Gate 53 Feeling as an abode of mindfulness

Feeling as an abode of mindfulness is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we detach from all miscellaneous feelings. 
心念處是法明門、觀心如幻化故。

We continue our exploration of the four foundations of mindfulness with feeling.  This isn’t feelings as in emotion; it’s sensation.  Emotions are more complicated and happen farther down the chain.  Feeling is our response to physical or mental stimuli.  We decide that a sensation or experience is pleasant or unpleasant, and then we take some action to get more or run away.  It’s our simplest response to sensation or experience.

The sense of today’s gate statement is that when we pay attention to feeling, we perceive that feeling is illusory.  We come to understand how feeling arises and how we get seduced or enchanted by it.  Our view of the world is based on the feeling we’ve created and our interpretation of whether things are pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, rather than on the reality of this moment.  

Feeling or vedana shows up in all kinds of lists and processes in the Buddhist tradition.  It’s the second of the four foundations and also second skandha, among other lists.  Contact of a sense organ with a sense-object is the condition for feeling, and feeling is the condition of craving and aversion.  In other words, there has to be sense-contact before there can be feeling, and there has to be feeling before there can be craving.

Remember that in Buddhism there are six sense organs, and the sixth is mind.  When we have mental sensations, we decide whether we like them or not, just like we do for physical sensations.  Feeling is one of the most basic elements in human life and experience.  It’s near the beginning of the twelve-fold chain of dependent origination, the beginning of five skandhas clinging to five skandhas, and the condition or basis for the three poisons that lead to all the other kinds of suffering and delusion.

Pleasant sensations are associated with greed, unpleasant sensations with aversion, and neutral sensations with ignorance.  We can get hijacked almost immediately when we have some sensation and react based on habituated thinking.  Because of our conditioning, we can react without attention or intention, and our subsequent actions can be happening somewhere that’s a world away from the reality of this moment.  If I hear some bad news, my immediate feeling is I don’t like this!  I may act as though the news is worse than it is, or as though I didn’t hear it, or as though the information is wrong—all based on my habits and conditioning.  That decision happens very quickly and usually without the benefit of discernment or clarity.  What’s important is the feeling-tone that arises when my senses come in contact with an object, and whether or not I’m aware of what’s happening.

In a way, being driven by feeling, or not being mindful of how feeling arises and where it goes, is living in the animal realm of samsara.  You’ll recal that there are six realms in samsara: gods, humans, demi-gods, hungry ghosts, animals and hell.  Traditionally, one was literally reborn in one of these realms depending on your karma.  We can also see these six realms as six states or conditions through which we transmigrate in this life moment by moment.  

Being led around by impulse or instinct is characteristic of the animal realm.  Sometimes beings in this realm are seen as stupid and servile, unable to reason or use logic or reflect on their condition.  They prey on each other, and they’re used for food or labor.  When we’re caught up in sensation and feeling, we’re not thinking clearly and we’re not remembering the dharma and what Buddha taught.  We’re using only a very early part of our brains.  However, one reason that the human realm is considered higher than the animal realm is that we have the capacity to practice.  Unlike animals we are in a position to work with this gate and be mindful of feeling.

Early Buddhists taught that we should understand all feeling as painful because even pleasant sensations are temporary and seductive, and craving and aversion that arise from feeling are the basis of suffering.  In this human form, turning off the senses and the feeling that arises from sense contact isn’t really possible.  We can see why the Buddha said that life is characterized by sufrering.  Since we have physical bodies, we can’t avoid the constant chain of sensation, feeling, thinking, emotions, and writing the story.  No wonder early practitioners wanted to leap off the wheel of rebirth and to go a place where this process of arising doesn’t keep happening.

For us, all this doesn’t mean that it’s not OK to like chocolate cake better than parsnips.  It doesn’t mean that appreciating beauty or having loving relationships isn’t OK.  It doesn’t mean that all experiences should be neutral and bland.  The question is: are we being led astray by these split-second decisions about pleasant and unpleasant?  Can we enjoy and appreciate pleasant sensations and then let them go, without attachment?  Can we encounter unpleasant sensations without running from them or ignoring them or pushing them away, or is our clear vision of reality being clouded by our feeling response to sensation and the impulse to judge and label?  Instead, can we see that feeling is empty of a fixed self-nature just like all the skandhas?  Then we really know that feeling is unstable and impermanent and perhaps clinging to feeling is not so helpful.

