The Dhammic Life Which Is Still a Secret
Photo: Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives C05988
“Why be so strict with vedanā? Isn’t it possible to enjoy your positive feelings without being attached to them?”
~ Response by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~
The vedanā are the cause of losing the mind’s naturalness – the mind’s naturalness is lost due to the vedanā. The vedanā either lead to their being too much or not enough, and in this way the mind’s naturalness is lost. If one is to enjoy feelings, one must enjoy them in a way that does not lose the mind’s naturalness, that does not disturb the natural balance of the mind. If the feelings are positive or negative, then that balance has already been disturbed. So to not lose that naturalness, one has to be above the positive and negative, so that the positive and negative don’t have any power to disturb the mind’s naturalness.
In Dhamma or in the ways of investigating Dhamma, the absence of positive and negative feelings is still considered to be a feeling – the feeling that is neither positive nor negative. This is also a vedanā, and this vedanā is a way to help us get free of the positive and negative vedanā, and this then is a kind of happiness or contentment which is more subtle and far more refined that the positive kind of happiness.
To live with the kind of vedanā which is neither positive nor negative is a far higher kind of happiness than with the positive kinds of feeling.
From the retreat “The Dhammic Life Which Is Still a Secret,” as translated from the Thai by Santikaro
Dhamma Questions & Responses sessions were offered by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu in 1990-1991 to foreign meditators attending Suan Mokkh International Dharma Hermitage courses.
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