Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c9.s3.7

c9.s3.7

Of the four psychical aggregates the first in the stereotyped order is feeling (vedanā), a term wide enough to cover sensation but predominantly indicative of pleasure or pain. But, in addition to these two aspects of feeling, there is recognized a third which is neutral; pleasure has stationariness as pleasant, change as unpleasant, the opposite applies to pain, while neutral feeling has knowledge as pleasant, ignorance as unpleasant, a statement which is not enlightening. The psychological heresy of neutral feeling is prompted doubtless by ethical considerations, for it is the aim of man in his process of attaining perfection to rid himself of all positive feeling of any kind. The term aggregate applied to feeling is obviously intended to indicate that the individual is constantly experiencing one feeling after another.