So how do we live in midst of the karmic conditions of being human and yet not get swept away by the feeling-tone of our experiences?  There’s a difference between simply experiencing pleasant, unpleasant and neutral sensations and having opinions about them.  Uchiyama Roshi has a lot to say about this, including:

The most important point is to put all things, both happiness and unhappiness, enlightenment and delusion, on the same ground.  We should think of how we can live on that ground.  However, people today pursue happiness and try to escape from unhappiness, seek after enlightenment and try to eliminate delusion.  Since they think of life from such a point of view, their life goes off the mark.  We should live out the self that is only the self, in whatever situation we face. (1)  

To live out the self that is only the self is to see clearly what’s arising and take the most skillful action we can.  He says a big part of that is letting go of fixed narrow ideas about who we are, and we need to know that the true self is not an abstract thing make of sensation and feeling and thought.  He gives several examples, like not clinging to a feeling of frustration when we have to cook for the group and won’t be able to sit with everyone else, or getting upset because we’ve been asked to clean the toilet rather than the teacher’s room, where no one will see the good work we’re doing.

Uchiyama Roshi frequently said that all of our ideas and thoughts are just the secretions of our brains.  The function of the brain is to make thought, so that’s not a bad thing; we just need to not get trapped by our habits.  He says:  You might try looking at all the stuff that comes up in your head simply as secretions.  All our thoughts and feelings are a kind of secretion.  It’s important for us to see that clearly.  I’ve always got things coming up in my head, but if I tried to act on everything that came up, it would just wear me out. (2)  

Immediately we have sensations as a part of these activities that we judge pleasant, unpleasant and neutral.  Maybe they’re physical sensations: it’s hard work being a tenzo, being on your feet cooking all day.  It’s not so pleasant crawling around the toilet stalls scrubbing them out.  Maybe those sensations are mental: I don’t want to be in the kitchen while everyone else is in the zendo with the teacher.  I don’t want to be cleaning toilets when someone else gets the lighter weight job of vacuuming the tatami or dusting the altar.  There’s a reason that during the ango the shuso or head student is assigned to clean the bathrooms, and the tenzo is frequently in charge of taking out the trash.  It’s a reminder to people in higher-status roles that we need to put happiness and unhappiness on the same ground, and then actually live on that ground, as Uchiyama Roshi says.

He keeps pointing out that living based on feeling, or on chasing and avoiding, is living in a way that’s one step removed from actual reality.  There’s this actual moment, and then there’s the separation we create with deciding about pleasant, unpleasant and neutral.  Again, we can fully experience sensations in this moment as pleasant or not, but we do that without having an opinion about it, particularly “What does this mean for me?”  As soon as there is something we call pleasant, there is also something we call unpleasant or neutral.  We can experience something without giving it a label; as soon as we have a label, we have chasing and avoiding and suffering.

Uchiyama Roshi ties this quite directly to his big question: how do we balance peace and progress?  How do we take action in the world to carry out our vows and responsibilities and also not lose our equanimity and stillness and peace of mind?  He says:  Without being tossed about by personal feelings and ideas, just returning to the life of my true self, without envying or being arrogant toward those around me, neither being self-deprecating nor competing with others, yet on the other hand not falling into the trap of laziness, negligence or carelessness—just manifesting that life of my self with all the vigor I have—here is where the glory of life comes forth and where the life of Buddha shines. (3)

In fact, we can see this in his famous phrase, opening the hand of thought.  The word for thought can also include feeling, desire and judgement.  When we open the hand, we let go of all of that, all the way back to feeling that arises when we experience some sensation.  To live that way is to encounter everything without an agenda based on being a separate being.  The universal self isn’t the one deciding what’s pleasant, unpleasant or  neutral.  That’s the experience of being in this human form, but it’s not the whole story or the only possibility.

Let’s go back to the Dogen discourse from the Eihei Koroku I introduced at the last gate.  You’ll recall that because it includes all four of the foundations of mindfulness, we need to look at it again at each of these four gates.

Our Buddha (Shakyamuni) said to his disciples, there are four foundations of mindfulness on which people should depend.  These four foundations of mindfulness refer to contemplating the body as impure, contemplating sensation as suffering, contemplating mind as impermanent and contemplating phenomena as non-substantial.

I, Eihei, also have four foundations of mindfulness: contemplating the body as a skin-bag, contemplating sensation as eating bowls, contemplating mind as fences, walls, tiles and pebbles, and contemplating phenomena as old man Zhang drinking wine, old man Li getting drunk.

​Great assembly, are my four foundations of mindfulness the same or different from the ancient Buddha’s four foundations of mindfulness?  If you say they are the same, your eyebrows will fall out (from lying).  If you say they are different, you will lose your body and life. (4)

This time it’s Buddha saying we should contemplate sensation as suffering and Dogen saying we should contemplate sensation as eating bowls.  At the last gate I said that my impression is that Dogen is taking the original teachings on the four foundations that describe them with adjectives and providing concrete examples of things we encounter.  At the beginning of this essay I said that early Buddhists taught that we should understand all feeling as painful because even pleasant sensations are temporary and seductive, and craving and aversion that arise from feeling are the basis of suffering.  Dogen makes reference to that here—contemplating sensations as suffering—but his view is that rather than labeling sensations as anything (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, suffering) we can just experience what arises from our senses without deciding anything about them.

When we eat, there are myriad sensations coming in from all our sense gates.  Physcially we’re seeing food, smelling food, tasting food.  Mentally we’re remembering the last time we had this dish and comparing whether it’s as good as the previous meal.  What if we just experience the food without deciding anything about it?  In one way, what Buddha and Dogen are saying isn’t different.  They agree that feeling or sensation is the condition for craving and aversion and suffering.  However, Dogen suggests that maybe this chain of unfolding isn’t inevitable and that we’re not necessarily held captive by our human form.  Rather than disengaging from the senses in order to avoid feeling and eventually suffering, we can fully experience what’s happening, see it clearly and not get completely swept away.

In another of his writings, the Tenzo Kyokun or Instructions for the Cook, Dogen says we should use the ingredients we have without making judgements about quality or quantity.  Ed Brown wrote about this in forward to the translation of the Eihei Shingi by Okumura Roshi and Taigen Leighton.  Ed Brown is a longtime tenzo within the San Francisco Zen Center complex; you may have seen his many books on Zen cooking.

In writing about this part of the Tenzo Kyokun, he says:  Work with what you have to work with.  This is basic and most profound.  We cannot control what cones our way, so we find out how to work with what comes: ingredients, body, mind, feelings, thoughts, time, place, season, flavors, tastes.  This is counter to blaming one’s parents, one’s upbringing, society, others.  This is no longer concieving of oneself as a victim (Why me?  Why this?) or omnipotent ruler (Get it together.  Grow up.).  This is contrary to our cultural norm, which asks, “How do I get rid of anger (sorrow, grief, jealousy) without actually having to relate to it?”  To actually relate with thingsw, to move things and be moved by things, is the heart of intimacy, the way of growing in wisdom and compassion, peace and fulfillment. (5)

In this human form, there will be feeling that arises from sense contact; we cannot control what comes our way, so we find a way to work with what comes.  That means seeing clearly what’s arising and how, without blaming others or having an idea about what that makes me: a victim or a failure or a winner or a loser.  

This question about how to get rid of unpleasant sensations without really having to relate to them is interesting, isn’t it?  We don’t want to inquire into that feeling, or explore it; we just want to label it and get rid of it.  Yet if we’re not acknowledging feeling, we’re not completely living our lives.  Suppressing, ignoring or pushing away any aspect of our experience means we’re not fully alive.  As bodhisattvas, we don’t get the choice to live only the parts of our lives that we like.  We have to see and acknowledge all suffering, the suffering in this body and in the bodies of others.

