Feeling Creates the Person

Summary: The effect of feeling, agreeable or disagreeable, touches the citta. The practice is not to contract around the resonance, don’t grab the feeling. It’s the clinging reflex that creates the person. Maintain open stable presence – go bigger and wider than the activations – and the grasping lessens.
 

Wherever you are, however it is, be aware of feeling – agreeable or disagreeable – and the effect, the shimmering, the resonance when feeling touches the citta, the heart. Our practice is to not contract around the resonance, to not grasp feeling. Pleasant feeling – let it roll through; unpleasant feeling – let it roll through, aim to return to a stable, open presence. There’s a strengthening and a cooling effect that comes from that.

Feeling is one of what we call the five khandhā, the five aggregates affected by clinging. It’s not that somebody clings, but just that this is what can occur around feeling. Clinging is a reflex, and it’s where kamma arises. That is, when feeling arises, we get activated and then the mind starts moving, wanting more or wanting less or forming various scenarios, particularly around unpleasant feeling: "This shouldn’t happen!" "What’s wrong?" "Why me?" This is the action of the heart and mind, and it is often the grit of daily life. There’s much activation around impressions and feelings – and the consequent interpretations that the mind creates in terms of self and other people. We may arrive at the sense that one has done wrong or that wrong has been done to oneself. Whether that is correct or not, but right now, before we can have a measured response to that, we have to tackle the feeling and any reaction and where all that leaves us.

Feeling is not personal, but it’s subjective. It begins the process that creates a person. Unpleasant feeling in terms of how we act can bring up the sense of being a person who has done wrong or has been wronged or left out and so on. People in general carry a huge amount of this; things happen in terms of action, kamma, and the felt results of that creates this "person." Then we become the confused one, or the one who’s talked down to, or the one who’s clumsy, insensitive, guilty, fearful or doomed. "Why is it that this kind of experience always happens to me?" Then we carry around a doomed sense about things that we have no final control over, such as succeeding or missing the mark, pleasing or offending or confusing others. Then we become that flawed person again.

Certainly, it’s good to work on how we behave and are responded to, but the success rate is not that high. Even in the case of the Buddha – people tried to kill him! So, instead of trying to be the person who gets everything right, who everybody likes and is always feeling bright and never makes a mistake, we look at how things turn out and consider, "Something could be strengthened here; something could be learned here." But what’s really powerful and transformative is to not make a person out of feeling.

So, if you review your day, notice the places where something seemed to have gone right or gone wrong and who you feel you have become by the end of that day, or in fact in any particular moment in time. Who’s that? How is that? Perception means you have an impression, and impression generates the feeling: they come together. So, perception is just another aggregate and the normal response is the fourth aggregate, saṅkhāra. This is the aggregate of activations, the mental agitations, the flurry and worry, the ill-will, the sadness that occurs. We must be very alert around these activations. They can be quelled. It’s not possible to not experience unpleasant feeling, but it’s possible to not get the activations; or to contemplate the activations and to get bigger, wider and steadier than them.

This is practice and it gives rise to quiet strength and clarity. The grasping of feeling lessens, and a coolness and steadiness arises. From that place, you contemplate the tides of the world, the so-called "worldly winds" – happiness and unhappiness, gain and loss, success and failure, being respected and included or being ignored and excluded. This is what we have to meet and know as they are. But in so doing, our full aware presence can stand in a place of steadiness. This is something that a "person" can’t do. This full aware presence is the result of Dhamma cultivation.

As you are coming to the end of a period of Dhamma cultivation, take the opportunity to congratulate yourself. This is not egotistical, but based on the recognition that to cultivate true Dhamma is really tough sometimes. Living Dhamma is penetrative and meets lots of sensitive points. So, to maintain presence, perspective and keep the precepts is an impressive practice. As you cultivate, you get more capable of discharging the intensities, the floods and the overwhelms. You acknowledge them, you meet them and discharge them, and you can linger in the effect of that release. Take that in, appreciate that.

Whenever there is truth and an acknowledgement of it, citta manifests a radiant quality. This feeds the faith that sustains the practice. So let a sense of gladness arise about having avoided unskilful reactions and responses, having checked them, or at least having understood them. Allow for some appreciative gladness to be felt in order to sustain right view of the Path. Because even though the Path can be rocky at times, it goes one way – towards unbinding, dispassion, and release. These are the rare and powerful results of Dhamma practice.