Ahetuka Cittas - Feeling conditions craving

Is this not real life? Touched by painful feeling, we long for pleasant feeling; we believe that it is real happiness. We do not see life as it really is: dukkha. We wish to ignore sickness, old age and death, ''lamentation and despair'', and the impermanence of all conditioned realities. We expect happiness in life and when we have to suffer we think that pleasant feeling might cure us of suffering and we cling to it. In the Buddha's teaching of the ''Dependent Origination'' it is said that feeling conditions craving. Not only pleasant feeling and indifferent feeling condition craving, but also unpleasant feeling conditions craving, since one wishes to be liberated from unpleasant feeling (Visuddhimagga, XVII, 238). Furthermore, we read in the sutta:

 

'....If he feels feeling that is pleasant,

he feels it as one in bondage. 

If he feels feeling that is painful,

he feels it as one in bondage.

If he feels feeling that is neutral,

he feels it as one in bondage.

This untaught manyfolk, monks,

is called 'in bondage to birth, death, sorrow and grief,

woe, lamentation and despair.

He is in bondage to dukkha. So I declare. 

                

But, monks, the well-taught Ariyan disciple,

when touched by painful feeling,

weeps not, wails not, cries not aloud,

knocks not the breast, falls not into utter bewilderment.

He feels but one feeling, the bodily, not  the mental...

If he feels a feeling that is pleasant,

he feels it as one freed from bondage.

If he feels a feeling that is painful,

he feels it as one that is freed from bondage.

If he feels a neutral feeling,

he feels it as one that is freed from bondage.

This well-taught Ariyan disciple, monks,

is called 'freed from the bondage of birth, old age,

from sorrow and grief, 

from woe, lamentation and despair,

freed from the bondage of dukkha.' So I declare....'