on feelings

Vedana samyutta

Saṃyutta Nikāya 36 of 56

Translated by: Bhikkhu Sujato
Read by: Roland Kitchen

Description

The “Linked Discourses on Feelings” contains 31 discourses on the three kinds of feeling. In Sinhalese-script manuscripts, this is reckoned as the last portion of the section on six sense fields. The term “feelings” renders vedanā, which is the simple affective or hedonic tone of experience as pleasant, painful, and neutral, rather than the complex states we call “emotions”. In the process of experience, feeling emerges from sense contact, and stimulates craving. One of the aims of mental development is to first loosen, then eliminate that second link, so that one still has feelings, but does not experience craving for them. The current collection includes a number of rich and significant discourses on this theme.