Questions & Answers
Question: Please advise us how to answer the following questions briefly: What is a sensation?
Goenkaji: Whatever you feel at the physical level on your body, we call it a sensation.
Question: Why do we get sensation?
Goenkaji: Because you are alive. Your mind and matter-nāma and rūpa-are working together. Where there is no nāma, no mind, one cannot feel. An inanimate body cannot feel sensations. This pillar cannot feel sensations. Wherever there is life, sensations can be felt.
Question: What is equanimity?
Goenkaji: When you don't react to sensations, you experience equanimity.
Question: What do we mean when we say not to react?
Goenkaji: Don't generate craving for pleasant sensations. Don't generate aversion for unpleasant sensations. Then you are not reacting.
Question: What is a free flow?
Goenkaji: There is nothing that flows. It is only your mind which moves from head to feet, or feet to head rapidly, because there is no obstacle on the way. Now there are no longer any blind areas or gross, solidified sensations-only very subtle vibrations of the same type. Your mind moves easily, and it feels as if a flow is there. The whole purpose is that you understand that no matter whether there are gross sensations, or subtle sensations, your mind must remain equanimous. Don't react with aversion towards the gross sensations. Don't react with craving for the pleasant sensations.
(20 January 1996, Annual Meeting: Dhamma Giri)
Source:
http://www.vridhamma.org/en2001-07
