Let's Have Pleasure || AP Neem Candies
Acharya Prashant: You get the definition of pleasure? That which agrees with the agenda of your physical constitution is called pleasure.
Now, in getting that pleasure, you get pain as well, and that pain makes pleasure even more necessary. So, you earned two units of pleasure, and along with two units of pleasure you also got two units of pain. What is the inference that your system draws from this? Two units of pleasure is not sufficient, because two units of pleasure came along with two units of pain, and it got nullified, the net was zero. So, now your system wants three units of pleasure. But very soon the system discovers that three units of pleasure has come along with three units of pain, so now you want four units of pleasure.
That’s the cycle of human life—chasing pleasure, getting pain, and pain spurs you on to chase pleasure even more. This is not pain that you have earned; this is pain that has come as a bonus. What did you want? Pleasure—but pain came tagged along. Had you had a choice, you would have said, “I want only pleasure, let’s untag the pain. I don’t want the pain that comes with pleasure, I only want pleasure. Can we just separate the two? No, I don’t want a combo. No, I don’t want the one plus one offer. I only want the one that I want—pleasure.”
So, we get pain without earning it or wanting it or choosing it. We get it as a compulsory attachment, we get it as a compulsory accompaniment of pleasure.
Guru Sahib is talking of something different here. He is talking of earning pain. He is saying, “You already have had enough pain. That pain came to you as a compulsion, as helplessness. You didn’t want it, but you were subjected to it. Now, can you willingly go for pain?” What does he mean? He means something quite radical.
Your system is designed to go only for pleasure. And if you have been told to go deliberately for pain, you are actually being told to go against your system. In a practical way, he is teaching you a method of detachment, a way to get disidentified with the body: deliberately go for pain. And this has been a method in India and elsewhere since long. Spiritual practitioners, those who have really wanted to know and live life fully, have invited pain. Knowing fully well that the road they are taking would hurt them, they have still gone down those roads.
I repeat, to the common man pain is incidental, uninvited; it comes as a surprise. “Oh! Pain has come—from where? I didn’t ask for it!” To the spiritual practitioner, pain is almost a target. Pain is a value. He says, “I want it. Bring it on!” Not that there is some great virtue in pain; it’s just that when you are going for pain, you are denying the bodily compulsion of seeking pleasure, you are getting disidentified. And once you are disidentified, there is no need to seek pain either.
If you will see, a lot of progress, even in the material sense, happens only by inviting pain.
Full article link: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/it-is-beautiful-to-earn-pain-on-guru-granth-sahib-1_e99d594
