In Buddhism, vedana constitutes the ‘texture of life’ and refers to the directly experienced sensations (rather than the emotions that we create from them). Mindfulness of vedana means to become more alive to the texture of experience.
Vedana is unavoidable, non-negotiable: it happens to us. What can be changed is how we respond to vedana. We can suppress or resist it (and create unpleasant emotions as a consequence), or we can consciously investigate it; explore it.
This is true for pleasant sensations as well. Although we spend time and money on things we find pleasurable, when we get it, we often forget to pay attention beyond the initial moment. Kids are much better at this: while we lose our attention after one or two instances, kids seem to get joy almost endlessly from the same silly face, ride down the slide, or leap into the air.
We need to regain this child-like curiosity; to experience every moment as if we don’t know what will happen next. We need to re-learn to cultivate the discipline of delight. Since our habitual thinking is that pleasurable things are counter-productive, this is harder than you may think.
The discipline of delight
We are distracted from experiencing pleasure be wanting more of it, just like how experiencing negative vedana makes us want it to stop. This ‘wanting’ more (or less) is what takes our mind away from what we are actually experiencing. We often associate wanting with pleasure, but when we become more aware of this feeling, this vedana, we will soon discover how unpleasant it actually is. Excitement is painfully similar to anxiety: it has the same physical tightness, restlessness and agitation.
Vedana is experienced within a ‘life context’ of association, expectation, and memory. This life context shapes how we react to vedana. The key is learning to stop confusing our reactions to experience with the experience itself.
The same holds true for so-called neutral vedana, which constitutes the lion’s share of our day-to-day experience. Our habitual response to neutral vedana is to want pleasure instead. We may refer to neutral vedana as ‘boredom,’ and it has been easier than ever for us to escape it. 📺
The reason so much of our life can feel bland is not because a lack of experience. After all, experience is present all the time! It is the lack of awareness of experience that makes moments pass unnoticed.
To enjoy life, to experience it, we need to create a discernible gap between our experiences and what we do with them; how we react. That’s what we’ll set out to do in this third week’s practice of life with full attention.
Cultivating vedana-awareness
Creating a gap between vedana and reaction required breaking habitual patterns. Naturally, this week’s practice involves quite a number of tools to help us do so.
The first thing comprises a vedana-diary. This will promote a habit of catching vedana before responding to them. Furthermore, writing down all vedana keeps us out of the downward, apathic spiral that draws our focus exclusively to the unpleasantness of experience. 📔
In its most basic form, the vedana-journal contains just that: positive and negative vedana, one page for each. Alternatively, you can make a table with five columns, which you can fill in for every vedana that appears:
- What was the experience?
- Was I aware of the pleasant feeling while it was happening?
- How did my body feel, in detail, during this experience?
- What moods, feelings and thoughts accompanied this event?
- What thoughts are in my mind now that I write this down?
You can also use the diary to catch your habitual reaction proactively. What vedana are you expecting to experience in a particular situation? What is it exactly that gives you the feeling of pleasure or displeasure? Having written about them makes it more likely that you will be more aware when it happens.
When the event has passed, you can compare the pro-active and reflexive diary entries. Do they match? What can be learned from it?
In addition, we may pay particular attention to vedana during our daily mindfulness walk. Try to become more aware about what it is that you experience: is it a feeling or is it your reaction to it? In that context, become aware of your surroundings and your (non-)judgement about it: what is the plain experience and what is actually your response? Try to pay sustained attention to pleasurable sensations when they occur, but only to the sensation, not the wanting for more.
When you are starting to be overwhelmed; when you feel you are being reactive, we should develop the habit of creating our personal breathing space. A space whose settign up has the following steps:
- Stop whatever it is that you are doing, and if possible, find a quiet place to settle down.
- Gently scan through your body: what do you feel?
- Become aware of the sounds that surround you.
- Tune into your breath and follow it while it goes in and out.
- Carry this awareness forward in whatever you were doing before.
This is also the week we will start practicing meditation. Meditation is simply and only setting aside a period of time to cultivate awareness. It is here that we feel most clearly the distinction between reaction and vedana, particularly those with a ‘neutral’ nature. 🧘
We try to feel our body rather than to think about it; we substitute words for experience by experience itself. We can move through our entire body like this. There are always things to feel, even the absence of feelings is in facta feeling in itself.
Its best to have a fixed moment in your routine where you meditate, say for 15–20 minutes. Start the meditation with a clear promise to yourself to explore the sensations in your body with pure and open awareness. Similarly, when you are done, take a moment to recognise how you feel. Try not to jump right into your other commitments for the day.
To increase your awareness of the (fruits of) your meditation practice, it is a good habit to write down a sentence or two about how your meditation went, in other words to keep a mediation diary.
If you find it useful to have some pointers for your practice (i.e. things to focus on) you can follow the schedule provided in the book:
- Day 1: become aware of sensations in your body, starting from the soles of your feet to the crown of your head.
- Day 2: the same as day one, but now with a gentle, benevolant attitude. Do you notice any differences with yesterday’s session?
- Day 3: see if you can uncover any habitual tensions, particularly in your back, neck and shoulders. Can you relax into them?
- Day 4: take the same body scan approach but see if you can uncover which sensations are interpreted as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
- Day 5: the same as day 4 but now try to stay with your pleasantly experienced sensations for a while.
- Day 6: the same as day 5 but now with unpleasant sensations. Alternate with a pleasant sensation when you’ve been with an unpleasant one for a while.
- Day 7: Expand the awareness of your body with the awareness of emerging sounds.
Third practice week
In addition to my preexisting mindfulness walk and meditation, I’ve integrated this week’s practice into my present routines as follows:
Vedana diary
To cultivate sensation-awareness throughout the day, I will add the following principle to my momentum cycle:
Whenever I experience a particularly pleasant or unpleasant sensation, I pause for a moment to neutrally observe the sensation, after which I write down (1) the sensation, (2) where and how I feel it and (3) what the sensation might try to tell me, so that I become more aware of the sensations in my body and experience life more freely.
As such, I deviate a bit from the book’s prompts, which to me personally seem like a lot of work, rather mechanical, and not so useful per se.
I feel like with this principle, I integrate the most essential parts of the vedana diary and the breathing space. I do not think I will manage to do both of them separately.
