Use code SUMMERPRACTICE for a 25% discount on all On Demand Courses through August 31.

Search Sangha Live

Mindfulness of feeling tone (vedana).

With Martine Batchelor recorded on April 12, 2015.

Found our teachings useful? Help us continue our work and support your teachers with a donation. Here’s how.

During this session Martine practices and explores mindfulness of the feeling tones, which is the second foundation of the practice of mindfulness.

First, she guides a meditation on mindfulness of the feeling tones. Afterwards she tries to define feeling tones and how to be mindful of them in our daily life. The Pali term Vedana refers to the affective tone of experience. When we come into contact through one of our six senses with the environment, we experience a pleasant, unpleasant or neither pleasant nor unpleasant feeling tone.

It is important to see that feeling tones are constructed, they are not a given, they do not reside in the object we come in contact with. It is vital to be aware of feeling tones as they arise extremely fast and have a profound impact on our behaviour.

Listen to the audio version below, or click here to download the mp3.

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Freedom without Expectations

    Recorded : October 1, 2023

    One of the Buddha’s primary realisations was ‘Life is painful and then you die.’ If this is true, then how do we respond to the difficulties of life? This session will explore how we are conditioned to protect, promote and satisfy a ‘self’ which can never be satisfied because ‘we are the slaves of craving.’ There will…

    Read More

  •

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Jaya Rudgard – Week of Jan 31, 2022

    Embodied and Awake: Meditations for Body, Heart and Mind.

    Mind, body and emotion form a constant feedback loop. As the traditional teachings on mindfulness make clear, all three equally deserve our interested, caring attention. When mindfulness is balanced in this way our whole being benefits. Our practice this week will include some gentle movements and mindful breathing practices as a prelude to each day’s meditation. These can be done seated or standing, or adapted for lying down, according to your ability and levels of energy.

    Each morning this week we’ll dive into one of the images from the natural world and daily life that the Buddha used to explain his teachings. Let’s see how how these similes and metaphors from the Buddhist texts can support our understanding and enrich our practice. We may also discover how practising with them can enhance our appreciation of the world around us.

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    Love and Dust: Opening your Heart Wide to a Dying World

    Recorded : May 12, 2019

    With the fragile condition of our eco-system finally breaking through into the mainstream news cycle, we can easily be overwhelmed by the loss of biodiversity and permafrost, the pollution of earth, air and oceans, and the attendant insecurity and danger to life on earth. We might struggle both with the information itself – the amount,…

    Read More

  •

    Muditā: Appreciative Joy

    Recorded : November 20, 2022

    Of the four traditional heart qualities in Buddhism, appreciative joy – muditā – gets less attention than lovingkindness (mettā), compassion (karuṇā), or equanimity (upekkhā). But the cultivation of sincere joy at the success of another greatly enriches our well-being and happiness. We will explore this powerful form of joy together, as well as what blocks…

    Read More

  • JD Doyle

    Reflections on Time and Timeless Awareness

    Recorded : June 8, 2025

    What if the concept of time is part of our suffering? In this talk, we’ll look at the impact of our attachment to schedules and productivity and explore the ways that Buddhist teachings challenge these conventional understandings. By investigating our relationship to time, we learn ways to practice and to cultivate liberation from suffering for…

    Read More

  •

    The Wisdom of Equanimity

    Recorded : June 4, 2023

    The dominant culture treats unpleasant feelings as problems, and pleasant feelings as if we should experience them all the time. This is neither possible nor wise. How can we fully feel the beautiful and painful aspects of our lives so that we are strengthened and enriched by the depth and breadth of this human experience?…

    Read More

  •

    Embodying Presence – the Deep Current

    Recorded : January 27, 2019

    A river of presence flows through all of life, connecting us with ourselves and each other and the essence of living. In this session, let’s open to a direct experience of this clear, wakeful presence. The practice of embodied, mindful meditation opens the possibility to understand and transform our habits of dissatisfaction and distraction and…

    Read More

  • Willa Blythe Baker

    The Wisdom of the Body

    Recorded : March 8, 2020

    If you seek to deepen in your meditation practice, there is no better friend than the body. Like a venerable teacher, the body has the power to draw you into the present moment, show you how to find stillness and even—if you listen closely—wake you up.

    Read More