<p><em>New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.</em></p> <p><em>---</em></p> <p><br /></p> <p>Is it possible to be happy no matter what happens? Today we're going right to the source of what makes us unhappy to learn how to disarm and disable potential suffering before it owns us. </p> <p><br /></p> <p>Everything that comes up in our mind is either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. In other words, with everything we experience, we either want it, don't want it, or we don't care. In Buddhism, this is called "feeling tones" or "vedana" and it is known as the second foundation of mindfulness in the Buddha's comprehensive list. So why does this matter? Because if you are unaware of the pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral tones, then you are being controlled by them. Similarly, if you are unaware that certain people or things provoke aversion, then you can unthinkingly avoid or even be aggressive towards them. In this way, we can be like puppets on a string— just yanked around by greed, hatred, and numbness. </p> <p><br /></p> <p>Today's guest, dharma teacher Christina Feldman, is going to drill down on this embarkation point for our suffering, zap it with mindfulness and help us understand how we don't have to live like puppets on a string. </p> <p><br /></p> <p>Feldman began teaching in the west in the seventies after spending years in Asia studying Buddhist meditation. She is a co-founder of <a href="http://www.gaiahouse.co.uk/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Gaia House,</a> a retreat center in the UK, and has also served as a guiding teacher at <a href="http://www.dharma.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Insight Meditation Society</a> beginning in its early days. More recently, she is a co-founder of <a href="https://bodhi-college.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Bodhi College</a>, which is dedicated to the study and practice of the early teachings of the Buddha. She is the author of a book called, <a href="https://www.shambhala.com/boundless-heart-3649.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Boundless Heart: The Buddha's Path of Kindness, Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity</em></a>, and co-author of <a href="https://www.guilford.com/books/Mindfulness/Feldman-Kuyken/9781462540105" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Mindfulness: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Psychology</a>.</p> <p><br /></p> <p><em>This episode is the second installment of a series we've launched on the four foundations of mindfulness.</em></p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>In this episode we talk about:</strong></p> <p><br /></p> <ul> <li>Why vedana is often called, "the ruler of consciousness" or "the king, or the queen of consciousness"</li> <li>How to practice with vedana, and the benefits thereof</li> <li>Her lovely description of the Buddha as being very focused on understanding "the architecture of distress and unhappiness" </li> <li>Her contention that unhappiness is not a life sentence. </li> <li>Her definition of genuine happiness</li> <li>What she means by the power of "giving greater authority to intentionality, rather than to mood or story"</li> <li>And her personal practice of setting life intentions every year</li> </ul> <p><br /></p> <p><br /></p> <p><strong>Full Shownotes:</strong> <a href="https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/christina-feldman-500" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/christina-feldman-500</a></p> <p><br /></p>
Actionable Insights
1. Cultivate Space Between Stimulus & Response
Actively work to create a pause between an experience (stimulus) and your automatic reaction (response), as this space is where your power to choose, grow, and find freedom lies.
2. Shift from Reactivity to Responsiveness
Consciously move away from habitual, automatic reactions of wanting or not wanting, pursuing or pushing away, and instead cultivate a life where you choose how to respond to conditions.
3. Prioritize Intentionality Over Mood
Give greater authority to your deliberate intentions (e.g., to heal, understand, or liberate) rather than being dictated by passing moods, stories, or impulses, which may not be beneficial.
4. Practice Mindfulness of Feeling Tones
In both formal meditation and daily life, specifically set the intention to notice and identify the feeling tone (pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral) of every sensory impression, thought, or mood as it arises.
5. Combine Mindfulness with Other Qualities
Enhance mindfulness by integrating it with investigation, committed intentionality, skillful effort, and compassion to effectively change and transform habitual reactive patterns.
6. Track Impulses of Craving/Aversion
Get to know the territory of your impulses by intentionally tracking when you are moving towards something (craving) or away from something (aversion or fear) to understand these core human patterns of distress.
7. Pause & Investigate Impulses
When you notice an impulse (e.g., reaching for something, shutting down), pause for a moment to investigate what is truly pushing you or what the underlying landscape of fear and aversion entails.
8. Respond to Unpleasantness with Care
When experiencing unpleasantness, ask what it needs (e.g., resilience, compassion, space, or boundaries) and respond to it directly, rather than adding secondary suffering like blame, shame, or fear.
9. Appreciate Pleasantness Without Clinging
Savor and celebrate pleasant experiences deeply, allowing yourself to be touched by them without holding onto them, needing more, or trying to make them last, as craving sabotages genuine appreciation.
10. Cultivate Neutral Experiences
Intentionally pay attention to experiences that initially seem neither pleasant nor unpleasant, as careful attention can imbue them with interest, curiosity, or appreciation, bringing the world to life.
11. Set Yearly Life Intentions
Annually commit to a specific ’life intention’ (e.g., giving up hurrying, having no neutral people), actively reminding yourself of it daily for a year to allow it to naturalize and deepen.
12. Set Meditative Intentions
For formal meditation practice, establish a specific ‘meditative intention’ (e.g., cultivating metta, compassion, or collectedness) and maintain it for three to six months to deepen your practice.
13. Cultivate Wise Intentions
Make kindness, compassion, and generosity (non-clinging) the core intentions that precede your speech, actions, and thoughts, applying them to all experiences, including Vedana.
14. Approach World with Interconnectedness
Instead of looking at the world and asking it to ‘make you happy,’ approach it with a sense of interconnectedness, asking ‘how are we touching each other today?’
15. Don’t Believe Anxious Thoughts
Recognize that anxious thoughts and storytelling are optional and not always helpful, and do not feel obliged to believe in them too much, as this can lead to emotional and psychological distress.
16. Cultivate Inwardly Generated Happiness
Focus on developing a disciplined heart and mind characterized by collectedness, aliveness, wakefulness, connectedness, and calmness, as this is the source of enduring, trustworthy happiness.