Martine Batchelor
Editor’s Note: In her book The Spirit of the Buddha, former Buddhist nun Martine Batchelor looks to early Buddhist texts for inspiration and insight, offering her favorite selections from the Pali canon accompanied by her own commentary.
Pleasant feeling is pleasant when it persists and painful when it changes. Painful feeling is painful when it persists and pleasant when it changes. Neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling is pleasant when there is knowledge of it and painful when there is no knowledge of it.
–Majjhima Nikaya, 44
A pleasant feeling will continue to give us pleasure if it lasts, but if it stops it will be transformed into an unpleasant feeling. A painful feeling will be perceived as painful the longer it persists but will be felt as pleasant when it stops.
Neutral feelings are pleasant when we are aware of them and unpleasant when we are not. If nothing special is happening to us, nothing specifically joyful or painful, we do not feel much. If we were aware of a feeling that is neither pleasant nor unpleasant, it could be deeply restful, because we actually feel calm and tranquil. Because nothing special or extreme is happening, we can rest and just be aware of being alive in this moment and do whatever is required. We might feel this way at work or at home. It might be easier to do our work in that state as nothing will interfere, we will not be too anxious or excited, but stable and open in this moment. At home we can use these moments to rest and breathe for a short time–with nothing special to do, nothing special to be.
But if we do not cultivate mindfulness and we feel a neutral feeling, it can turn into an unpleasant feeling because of its association with boredom. We will feel that nothing special is happening–nothing specially good, nothing specially bad, and from that we will often generate painful stories about being a boring person, having a boring life, the world being boring, and actually end up in a painful place. Sometimes it seems that we prefer to have painful feelings because they are somewhat exciting and we seem to feel more alive in them than with neutral feelings that we equate with nonexistence. The problem is not with neutral feelings but with our relationship to them and our interpretation of them.
