HAPPINESS : 3. & 4.

3. PLEASURE IS MIXED WITH PAIN :


You cannot have pleasure without pain. Wherever there is pleasure, there is pain. You vainly seek pleasure in gold, in women (or men in the case of women), in this mundane existence. You cannot have absolute happiness in a relative physical plane of pairs of opposites. The pairs of opposites rotate in their turn. Death follows life. Night follows day. Light follows darkness. Pain follows pleasure.

One part of pleasure is mixed with fifteen parts of pain. Pleasure that is mixed with pain, fear and worry is no pleasure at all. If you carefully begin to analyze this one part of pleasure also, it will dwindle into an airy nothing. You will find that it is mere play of the mind.

Pleasure and pain are relative terms only. They are not two entities. They are obverse and reverse sides of the same coin. The difference is not in kind, but in degree only.

Pleasure and pain are two names for one thing. They are two aspects of one thing. For a worldly man without philosophical knowledge, they appear as two different entities.



4. PLEASURE AND PAIN LIE IN THE MIND :



What is pleasure for you is pain for another. What is pleasure for you now is pain after some time. The first two cups of milk gives you pleasure. The third cup induces disgust, nausea and retching. Milk does not give pleasure during fever. Therefore, pleasure is not in the objects, but in the imagination or inclination of the mind.

Pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness, are all false imaginations of the mind. Mind is a false, illusory product. Conceptions of the mind also must, therefore, be false.

Pleasure and pain are in the mind only. It is subjective. Things, when longed for, are pleasant; but are bitter if not longed for. Desires are the cause for pleasures.

You can convert pleasure into pain and pain into pleasure by thinking, by Bhavana, by imagination. Many vegetarian students who have gone to England to prosecute their studies have become inveterate meat-eaters. Meat was very repulsive to them when they were in India. Mere sight used to induce vomiting. How is it they are able to relish meat with avidity, cupidity and stupidity now ? By simple change in thinking.

Ignorant persons attribute their pleasure to external objects. That is a serious blunder, indeed. Really, there is no pleasure in objects. There is neither pleasure nor pain in objects. It is all mental creation, mental perception, mental jugglery. It is only the mental attitude or a certain kind of mental behaviour towards objects that bring joy or grief, pleasure or pain. Maya has her powerful seat in the imagination of the mind.

When you are in acute agony, a cup of coffee, milk or tea does not give you any pleasure. When you are in acute agony, the whole world which appeared to you to be full of bliss while in good health, appears quite dreary. The world loses all its charms while you are seriously ailing. A real thing must give pleasure for everybody at all times. Is it not ?


Next : 5. PLEASURE IS THE CAUSE OF PAIN & 6. THE SOURCE OF HAPPINESS :

To be continued  ...