daverupa wrote:tiltbillings wrote:Did not the Buddha comment of the beauty of natural scenes.
Actually... where might this have happened? Because all I can think of is that if the underlying tendency to lust is not abandoned, then pleasant feeling can be fixated on and clung to. Basically, inappropriately attending to objects to be taken as beautiful causes lust to arise and aggrandize, and this goes for any sense input involving natural scenes...
Hi Dave
The pleasant feeling as hedonic tone would fall within the
kāyika (bodily) feelings. How one reacts to it as a result of a particular
anusaya appears to be the sequel to the
cetasika (mental) feeling. I think the problem here is the grasping of the sign (
nimittaggāhī), but it does not suggest that the sign (
nimitta) is a subjective experience.
We probably need to dive into that formulaic phrase "to be experience/felt as" (
vedanīya). It's all over the suttas, and here's an interesting take on it -
"Monks, for anyone who says, 'In whatever way a person makes kamma, that is how it is experienced,' there is no living of the holy life, there is no opportunity for the right ending of stress.
But for anyone who says, 'When a person makes kamma to be felt in such & such a way, that is how its result is experienced,' there is the living of the holy life, there is the opportunity for the right ending of stress.
Yo bhikkhave evaṃ vadeyya: yathā yathā'yaṃ puriso kammaṃ karoti, tathā tathā naṃ paṭisaṃvediyatī'ti. Evaṃ santaṃ bhikkhave brahmacariyavāso na hoti. Okāso na paññāyati sammā dukkhassa antakiriyāya.
Yo ca kho bhikkhave evaṃ vadeyya: yathā yathā vedanīyaṃ ayaṃ puriso kammaṃ karoti, tathā tathāssa vipākaṃ paṭisaṃvediyatī'ti. Evaṃ santaṃ bhikkhave brahmacariyavāso hoti, okāso paññāyati sammādukkhassa antakiriyāya.
AN 3.99
There's still that mysterious and unbridgeable process which should account for how
kamma ripens in particular ways...
Perhaps you are right that
nimittas will be subjective, in the sense that different people may experience the same sense object but not perceive the
nimitta uniformly. But I suspect that what makes
nimittas also objectively "encoded" into each contact is the fact that the suttas resort to the
vedanīya and
tajja vedayita concepts. This objective potentiality for one's future enjoyment of a sense object might come from the mental state accompanying the kamma - see SN 3.20.