Identity and Experience_Hamilton_1996

46 Identity and Experience
there is a degree of discrimination or cognition sufficient for its classification
in one of these three ways. A further point arises from the description
given above of the arising of feeling, which is that it illustrates that it is part
of a process involving both safiti and viiiiiiina. We shall see below in the
chapters on these two khandhas that both of these are part of the cognitive
process. But the samkhiirakkhandha is not involved. Again as we shall see
below (in chapter IV), this is where the emotions Westerners associate with
feelings come from.23
The cognitive role of vedanii is unsubtle: one might say that it is affective
rather than intellectual cognition. It is nevertheless significant enough to be
an important factor in understanding the role of the vedanikhandha
correctly. From a psychological point of view, it is not too difficult for us to
understand that vedana' is part of the cognitive process. We know, for
example, that feelings can be expressed cognitively: if we say we are feeling
sad, we also mean that we know that we are experiencing sadness. We also
commonly refer to feelings as a vague level of knowledge in expressions
such as 'I have the feeling that this is correct', or 'I feel there is something
wrong here'. Thus vedanZ plays a part, however nebulous, in the cognitive
process of an individual. It is perhaps significant that vedayita, the (irregular)
past passive participle of the verb vedeti, from which vedanii comes, is often
interpreted as meaning 'experienced' rather than 'felt'. And 'experience'
might be a better translation of vedanii when it is found in the context of the
cognitive process as a whole: in English to state that cognition necessarily
involves experience is more readily acceptable than stating that it
necessarily involves feelings. I will return to the question of the cognitive
role of vedanii in the chapter on the viiiKii@andha, when we will have more
information available to us.
What the discussion here has shown is that though different types of
feelings are referred to, descriptions of what feelings are emphasise the
way they arise. The concern is not with understanding what a feeling is per
se, but in seeing that feelings arise as part of a process.
I have pointed out above that according to the twelvefold version of the
pakcasamuppa'da formula, feeling (uedan4 has contact &ham) as its condition
and that feeling itself is therefore more than mere sensory event. And
in the description of the arising of feeling to which I have referred it is also
from phma that feeling is stated to arise. Indeed, in the Phmmzihka Sutta
in the VedanZ Samyutta the dependence of vedani on phma is stressed: the
three feelings (agreeable, disagreeable and neutral) are born of contact,
rooted in contact, caused by contact, conditioned by contact.24 Before
going on to discuss the safiiiikhandha, therefore, it would seem appropriate
to investigate the role of phma in more detail.