You’re abandoning the fears and worries that come with trying to lay claim to power, trying to lay claim to material things, and you’re finding your pleasure elsewhere, in safe places: inside you, in your experience of the body and the mind as you experience it from within.

"So, renunciation is a trade — and it’s a good trade, a trade up. You’re trading candy for gold. You’re abandoning the fears and worries that come with trying to lay claim to power, trying to lay claim to material things, and you’re finding your pleasure elsewhere, in safe places: inside you, in your experience of the body and the mind as you experience it from within. An area where no one else can enter, no one else can sense.

If you’re looking for your pleasures outside, people can see the material things you have and they can want them. But when you’re looking for pleasure inside, it’s nobody else’s business — which means it’s safe. Nobody else has to know.

But you’ve developed your resources inside: through the brahmavihāras, through the practice of jhāna, right concentration, until you get to that third high and luxurious bed of the Buddha’s which is the noble bed — where the mind is free from its effluents. In other words, no longer any dangers from outside, and also no dangers welling up from within. That’s the ultimate, total freedom, total happiness.

So it’s odd that the word renunciation, which has the connotation of deprivation, actually leads to a happiness where there’s no deprivation at all."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Renunciation Isn’t Deprivation"

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