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Fleeting Pleasure, Enduring Pain

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A very good article from Shri S. H. Venkatramani

 

Fleeting Pleasure, Enduring Pain

By S H VenkatramaniLet’s talk about pleasure and pain. Pleasure first, because

it makes you feel good. But life’s pleasures seem so fleeting and evanescent,

like glistening dewdrops that evaporate with the first hint of the warm rays of

the sun. A pleasant state of being, we instinctively feel, is intrinsically

unstable. Pleasure vanishes like a transient bubble, while pain endures. What

is pleasant is short-lived because the human mind quickly gets used to it, and

subconsciously craves to heighten and intensify that feeling of pleasure, as it

lingers in the memory and haunts the mind.Man’s mind remembers and reconstructs

a pleasurable experience and yearns to perpetuate and intensify that pleasant

memory by seeking to recreate and magnify the

sensation.It is the yearning for more and more of that sensation, that feeling

and that memory which causes man’s greed and avarice. It is scientifically

impossible to satisfy our craving for more physical and mental possessions.

This desire for an infinitely intensifying and ever-growing pleasurable

sensation is therefore self-defeating.Lord Krishna expounds this truth in the

Bhagavad Gita: "When the mind, completely transcended, rests in the Self alone,

free from longing for all objects of desire, then he is said to be a Yukta,

manifest in self-knowledge". He continued, "The unsteady and the fickle, being

attached to fruits through desire, are ever bound". Pleasure begins to recede

as you approach it, goaded by desire. The quest for pleasure is, therefore,

futile. It vanishes

while pain endures. Pain and suffering often overwhelm us, leaving us feeling

utterly helpless. We feel completely at the mercy of an inexplicable and

omnipotent divine force. "As flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods:/ They

kill us for their sport’’ — This is how William Shakespeare poignantly

articulated man’s pathetic plight as he grapples with the uncertainties of

life.He feels like a rudderless raft, adrift in the mighty and mysterious sea

of life. Pain endures. It is caused by stress. It is born of tension between

what is, and what you desire. All suffering arises from the fundamental

conflict between what is and what should be. When different forces pull the

mind in different directions, the resulting tension between the Self and

perceived reality causes disappointment and sorrow. It is the dualism between

the Self and the universe that manifests as

suffering. At the root of pain and suffering is the illusory sense of abiding

identity of a human being, the mirage of a distinctive Self. It is this

everlasting maya of the Self that blesses pain and sorrow with eternal life.It

is a daunting challenge to transcend the vice-like grip of this selfhood. You

have to lift yourself above the maya of the individual Self, the jivatma,

unselfconsciously and not by a determined effort of the will. As Fenelon

explains: "Real simplicity lies in a just milieu that is equally free from

thoughtlessness and affectation, in which the soul is not overwhelmed by

externals, so as to be unable to reflect, nor yet given up to the endless

refinements, which self-consciousness induces. That soul which looks where it

is going without losing time arguing over every step, or looking back

perpetually, possesses true simplicity".Fenelon defines simplicity as ‘‘an

uprightness of soul which prevents self-consciousness’’. To be really simple,

you have to transcend the enduring mirage of the self without the subtlest

self-adulation. This logic of the soul is as irrefutably true as it is

metaphysically subtle.As St John of the Cross explains: "The soul that is

attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at

the liberty of divine union". For the good of God "can only be contained in an

empty and solitary heart".

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/12907954.cms

 

 

 

Regards,

 

Subhashbhai

 

E-mail : bjswadia (AT) (DOT) co.uk

 

Sai Ram!

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