Duration of a feeling

betaboy

It is often said that one should observe the impermanent nature of feelings/thoughts. But how long does it last? Somewhere I read that feelings - any feeling - last but for a moment before a new feeling takes its place.

Is this the case - that feelings or thoughts come and go in an instant, or is it that some of them could last a while (even if technically impermanent)?

AllbuddhaBound

Feelings can last some time. I find that mine usually don't, but if I believe people who tell me they are chronically depressed, I have to believe they can last for some time.

EvenThird

I think even if a feeling seems to linger or stay with you for a while, it's actually still changing at every moment. Feelings are not static but impermanent because "you" yourself is a different person at every moment. As a different person now than when you started reading this, how could your feelings be exactly the same? I think feeling the same emotion over a period of time is no less impermanent than a short lived one, just different.
I hope that made sense

Chaz

What I was taught, was that, from a relative perspective, "feelings" last as long as you cling to them. As soon as you let go of the feeling, the thought, the emotion, they disolve.

So how long they last depends entirely on you.

betaboy

Chaz said:

What I was taught, was that, from a relative perspective, "feelings" last as long as you cling to them. As soon as you let go of the feeling, the thought, the emotion, they disolve.

So how long they last depends entirely on you.

Or can we put it this way? Feelings are impermanent, but because we cling to them and feed them, they appear to have a certain permanence? Is that why clinging is frowned upon in Buddhism?

Chaz

I guess you can look at it that way. I think it would be better said that feelings are impermanent and we cling to them because we think they're permanent.

I'm not so sure that "frowned upon" would be the best description.

Theswingisyellow

@betaboy-"that feelings - any feeling - last but for a moment before a new feeling takes its place." on and on and on........
it is never the same feeling no matter how much we want to conceive it as such. The moment has past and a new moment begins anew. It's our conceptions we want to hold onto.

pegembara

Sense organ + sense object + consciousness = contact
Contact is followed by feeling.
Feeling is accompanied by "craving" and grasping.

Craving ("I want/don't want that") causes the cycle to repeat. Without craving, it ends.

That is dependent origination.

"He who sees Dependent Origination, sees the Dhamma; he who sees the Dhamma, sees Dependent Origination."

http://www.buddhanet.net/cmdsg/coarise1.htm

Jeffrey

@pegembra, suppose I want to play a game and I am experiencing craving. Then I play the game and I get bored and there is boredom. I then crave the boredom to go away.

Where and how do I stop the craving? It can be anything like cookies or olives to eat. There is craving and it seems that is all there is to life.

pegembara

@Jeffrey
This is where the attainment of the jhanas come into play, the key being seclusion from sensuality.

"'I tell you, the ending of the mental fermentations depends on the first jhana.' Thus it has been said. In reference to what was it said? There is the case where a monk, secluded from sensuality, secluded from unskillful qualities, enters & remains in the first jhana: rapture & pleasure born of seclusion, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation. He regards whatever phenomena there that are connected with form, feeling, perception, fabrications, & consciousness, as inconstant, stressful, a disease, a cancer, an arrow, painful, an affliction, alien, a disintegration, an emptiness, not-self. He turns his mind away from those phenomena, and having done so, inclines his mind to the property of deathlessness: 'This is peace, this is exquisite — the resolution of all fabrications; the relinquishment of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding.'

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an09/an09.036.than.html

upekka

betaboy said:

Is this the case - that feelings or thoughts come and go in an instant, or is it that some of them could last a while (even if technically impermanent)?

any contact comes through eyes, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind
the feeling comes because of the contact
feelings come and go in an instant

you can check this yourself

sit and close your eyes
listen to any sound comes into your ear and see how long it stays before another sound comes into your ear
try not to give names to sounds

do this for a while
this is a Noble Experiment or Vipassana




you can use all six faculties to do this experiment

answer Will Be ..............

DairyLama

Chaz said:

I guess you can look at it that way. I think it would be better said that feelings are impermanent and we cling to them because we think they're permanent.

Or push them away if the feelings are unpleasant.

DairyLama

betaboy said:

Is this the case - that feelings or thoughts come and go in an instant, or is it that some of them could last a while (even if technically impermanent)?

I think there are moods and mind-states that persist, or at least appear to persist.