Zapper asked, “Does that mean that even an arahant feels pain, and if so, is it only from the body sense organ?”
1. As Christian pointed out, there are many accounts in the Tipitaka about Arahants feeling bodily pain. Even the Buddha felt pain when a stone injured his foot (when Devadatta tried to take his life). He also felt bodily aches. In the final days, he had stomach pains.
- So, yes. There is plenty of evidence that Arahants feel “bodily pain.” In the same way, they can feel “bodily pleasures” like resting on a soft bed compared to sleeping on the ground.
2. The other types of “vedanā” are associated with “saññā” built into the physical body.
- For example, the sweet taste of sugar is a different type of “vedanā” are associated with “saññā” built into the physical body. It does not come through the nerves in the physical body (as in #1), but come through the tongue (taste).
- In reality, that “saññā” of sweetness in sugar is not real in an absolute sense. If it were, all living beings would taste sugar to be sweet. But a cow or a tiger would not eat sugar. In the same way, cows like to eat grass, but humans or tigers do not. That is why it is called “distorted saññā.”
- A puthujjana attaches to the taste of sugar. But since an Arahant has understood how the human bodies are built to provide a “sweet taste” (but the body of a tiger or cow is not), their minds do not go through the “automatic attachment” at the purāna kamma stage (at the very beginning of the tasting sugar).
- That is the critical point I tried to point out (as in your above quote: “and in the “Saññā Nidānā hi Papañca Saṅkhā – Immoral Thoughts Based on ‘Distorted Saññā’ post, you said “The key point is that their minds do not even go through the purāna kamma stage”).
3. Such “distorted saññā” can lead to a feeling of joy (or revulsion) with other senses, too. For example, we smell rotten meat to be repulsive, but a pig likes that smell.
- An Arahant would smell rotten meat as a “bad smell,” but is not depressed. They fully understand that smell is “made up.”
- The fact that Arahants also experience those “made-up emotions” (“agreeable and disagreeable”) associated with the sense faculties is expressed in the “Nibbānadhātu Sutta (Iti 44)“: “Their five sense faculties still remain. So long as their senses have not gone they continue to experience the agreeable and disagreeable, to feel pleasure and pain.”
- I have discussed that sutta in several posts: “Search Results for: Nibbānadhātu.” You can read them to gain further understanding of this critical point.
4. The difficulty lies in understanding how our bodies (and the external world) arise to provide that “distorted saññā.“
- It is fully explained via Paṭicca Samuppāda. The first few posts in the “Worldview of the Buddha” section explain that.
