On Guru Granth Sahib: It is beautiful to earn pain!

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

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

Says Nanak, listen, mind: whatever pleases God comes to pass. ||39||

~ Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, Salok Mahalla

(Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 14128)

Question: Acharya Ji, please clarify what is meant here by, ‘earning pain’?

Acharya Prashant:

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. It wants to have pleasure.

What is the definition of ‘pleasure’?

That which helps prakriti…