Question

Rosemary once stated a phrase like this "most people are stuck in Vedana." Could you explain this?

Answer

?Doesn't sound like me, maybe it was a phrase similar to this. Well, Vedana is a very important part of the practice, and yes, most people are attached to Vedana. If they weren't attached to Vedana, then they would be enlightened. So it is not such an easy thing to do, we can see moments when we can be equanimous towards Vedana, in that when pleasant feelings arise from the senses we see them as pleasant but we are not attached and we see their impermanence. And the same with unpleasant and neutral feelings. On the spiritual side, some people get attached to the pleasant Vedana that arises from mind development and then they focus on that and are trying to maintain that Vedana. But that means they don't understand the impermanence of mind states. They do not see the impermanence of this Vedana and then they get upset when it passes away. So we are not out to maintain Vedana, we want to see how Vedana arises and passes. We would like to be able to focus more on the wisdom side, that of cause and effect, we see Vedana arises due to certain causes.

Working within that law, if we want it again we have to sow the cause for it to arise again, because to replace our attachment to worldly pleasant feeling, the Buddha encourages us to cultivate pleasant spiritual feelings, so we have to know how these come to be. But if we get stuck in wanting them to be permanent, that is the problem. We understand their nature, that they arise due to causes and pass due to causes. We cultivate them, but we don't stick to the Vedana. Instead we focus more on the wisdom and the understanding of these things, realizing that they are part of the practice. This helps to ensure that we don't form our positive self-image around whether we get a pleasant, unpleasant or neutral feeling in the meditation, but more on the growth of compassionate understanding.

Our apologies if there are any errors in the above text. If anything seems to be wrong or confusing in any way, please feel free to contact the teachers for further clarification.