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differentiating physical from mental happiness, do pīti and sukha have both components?


https://www.reddit.com/r/EarlyBuddhismMeditati/comments/mrjdq8/comment/jxtdv87/?context=3


I choose to treat the sutta usage of pīti as always mental joy, and sukha (when in context with pīti or jhāna) will be referring to physical pleasure.

Because there are several times when the Buddha qualifies pīti with manassa (mind), and sukha with kāya (body). But I'm not aware of there ever being pīti described with kāyika (bodily).

Sukha on the other hand, in a context where we don't know if it's jhāna,

sukha = sukha vedana, and

sukha vedana = sukha indriya (physical) + so-manassa (mental joy), from SN 48.37.


example 1 mental joy causes physical symptoms of joy 


From real experience with physical and mental happiness, we all know one tends to cause the other to immediatley follow. For example, you feel affection, joy from getting something you want, it starts with mentally originated joy, but immediatley your body responds with warm fuzzies, goose bumps, tingling, pleasant surges of energy flow in the body.

I would call that sa-misa (worldly) pīti, followed immediately by sukha-indriya (physical pleasure),

rather than saying pīti has both a mental and physical component.




example two, sukha physical pleasure first, followed by pīti mental joy.


You're on vacation walking on the beach dipping your toes in the ocean. You feel physically pleasant sensations of sunshine, coolness of water and breeze, and then that triggers mental happiness (pīti, or somanassa, or pamojja).

So I would characterize it that way, physical sensations -> trigger mental sensations -> physical sensations, etc. depending on how your mind reacts each moment,

rather than saying pīti is both physical mental and sukha is both physical and mental.

Why?

Because then the suttas you can't really ever deterimine whether it's talking about the physical part and what is the mental part.

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