Uchiyama Roshi reminds us that when we chase after the things our feeling dimenstion decides are pleasant sensations, we think we’re looking for happiness, but we don’t really know what happiness is.

Happiness is nothing more than what we feel when we have joy or pleasure in our mind.  What we call happiness is merely the condition in which our desire for self-satisfaction is fulfilled.  This is the root of our confusion: what do we human beings live for? 
. . . Human beings these days can be motivated only if we convince them that something will improve their standard of living and will fulfill their desire for self-satisfaction.  Nevertheless, happiness, a better standard of living or a prosperous society are concepts, just secretions of the brain.  We are living upside down if we find the meaning of our lives solely in fulfilling desires that are based only on secretions.  See thoughts just as thoughts.  See secretion simply as secretion, neither more nor less than that.  See everything as the reality of life just as it is. (6)

It’s important and interesting to consider that what seems like a pleasant or unpleasant sensation for one person or being is the opposite for another.  It’s easy to assume that we all experience suffering the same way, or that we all experience the same kind of suffering, but conditions that I think are the end of the world might make you very happy.  Let’s just say: we see this every four years at a national level.  However. this happens all the time in other ways.  Your friend tries to solve a problem that you don’t think is a problem, and you’re afraid the solution will actually make your life worse.  Someone you know lives in a way you find problemmatic, but she says this it’s a lifestyle choice and she’s just fine.  Your coworkers want you to join the union at your workplace, but your perception is that you can make better career progress on your own.  In all of these cases, well-meaning people are trying to ameliorate suffering, but others don’t agree on the nature of that suffering.  What’s an unpleasant senation for one is not for another.  We can’t assume that everyone agrees there’s a problem, let alone that everyone agrees on a solution.

When we think about caring for the earth, we quickly realize that because of interdependence, beings are in a delicate balance.  If we remove species we find unpleasant, even if we’re trying to help another species survive, we could be upsetting the balance.  How do we decide which species get to stay there?  Is it OK to base that decision on our own feeling?

Dogen’s Genjo Koan includes a famous image about flowers blooming, which we like, and weeds spreading, which we don’t like.  Even though we like flowers, they fade and even though we don’t like weeds, they grow and spread.  Uchiyama Roshi says that while we might not like weeds, farmers plow them into the ground as fertilizer.  While we might enjoy cherry blossoms every spring, dogs lie under those trees every day and don’t think anything about it.

For grasshoppers, weeds are their world.  When weeds spread they feel comfortable having a new living room.  When the frost in the desolate winter season kills the grass, the grasshoppers think that their Buddha Hall is destroyed, and they think, “This Buddha Hall is crushed and needs to be restored.”  Look at this.  Insects do not think that weeds are in the way.  For those who like it, “spreading” is not a problem. (7)

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Notes:
(1) The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dogen's Bendowa, With Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi. (2011). United States: Tuttle Publishing, p.178.
(2) Uchiyama, K. (2005). Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Ukraine: Wisdom Publications, p. 16.
(3) Ibid. p. 97.
​(4) Dogen, E. (2010). Dogen's Extensive Record: A Translation of the Eihei Koroku. United States: Wisdom Publications. p. 287.
(5) Dōgen's Pure Standards for the Zen Community: A Translation of Eihei Shingi. (1995). United States: State University of New York Press, p. xv.
​(6) Deepest Practice, Deepest Wisdom: Three Fascicles from Shobogenzo with Commentary. (2018). United States: Wisdom Publications, p. 19.
​(7) Dogen, E., Zenji, E. D. (2011). Dogen's Genjo Koan: Three Commentaries. United States: Counterpoint Press, p.38.

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Questions for reflection and discussion:

• What do you think about the traditional relationship between feeling and the animal realm of samsara?
• How do you practice with having a feeling and not having an opinion about the feeling? 
• What does "opening the hand of thought" mean to you?  What's your experience of it?
• Consider a time when what was suffering for you was not for someone else, or vice versa, and how you evaluated the options for lessening that suffering.  Were the solutions offered appropriate for the sufferer or not?