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Concept
Vedanā
Summary
Vedanā (Pāli and Sanskrit: वेदना) is an ancient term traditionally translated as either "feeling" or "sensation." In general, vedanā refers to the pleasant, unpleasant and neutral sensations that occur when our internal sense organs come into contact with external sense objects and the associated consciousness. Vedanā is identified as valence or "hedonic tone" in psychology.
Vedanā is identified within the Buddhist teaching as follows:
One of the seven universal mental factors in the Theravāda Abhidharma.
One of the five universal mental factors in the Mahāyāna Abhidharma.
One of the twelve links of dependent origination (in both Theravāda and Mahāyāna traditions).
One of the five skandas (in both Theravāda and Mahāyāna traditions).
One of the objects of focus within the four foundations of mindfulness practice.
In the context of the twelve links, craving for and attachment to vedanā leads to suffering; reciprocally, concentrated awareness and clear comprehension of vedanā can lead to Enlightenment and the extinction of the causes of suffering.
Bhikkhu Bodhi states:
Feeling is the mental factor which feels the object. It is the affective mode in which the object is experienced. The Pali word vedanā does not signify emotion (which appears to be a complex phenomenon involving a variety of concomitant mental factors), but the bare affective quality of an experience, which may be either pleasant, painful or neutral....
Nina van Gorkom states:
When we study the Abhidhamma we learn that 'vedanā' is not the same as what we mean by feeling in conventional language. Feeling is nāma, it experiences something. Feeling never arises alone; it accompanies citta and other cetasikas and it is conditioned by them. Thus, feeling is a conditioned nāma. Citta does not feel, it cognizes the object and vedanā feels...
All feelings have the function of experiencing the taste, the flavour of an object (Atthasālinī, I, Part IV, Chapter I, 109).
Official source
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