I found it interesting that in my particular lineage, "feeling" was always used as #3 below, as opposed to #2 in the passage above. More a note about how confusion can spread that any particular point:
(1) Active Investigation: Reach out and tell me what the texture of the leather feels like
(2) Emotional Response: How do you feel about the leather's texture.
(3) Responsive Sensation: The experience of the perception of the finger-tips-feel of the texture of the leather
Or, in one sentence: Please feel (1) the leather, and tell me how you feel (2) about it when you feel (3) it.
So, when we talked about "feeling-contemplation", that meant "Openness to receptive sensation", not "dwelling on emotional response".
When not constrained by the activity of conceptual fixation, feeling has no “weakness” as described here.
Rather than considering feeling to be a kind of vulnerability or limitation (“I am the one who feels and therefore I am in constant danger of losing that establishment”), we can recognize feeling as the self-cognizance of every experience. Sentience itself—coming into being along with the experience, changing as it changes, dying as it dies, and reborn again as something fresh.
Not weak but impossibly strong in its pliability. Unbreakable, adamantine!
I found it interesting that in my particular lineage, "feeling" was always used as #3 below, as opposed to #2 in the passage above. More a note about how confusion can spread that any particular point:
(1) Active Investigation: Reach out and tell me what the texture of the leather feels like
(2) Emotional Response: How do you feel about the leather's texture.
(3) Responsive Sensation: The experience of the perception of the finger-tips-feel of the texture of the leather
Or, in one sentence: Please feel (1) the leather, and tell me how you feel (2) about it when you feel (3) it.
So, when we talked about "feeling-contemplation", that meant "Openness to receptive sensation", not "dwelling on emotional response".
An offering:
When not constrained by the activity of conceptual fixation, feeling has no “weakness” as described here.
Rather than considering feeling to be a kind of vulnerability or limitation (“I am the one who feels and therefore I am in constant danger of losing that establishment”), we can recognize feeling as the self-cognizance of every experience. Sentience itself—coming into being along with the experience, changing as it changes, dying as it dies, and reborn again as something fresh.
Not weak but impossibly strong in its pliability. Unbreakable, adamantine!
Beautiful!