October 27, 2020 – Vedanā

Tonight at Satsang, we keep going with the second foundation of mindfulness: vedanā (feeling tone / affect / hedonic tone / charge). We talk about the physiological nature of emotions, and some ways to understand them: biologically and evolutionarily, not just psychologically.

On the subject, check out this talk by historian Yuval Noah Harari where he discusses (among a lot of other things) emotions as biological algorithms being made obsolete now by more accurate AI algorithms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ChHc5jhZxs

I attempt to tie his theory in with the model of Dependent Origination we started looking at last night, in which vedanā is in some ways the most vital link as far as practice goes.