It’s beautiful to earn pain

People make all sorts of efforts to find peace and pleasure, but no one tries to earn pain.

~ Guru Granth Sahib

The constitution of the body is such that it is pleasure-seeking — that’s the guiding principle behind bodily actions. Bodily actions include the impulses of the brain. So that which you call as ‘natural’, in a loose language is nothing but pleasure-seeking behavior.

When you say that something is natural, effectively what you are saying is that it is pleasure-seeking behavior. So that’s how your system is — it wants to have pleasure.

What is the definition of pleasure?

That which helps Prakriti (nature) further its agenda.

Food pleases you because it gives energy to the body to continue, that’s what Prakriti (nature) wants. Flattery pleases you because it gives the subtle-body the energy to continue. It will continue, it will stay motivated, it will further its goals.

Do 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 earn 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 your 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 the pain that you have earned, this is the 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 un-tag 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 the…