Insight Meditation 09

This investigation develops the ability to separate pleasant feeling tone (vedana) from sensation and observe its function as a sorting mechanism of the mind (to signal safe).  This requires earlier training in sensitivity to body sensations and enough samadhi and insight as to not to get entangled with the experience.

Pleasant feeling tone can be observed by bringing to mind a happy memory or thought. As you do this notice that a feeling of pleasantness appears in your body as a reflection of the contact between attention and the thought or memory.

Separating out a feeling tone from what is being experienced is like separating the texture of a banana as you eat it, from its overall flavour/taste. Bodily sensations are the texture, feeling tone (vedana) is the flavour of that experience.

Step 1: Prepare your attention for insight.

• Prepare your attention for insight as per the instructions in Preparing Your Attention for Insight and ground awareness within your body and the experience of your hands touching.

Step 2: Bring a pleasant memory to mind.

• Bring to mind a pleasant memory, holding it gently within your mind. Observe any change of the experience of your body in regard to sensations and feeling tone. Soften into it.

Step 4: Bring to mind a pleasant thought.

• Bring to mind a pleasant thought of the future, holding it gently within your mind. Observe the change of the experience of your body in regard to sensations and feeling tone. Soften into it.

Step 5: Smile & soften into the pleasantness.

• Smile into this feeling of pleasantness with your eyes and allow it to enter your mind. Observe the relationship between the feeling tone, your attention, and the magnification of that pleasant feeling. Gently soften/relax into that pleasant feeling and observe whether the pleasant feeling tone grows or fades.

Step 6: Reground awareness into your body.

• Reground awareness within your body and soften into it. Observe what it feels like to be present, within your body – here, now. Observe the experience of just sitting here, the simplicity of it. Notice what happens to the pleasant feeling tone now that your attention has moved from the thought/memory and feeling tone, to the sensations within your body.

Investigation:

Through this investigation, we can observe how the mind sort's memories by attaching vedana (feeling tone) to them. When attention contacts the memory, the feeling tone attached to it releases in the body.

We can also notice how the 'worldly' pleasant feeling tone leaves a feeling of lack, of wanting more or not having enough. We can also observe how it fades as the attention resting on it is softened and that as we continue to soften, the 'worldly' pleasant feeling tone is replaced by a 'meditative' pleasant feeling tone produced by the quality and structure of attention itself.

From this we get a glimpse of where liberation is found.

• Take interest in how the experience of your body changes as a direct reflection of turning your attention towards a pleasant memory.

• Notice how the pleasant feeling is not produced by the world around you but rather is a carried sorting mechanism attached to the memory, that is released with the contact of attention.

• Notice any wanting or longing that arises in your mind as well as the feeling of 'something missing' when you dwell on this pleasant memory. 

• Observe the effect that softening your interest in the memory and its associated feeling has on the pleasant feeling in your body, how it fades.

• Observe how as you soften a pleasant feeling arises in your mind, then fills your body, taking its place.

You are ready to progress to Insight 10: Unpleasant Feeling when:

• You understand pleasant feeling as an observable, impersonal experience that is simply produced by the mind to signal 'safe'.