Felt Experience View in explorer

12 discourses
Pleasant, neutral, or painful sensation—the experience felt on contact. Sometimes translated as “feeling.” Distinct from an emotional state or reaction, it refers to the affective tone of experience, the bare sensation of pleasure, pain, or neutrality before mental responses arise. It is the second of the five aggregates.
Also known as: feeling
Pāli: vedanā
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Ignorance

Ignorance

A fundamental blindness to the true nature of reality. It is not merely a lack of information, but an active misperception that views the transient as permanent and the unsatisfactory as a source of happiness, thereby fueling the cycle of suffering.

Also known as: illusion of knowing, fundamental unawareness of the true nature of reality, misunderstanding of how things have come to be, not knowing the four noble truths
Pāli: avijjā
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Wisdom

Wisdom

Lived understanding and sound judgment that steers the mind away from suffering, distinct from mere accumulation of facts.

Also known as: (of a person) wise, astute, intelligent, learned, skilled, firm, stable, steadfast, an experiential understanding of the four noble truths
Pāli: paññā, vijjā, medhā, dhīra, paṇḍita
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Related
Perception

Perception

The mental process of recognizing and giving meaning to experience. It marks sensory information by signs, labels, or associations drawn from memory and the field of contact. Perception shapes how one experiences the world. It is the third of the five aggregates.

Also known as: recognition, conception
Pāli: sañña
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Consciousness

Consciousness

Consciousness, the fifth aggregate, has two key meanings in the discourses: 1.) The distinctive quality of awareness which knows and arises in dependence on the meeting of eye and form, ear and sound, nose and odor, tongue and taste, body and tangible object, mind and mind object. 2.) A seed that finds a footing in a realm, established by ignorance and intention, leading to renewed existence.

Also known as: awareness, the faculty that distinguishes
Pāli: viññāṇa
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Featured Discourses

MN 59 Bahuvedanīya sutta - The Many Kinds of Feeling Classifies feelings (2/3/5/6/18/36/108)

When a debate arises regarding the classification of feelings, the Buddha explains that different presentations can be valid in their context. True understanding, he explains, fosters concord rather than quarrel. He then charts a progressive hierarchy of happiness starting with worldly pleasures.

SN 36.6 Salla sutta - Arrow Two arrows: bodily pain vs mental suffering

The Buddha explains the difference between an uninstructed ordinary person and a learned noble disciple in how they experience pleasant, painful, and neither-painful-nor-pleasant feelings.

SN 36.2 Sukha sutta - Pleasant Seeing feelings vanish at each contact leads to dispassion

Seeing the vanishing nature of the experience that arises with each contact—whether felt as pleasant, painful, or as neither-painful-nor-pleasant—one becomes dispassionate towards it.

SN 36.1 Samādhi sutta - Collectedness Three feelings; discern arising, cessation, and the path

The Buddha describes the three felt experiences that are experienced on contact through the sense doors - pleasant, painful, and neither-painful-nor-pleasant.

SN 12.11 Āhāra sutta - Nutriment Contact conditions felt experience, which in turn conditions craving

The Buddha explains the four kinds of nutriments that sustain beings that are existing and support those seeking birth, and how they arise from craving.

When a misguided monk clings to the idea of an unchanging consciousness that “wanders through rebirths,” the Buddha corrects him, revealing the truth of dependent co-arising. Consciousness, like fire, arises only through conditions. Tracing the cycle of existence from the four nutriments and conception to the snare of sensory reaction, he shows the way to the complete exhaustion of craving.

ITI 52 Paṭhama vedan sutta - Felt Experiences (First) Three feelings; discern arising, cessation, and the path

The Buddha describes the three felt experiences that are experienced on contact through the sense doors - pleasant, painful, and neither-painful-nor-pleasant.

ITI 53 Dutiya vedan sutta - Felt Experiences (Second) Pleasure as dukkha, pain as thorn, neutral impermanent

The Buddha describes how to see the three felt experiences that are experienced on contact through the sense doors - pleasant, painful, and neither-painful-nor-pleasant.

MN 13 Mahādukkhakkhandha sutta - The Greater Discourse on the Mass of Suffering Gratification, drawback, and escape regarding feeling

The Buddha explains how to completely comprehend the gratification, drawback, and escape in the case of sensual pleasures, form, and felt experience.

MN 102 Pañcattaya sutta - Five and Three Examining various views related to feeling and self

The Buddha deconstructs speculative views about the past and future, revealing them as forms of clinging. He exposes subtle attachments within even exalted meditative states, showing that all conditioned experiences are unstable. True liberation lies not in constructed peace, but in non-clinging through full understanding of the six sense bases.

SN 45.11 Paṭhamavihāra sutta - Dwelling (First) Many conditions for feeling, including path factors

Emerging from seclusion, the Buddha describes dwelling in the meditative state he had experienced immediately after Awakening. He explains that all the mental factors—from wrong view to right collectedness, as well as desire, thought, and perception, whether active or subsided—serve as conditions for feeling, even the attainment of the final goal giving rise to feeling.

SNP 5.13 Udayamāṇavapucchā - Udaya’s Questions When not delighting in feeling, consciousness ceases

The venerable Udaya approaches the Buddha with questions about liberation through final knowledge, the fettering of the world, and how to live mindfully for consciousness to cease.