Impermanence of Feelings

From theory to practice, the paperwork deals with Feeling or vedana, the 2nd aggregate in line with other 4 aggregates which constitutes a human being. Interrelated to Dependent Co-arising, yogis can comprehend the 'Paths', one leading to endless samsara, another leading to the cessation of all sufferings. By discerning 'Feeling' from 'Clinging-feeling', yogis can contemplate the impermanence of contact through six sense doors, which conditions feeling, perception and volitional thoughts.

Religions

The doctrine of impermanence can be called the most salient feature of the Buddha’s teaching. The early Buddhist doctrine of impermanence can be understood in four different but interrelated contexts: Buddha’s empiricism, the notion of conditioned/constituted objects, the idea of dependent arising, and the practical context of suffering and emancipation. While asserting the impermanence of all phenomena, the Buddha was silent on the questions of the so-called transcendent entities and truths. Moreover, though the Buddha described Nibbāṇa/Nirvāṇa as a ‘deathless state’ (‘amataṃ padam’), it does not imply eternality in a metaphysical sense. Whereas the early Buddhist approach to impermanence can be called ‘phenomenal’, the post-Buddhist approach was concerned with naumena (things in themselves). Hence, Sarvāstivāda (along with Pudgalavāda) is marked by absolutism in the form of the doctrines of substantial continuity, atomism, momentariness, and personalism. The paper also deals with ...

In this paper, I present constitutive phenomenological analysis of the continuity in transformation ("transmutation") of religious emotion, from unwholesome (anger, alienation, grief) to wholesome (love, sense of connectedness, bliss). Phenomenological evidence in these practices contradicts the traditional philosophical and phenomenological claims to incremental nature of emotions. The findings show that with a development of practice, givenness of emotion undergoes a change, from incremental, complex and axiologically directed at intentional objects, to nonrepresentational, and further, to embodied, self-affective and teleologically directed flow towards wholesomeness. I explain how different phenomenological theories, from Husserl-Brentano "priority of presentation" claim, to Levinas' non-representational emotion claim, to Henry's nonintentional phenomenology and philosophy of affectivity, apply to these levels. I further describe the changes in noema-noesis relationship which convert emotion into a counterphenomenon, and show the corresponding conditions of possibility. Finally, I describe the noetic and noematic horizons related to the non-intentional continuity of emotion. Synopsis

Contemporary Buddhism, 2019

This paper proposes a framework for understanding vedanā and emotion in relation to each other, and both of them in relation to awakening. The vedanā (or feeling tone) that arises in mental experience will be shown to be central to emotion. Western views of emotion will be examined alongside some of the Buddha’s teachings on vedanā. The paper will show mental vedanā, and human emotion in the context of the two psychological orientations of ‘fabrication’ and ‘letting go’, which are then correlated with the Buddha's ’notions of ‘worldly’ and ‘unworldly’ feelings. The paper proposes that such contextualisation is useful towards the development of a clear intellectual understanding of the nature of feelings, while (more importantly) it could support practitioners in a process of meditative inquiry and transformation.

Journal of Indian Philosophy, 2005

In conclusion, we can accept the Aviparītaka Sūtra account that domanassa, dukkha, somanassa, sukha and upekkhā cease successively as one proceeds from lower to higher meditative attainments, and these five terms in this account are not different from those in the usual jhāna formula. It is not necessary to equate sukha of the first three jhānas to somanassa as the Theravādins do, or to identify sukha of the first two jhānas with prasrabdhi (a volitional formation, not a feeling) as the Sarvāstivādins do. Neither is it necessary to interpret upekkhā in the jhānas as a volitional formation as the two traditions do. The process of reducing feelings as prescribed in the scheme of jhāna conforms with what is stated in the Saḷāyatanavibhaṅga Sutta: first developing pleasant feeling and eliminating unpleasant feeling; then abandoning pleasant feeling and achieving upekkhā.

The Abhidhamma, or Buddhist psychology, is a detailed compilation and analysis of the teachings of the Buddha that are presented in the discourses (suttas). Through a comprehensive overview and systematic deconstruction of the experiences of life-from birth to death, from ignorance to liberating understanding-the Abhidhamma reveals the unfolding as deeply conditioned impersonal processes. When entangled by conditioning and personalizing by identifying with the natural processes, life is a struggle and we suffer. Through development of awareness, the direction of the unfolding gradually changes and liberation from conditioning becomes possible. Basic Abhidhammic knowledge of the mental and physical building blocks of life and how they are synthesized in each unfolding moment makes apparent the distinction

Handbook of Logical Thought in India, 2020

This chapter explores the ways Abhinavagupta, an eleventh-century Kashmirian polymath, establishes the experience of serenity (śānta) as one of the appraised emotions called rasa. Beyond the issue of whether serenity can be the savoring of rasa, this chapter explores various models from classical Hindu and Buddhist philosophies that establish serenity in order to contextualize the phenomenology of experiencing serenity. For Abhinava, this experience is not a mere negation of emotions but a positive experience. And to establish his argument, Abhinava explores the ways absence is analyzed in Hindu and Buddhist traditions. One of the central problems of aesthetics that overlaps metaphysics is whether the experience of serenity is identical to the experience of liberation. Abhinava paves his path through the middle, without collapsing this experience to the mystical experience of the Brahman or to common everyday experiences. By rejecting the argument that serenity is a product of cessation or that dispassion evolves into serenity, Abhinava argues that serenity emerges from self-awareness.