The Hundred and Eight Feelings

A Deep Dive into SN 36.22

TheGentleLaw Community

In the Samyutta Nikaya 36.22, we find a fascinating map of human experience, a complex interplay of how we feel, perceive, and react.
Today, I’d like to share some reflections from my private research on this theme, connecting it with the broader teaching on primary and secondary vedanā (feeling levels).

Primary and Secondary Feelings: Understanding the Layers

At its simplest, vedanā refers to the affective quality of experience: pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. But there’s more under the surface.
We can distinguish primary from secondary feelings:

• Primary vedanā is the immediate, raw tone of an experience: the basic hedonic flavor, whether pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, independent of personal interpretations or attitudes.

• Secondary vedanā arises when perception (saññā) and mental tendencies (anusaya) like craving, aversion, or ignorance enter the picture. It is more complex, woven with thoughts, memories, and mental constructs.

Most primary feelings are triggered by physical contact (paṭigha samphassa): the touch of a breeze, the sound of a bell, the taste of sweetness.
Secondary feelings, however, often spring from conceptual contact (adhivacana samphassa): the mind labeling, interpreting, reminiscing.

This distinction is beautifully captured in the Salla Sutta (Discourse on the Arrow, SN 36.6):
Being struck by a painful bodily feeling is like being pierced by a first arrow — unavoidable even for enlightened beings.
But when we mentally react — through aversion, complaint, or rumination — it's as if we're struck by a second, optional arrow.
Only the untrained mind (puthujjana) is pierced twice.

Although the arrow simile focuses on painful feelings, the framework of primary and secondary feelings extends to pleasant and neutral experiences too.
Many of the complex emotional reactions we live through — including the famous 36 feelings and their expansion into 108 are secondary. They are what we build on top of the initial raw feeling.

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