MANTRA YOGA CHAPTER 1 POSTING # 5

[Guest guest]

It is true that growth necessarily involves pain. On the other hand, merely living life for the sake of pleasure will bring greater pain. In other words, when we pursue pleasure, as an end in itself, (and not as conduits for higher growth) greater suffering will ensue. This is because we are investing our cause in that which is passing or transient. Investing in pleasure derived from the transient means that the pleasure too will necessarily fade. This will bring pain.

Pleasure and pain are the two sides of the same coin. Pursuing pleasure merely for its own sake, will leave us stranded. However, taking pleasure and pain as we stride and evolve to higher realms of growth, focuses our minds on the subtler, eternal aspects of life. Without consciously recognizing that pleasure and pain are the obverse and reverse of each other, human beings are left to the vicissitudes of craving for pleasure and experiencing unnecessary and unexpected pain. It is the transcendence of suffering, while we yet live, that ultimately matters.

Also, each time a pleasure is experienced, it brings less of a thrill, for as with every good experience, pleasure too has (to borrow a term from economics) ‘diminishing marginal utility.’ To clarify, if you are on a candy-eating binge, every additional candy bar that you consume in one sitting, will bring you less and less of a pleasure. The same applies for life’s bigger pleasures that are ends in themselves, whether they are experienced in one, or several sittings.