FEELING TONES

FEELING TONES

―Centered, mindful, alert, the Buddha’s disciple discerns feelings, how feelings arise, where they cease, and the path to their ending.

With the ending of feelings, one is free of want And is liberated.‖

- Iti 46

The 2nd foundation of mindfulness is feeling tones. This does not refer to what we call in English “feelings, ” meaning emotions. Rather, feeling tones are the hedonic or affective tone of experience. For every moment of experience of the body or mind there is a feeling tone associated with it. Feeling tones are one of three types: pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. For example, if we see a loved one smile, we may experience a pleasant feeling tone. If we stub our toe, usually the most immediate response is a feeling tone of unpleasant. Neutral is experienced when we do not have a pleasant or unpleasant feeling. Most of the time we are not aware of feeling tones. Usually feeling tones are present below our level or awareness. What we experience instead of the feeling tone is a reaction to it. The feeling tone is amplified into wanting more of the experience if it is pleasant (desire) or wanting to get rid of the experience if it is unpleasant (aversion). This reactivity is what causes our suffering (see “dependent origination” page 79). However, if we can learn to pay attention to the feeling tones themselves, we can develop a powerful tool for understanding how we experience the world and the relationships we form

with that experience. With that knowledge we can train ourselves to be less reactive and more at peace regardless of our circumstances. This is a type of renunciation that is at the core of Buddhist practice.