Wise about Pleasure (extract)

"The Buddha was not down on pleasure, it’s simply that he was a real connoisseur. He said, "Why settle for second best when there’s best? And it’s available.”

Now, we may decide that it seems awfully far away, and that we’re going to starve in the meantime unless we get the pleasures we want. But that’s taking the wrong attitude toward your pleasures. You can ask yourself, “Which pleasures are conducive to getting to the ultimate, and which ones are going to get in the way?” You focus on encouraging the ones that are conducive, letting go of the ones that’ll get in the way. That’s the real sign of wisdom. After all, the quest for wisdom begins with that question, "What when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?”

This applies to how you deal with pleasures, how you deal with pains: pleasures of the senses and pleasures of the practice; pains of the senses, pains of the practice. So you want to be wise about pleasure, wise about your feelings. That way, you find that the path is not more than you can manage. It’s not asking you to be superhuman, it’s not making inhuman demands on you, just that you have to learn how to be discerning in how you approach the whole question of pleasure and pain.

Remember here, pleasure is not an end in and of itself. Nibbana is an end in and of itself."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Wise about Pleasure"

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