IIT Kharagpur: The false promise of pleasure

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner (Q): I find myself in a vicious cycle of wanting more and more pleasure all the time. How can I get out of it?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Get some real pleasure. Real pleasure has a quality to it, and when you have that quality then your hunger for quantity diminishes. If you keep looking for more and more pleasure, chances are you are not getting pleasure anywhere. Had you been getting it somewhere, you would have stopped at that point, right? Because you don’t get it anywhere, that is why you want it everywhere.

So, look for the right place where real pleasure can be had. For that, you will have to first of all test whether all these places that promise pleasure to you are of any avail. They promise, they attract, they also extract a lot, but do they really deliver? And maintain the faith that the real thing is not inaccessible. You are born to achieve the real thing and you can get it, but not if you remain attracted to, and engaged with all the little and false stuff. Then the little things will keep you forever away from the real deal.

Q: The reason I asked this question is that society promotes this mentality which says, for example, “Crack that exam and you will get pleasure after that, you…