the observer. The notion of a particle, of a fundamental building block, just loses its reality in the terms that we usually take to mean reality, to feel reality intuitively. Talk about, this or that building block is just a kind of tendency to exist. Can't really say it exists or doesn't exist. It's a tendency to exist, a tendency to happen.

So through the physics, beginning to see the whole fundamental intuitive structure of reality. It's not what it seems. It's questioned. It's not true really. And similarly in the Dharma, similarly in the Dharma. Vedanā as simple units, simple moments, this moment of experience, this building block of experience -- that's a very, very helpful level, to see it at that level. "This is the moment. This is the experience. This is the vedanā. This is the reaction. What can I do with that?" It's a fuse point of a certain amount of dukkha. And, helpful as it is, it's not the whole truth. It's not the whole truth.

What's the reaction to that? I don't know how that sounds. I know it's a long talk; I'm almost done. What's the reaction? "Oh, dear. How inconvenient. I wish it were simpler. Look at all that that I have to do." [laughs] Or, "Wow! Wow!" To me, you know, it's really exciting to me. It's really -- I've seen this same thing over and over, and it's still as exciting to me today as it was the first time I saw it. Something there in that thing -- this is a question for you: do you see that what we're talking about here at this level, the level of the freedom that that implies? Because even that may not be obvious. I'm aware that may not be obvious.

But if that's true about the nature of reality, do you see what an unbelievably radical level that implies? I know it's not always obvious. We're understanding something about vedanā and about reality. So the simple view is great and it will unfold a degree of freedom. But when I begin to see the emptiness, a whole other level of freedom, a whole other level begins to open up. It's more of a mystical level. It's more of a mystical level of freedom. But I've arrived at it through very clear experimentation, you could say, with my mindfulness, with my observation, with my questioning, out of my own experience. So something we can see for ourselves. And it's really radical. You know, Niels Bohr, he was one of the founders of quantum physics, he said, "Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it." It's similar this level of Dharma and emptiness we're talking about. You can't possibly have understood it if it's not like [whistles]. It's similar with what we call dependent arising and emptiness.

So all this -- the Buddha said the Dharma is ehipassiko. It means "come and see for yourself." It's to be seen for oneself. All this that I've been talking about, all these different levels, I can follow this and see it for myself, see it unfold for myself, see it reveal for myself. But probably it will need a certain kind of sustained way of looking, sustained way of looking that reduces clinging that will unfold this particular level. And like I said at the beginning, maybe not now for this whole retreat. Maybe not vedanā at all. That's fine. That's completely fine. But if never interested in that level, why? Why? Why would I be never interested in that?

Someone just the other day in a casual conversation said, "I don't really like to ask deep questions about reality. It's not how I am." Is it really not how you are? Or is it that something has stifled and smothered and constricted and inhibited and veiled over my natural love of inquiry, my natural unfoldment of the being, the energy that wants the truth, the deep truth? Sometimes we're not really that interested; and no judgment. A question. It's like, if not, why not? Something's going on that there's a 'not' there. That's a whole other talk. I'm not going to get into it. But it's a shame, you know -- we live a life -- the Buddha said "all this is unreal," all this is unreal. We live a life with a lot of assumptions about what's real, and we react to that life, and we suffer in relationship to it. And then to go through our life and not actually have seen that maybe it wasn't quite what I thought it was.

And yet, we can discover. We absolutely can, and we love to discover. So maybe not now, and that's fine; you can park it for later. But there's something in this realm, at some point, at some point in our journey, that's so beautiful to discover, so possible, so available, so transformative.

So let's have a bit of quiet together to end.