Regarding the arising of feeling there we three ideas in the time of the Buddha. The sutta’s threat those ideas:
-they are all results of past deeds. All feeling is kamma-vipaka. This was the position of Jain leader Nigantha Nataputta. The soul most be freed from these karmic bonds due to painful practices.
-feelings arise due to the creative activity of God
-feeling do not arise because of causes and conditions. Some teachers believed feelings of pain and pleausure were measured out from the beginning. Live with it’s pleasure, pain and neutral feeling just unfolds like the unwinding of a ball of string. A kind of fatalism.
See AN3.61 for these three positions: https://suttacentral.net/an3.61/en/bodhi
What was the position of the Buddha?
I think, please correct me if i am wrong, that he rejected God as cause and he also rejected that feeling do arise without cause and are destined, measured out. Such views come with fatalism that does not encourage to live the holy life like the Buddha meant it.
His position regarding the cause of feelings was, i think:
1. Feeling can arise as a result of the ripening of earlier moral or immoral deeds, kamma-vipaka. These kind of feelings we have to deal with in an intelligent way. Once ripened we have to bear those feeling without any aversion when they are painful and without any greed when they are nice. Even Buddha’s and arahants have those kind of feeling due to the ripening of earlier deeds in this or former lives. Some feelings are kamma-vipaka. We must learn that feelings are not mine, not me, not who i am. In stead of going out of contact of unpleasant feeling we must learn to contact them mindfully. Our ingrained aversion to unpleasant feeling must change. We have to develop an intelligent or wise relationship with unpleasant en pleasant feeling.
- Feelings also arise in reaction on feelings which are kamma-vipaka. For example, when pain arises as a result of kamma (earlier immorel deeds), that is a painful feeling, but when aversion starts that state of mind is also accomponied by unpleasant feeling. This is another mechanism of the cause of feeling.
Another sutta who deals with causes for feeling is SN36.21. In that sutta you can see that kamma (i think as deeds in the past) as a cause is just one of the possible causes. So the Buddha also rejected the view of Jain leader Nigantha Nataputt that all feelings are due to past deeds. He also rejected the idea that one can wear away bad kamma due to painful practices.
https://suttacentral.net/sn36.21/en/bodhi
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