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

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

  • Nathan Glyde

    Getting Free: The Infinite Middle of the MiddleWay

    Dharma teachings are sublime, subtle, and onward leading: they are always going deeper and wider than we may first presume. Yet, they also meet us where we are, in the midst of our life. In this session we’ll explore two expressions of the middle-way we can cultivate and develop in our practice and in our…

    Read More

  • Celeste Young

    Finding Refuge Within Uncertainty

    During these unprecedented times, it can be challenging to find a sense of refuge amidst the storms of uncertainty swirling around us. While the timeless teachings of the Buddhist Tradition don’t offer us lasting certainty, they do offer the possibility of finding a reliable refuge in what are known as the 3 jewels: The Buddha,…

    Read More

  • Certainty in an uncertain world.

    Consider that your presence on the cushion doesn’t guarantee balance. It’s what you bring to the cushion that matters. The same could be true of the fullness of our lives. It’s what we bring to it. What shifts when we focus on creating a life of certainty? A life of certainty that whether you are…

    Read More

  • Alexis Santos

    Natural awareness: practicing in daily life.

    Meditation is often viewed as something restricted to a certain posture or time of day. For most of us, the majority of our life will not be on retreat or even spent in a formal sitting posture. If we want to make best use of our daily life, it’s important to know that being aware…

    Read More

  • Shaila Catherine

    Who Knows Best?: Exploring the Judging Mind

    In this Sunday Sangha session, we will address the common tendencies to judge and compare. Wise discernment is useful, but excessive comparing and compulsive judging can harm relationships, obscure the clarity of perception, and thwart spiritual development. This session includes practical suggestions for calming a harsh inner critic, while encouraging critical and thoughtful inquiry. (Please…

    Read More

  • Living the Bodhisattva Vow

    In Buddhism, a Bodhisattva is one who, having realized deep insight into the nature of self and reality, dedicates their life to alleviating suffering and guiding others toward awakening. Through examining the foundational principles of the vow of the Bodhisattva, we will consider what it means to be “Bodhisattvas in training” and how this intention…

    Read More

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of Sept 12, 2022

    This week’s topic is (Be)Come As You Are. Our driven-ness, our ruminating thoughts, and our feelings of shame, guilt, and anxiety never allow us to simply ‘be’. They evolve around a sense of identity , a process the Buddha called selfing (bhava), a form of suffering (dukkha). We are endlessly trapped in a narrative of who we think we ought to be, were in the past and should be in the future.

    We will dedicate our shared time together to build an awareness of these processes and find alternative ways to relate to the many experiences of life.

    Read More