The Five Skandhas: Sensation

Vedana, the second skandha (“aggregate”), is translated as “sensation” or “feeling tone.” According to Buddhist philosophy, all sensations fall into one of three categories—pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral—and are the product of the contact between our sense faculties, their corresponding objects, and consciousness. For example, when my eyes see a swath of blue, eye-consciousness and mind-consciousness cause me to perceive the object before me as “sky.” If I like what I see, I’ll deem the experience “pleasant,” and a desire for more days like this might surface. Or I might instead feel aversion, because I like rainy days. Or maybe I’ll be indifferent to the subtle changes happening outside my window, opting instead to look at my phone screen.

Clinging to the second skandha happens when we react to objects with desire, aversion, or indifference. Awareness is therefore the main tool for working with vedana, letting all feelings arise and pass without reactivity. Perhaps the most direct instruction on how to do this comes from Hongzhi Zhengjue, a 12th-century Chan master: “Stay with that just as that. Stay with this just as this.” A pleasant experience, just be with it. A painful experience, just be with it. Don’t cling to either—pay attention to what’s before you, and let it be.

“Every single sense contact has an almost subliminal plus, minus, or zero valence. . . . Vedana gives us the data of whether we like, don’t like, or don’t even notice a particular experience.”

–Lama Karma Yeshe Chödrön

“What pushes us to do silly things is usually vedana. It’s the push of vedana, which, in cooperation with unwholesome states of mind arising through the underlying tendencies, leads to more vedana. . . . It builds up. So what we really want is . . . seeing things as they really are.”

–Bhikkhu Anālayo

Tip: It’s helpful to remember that no object is inherently pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. It’s our reactions to these objects—which are conditioned by our learning, history, and karma—that shape our responses. Habitual as it feels, vedana isn’t automatic. We can train ourselves to see and not so quickly react.

“What this practice [of working with feeling tones] does is shift us out of the story and into the body. And what we can begin to notice, then, is the fleetingness of the experience, of sensation.”

–Ruth King

Tip: The Satipatthana Sutta gives a simple instruction to work with our reactivity to feelings or sensations by opening up some space. When we notice a pleasant feeling, for example, we quietly say to ourselves, “A pleasant feeling has arisen in me.” Same with an unpleasant feeling. (Neutral feelings are harder—though not impossible—to spot.) Try this practice, and see your reaction losing its power through awareness, like an arrow whose target has suddenly been moved.

♦

Editor’s note: This is the second installment of our series on the five skandhas: form, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness.