The Deception of Pleasure

The identity of pleasure and the deception behind it is one of those things that, once you see it, it is impossible to unsee. It feels so obvious once you have understood it, yet our minds cannot comprehend it without instruction from a self-awakened one, that is, a Supreme Buddha. One reason for this is that there are, in fact, two very subtly distinct phenomena – pleasure and happiness which seem similar to the un-awakened mind. The distinction between these two is so subtle that the Buddha himself expounds that it is due to the miscomprehension of the truth behind these two phenomena that one goes through samsara. So, in an era in which the Buddha’s teaching prevails, we must strive to understand the truth of pleasure and happiness. The sole objective of the series "The Buddha’s Guide to Happiness” is to provide practical guidance to those who feel their time has come to navigate out of the thick fog of delusion so that they may liberate themselves from the deception of pleasure and experience for the first time ever the incomparably sublime bliss that awaits those who awaken to the truth. Our online talk series (scan QR code), which shares its name with this article series, is intended to help people all over the world achieve the same goal. 

In the anecdotes we discussed in the previous article, we could clearly see that pleasure does not come from the outside world; instead, it is the dynamic product of an internal process of the mind. Hence, to understand how we perceive pleasure, we must first examine how the mind works. Let us start with the first example story, ‘My Twins’. Please revisit the previous week’s article if you might like to remind yourself of the background story.

My Twins

Let us do a step-by-step breakdown. If we isolate the pleasure that was experienced upon learning the twins’ test scores and disregard the actual test, the pleasure-generating process started well before the twins actually informed you about the results. This may seem quite bizarre, as it seems your pleasure was triggered by the joyful news of the exam results, but it was not so. Before we dwell further, let us take a slight detour to clarify this point. I would like you to imagine yourself in that situation as one of your fictitious twins hands you the paper that holds their exam results. What would you be feeling a fraction of a second before you feel pleasure upon receiving the good news?
Anxious, nervous, and distressed are some of the words that could describe this feeling in our minds and they come dressed up with undertones of love and affection for the child.  You have anxiously awaited a good result and then feel pleasure when you learn about it. Let us take a moment and focus on this anxious waiting. This is not a positive, pleasurable feeling but a feeling that irritates us and one we would like to do away with as soon as possible. It is a very unpleasant negative feeling. We can commonly refer to these as vexation. Vexation is the mental pressure that is felt in such situations. Our minds intensely dislike this feeling – the feeling that one gets when standing in line for something you want. It is a fire that burns you from the inside out. So, what does this feeling have to do with pleasure? What connection could vexation have with pleasure? After all, they are polar opposites.

Vexation seems somehow connected with pleasure, as we tend to feel vexation immediately before we feel pleasure; it is as if the former replaces the latter. In a scenario similar to the above, it would be quite common for a parent to feel the pressure of wanting their children to do well in their exams. In this example, both twins are doing important exams, and it is likely that they may also be stressing over their exams like you. You would want them to do very well, as most parents, who would want their children to get excellent marks and come out top in class. At the very least, you would want them to pass. Therefore, you now expect them both to do well. This is where your internal mental pressure starts building up. When ‘Twin A’ comes home and hands you their mark of 95%, you feel happy. Is this happiness because of the marks or because your expectations were met? Some parents might be over the moon if their child brought home these marks if their expectations were much below this level, whereas others may even be disappointed even with such a high mark if their expectations are higher, for instance, if they had expected full marks! So, we can conclude that the pleasure felt was because these expectations were fulfilled, and when fulfilled, the mental vexation is released. 
Now ‘Twin B’ hands over to you his marks. This time, they have not managed to get what you expected; therefore, your vexation is not relieved; consequently, you will not feel much pleasure, if any at all; instead, you may feel disappointed (negative emotions). You may be relieved that the child has managed to score a pass mark, and this relief is also a relief from vexation – and, therefore, will present a feeling of pleasure. But some may argue they felt a minute of happiness for the child. In addition, there was also the suspense of the result and the pressure felt from waiting for the result. As the result has now been presented, this vexation has also been addressed. 
If we look at the second exam results, we can see a massive change. ‘Twin A’ comes home with a slight improvement of 1% (95% to 96%). In our own minds, our expectation towards Twin A has been “revised” from the earlier results. If they get worse than they did on the previous occasion, we feel disappointed again. ‘Twin B’ has made a substantial improvement of 40% (40% to 80%) this time round. Our revised expectations for Twin B, influenced by their previous results, were greater as we feel B is not doing so well in class, so when B presents a better result, our expectations are quickly met and exceeded; therefore, we feel great pleasure. The almost absurd reality here is, though, that when presented with the results, it is not A with a much higher overall mark that makes us happier, but rather B with a lower mark than his sibling, but of course, with a greater improvement.
Pleasure comes from the relief of the pain of the pressure felt. When we closely examine this thought experiment, we can see the expectation and pressure build up, and the relief of vexation brings us pleasure. In all situations in life, we can identify that pleasure is always greater when the expectation is higher. In other words, the greater the want, the greater the vexation, the greater the pleasure we receive when it is relieved.

So, if we were to simplify the pleasure process, what kick-starts this process is wanting something. It is our wanting that is at the root of this problem. We will explore where wanting comes from later. In the real world, just because you want something does not mean you get it instantly; therefore, the pressure starts to build up. When the pressure becomes unbearable, the mind begins to look for it. In this day and age, most things that bring us pleasure have a price-tag, so we have to work and physically exert effort to get what we want. Unaware of the vicious cycle of vexation followed by pleasure, followed by vexation and so on, life continues… The promise of pleasure is the motivation. Finally, when you get what you want, at that very moment, your mind perceives it, the pressure is relieved, and then pleasure is felt. Unfortunately, this is the true nature of the pleasure we feel.
This is definitely an eye-opener for us all and a portal to understand the absolute truth about pleasure. Although ‘wanting’ and ‘pleasure’ feel synonymous, they are not. When you start wanting something, it is not pleasure you get, but vexation instead. When you get what you want, and you are no longer left wanting it, then you have pleasure as a result of relief. This leads us to the conclusion that wanting itself is vexatious, and its relief brings us pleasure.

What many do not realise is that the expectation of happiness itself is vexatious. The catch is if you expect something to bring you happiness from that very moment on, you are vexed, and you have lost the opportunity of happiness in that moment. This seems obvious when pondering over it, but we do not realise this because of the illusion of pleasure. Pleasure covers up the pressure; therefore, to seek respite from this pressure, we continue to look for pleasure. There are certain occasions when some people choose to forgo the pleasure because they do not want to endure the pressure. An example of this would be exams. If we ask ‘Twin B’ whether they are happy with the results,  they would most likely agree, and this pleasure may last a few hours or maybe even days. Technically, if the child wants to get the same amount of pleasure again, they will need to do the exam again and achieve better results. If the child were given the choice of receiving the same amount of pleasure, most children would turn it down instantly. Is it because they do not want the pleasure? Of course not. Instead, they do not want to go through the pressure and stress of it again. But if you give them a bar of chocolate, they will not think twice before eating it for pleasure, not realising they are, in fact, initially vexed by it. 

Pleasure, unlike unconditional happiness, is transient and lasts for a short period of time, but fear and loss have longevity. When you want something, you work for it. When you receive what you seek, you are happy for a few seconds, and at that moment, you are in fear to protect it. You always feel a sense of loss if you do not get what you want. However, when you have it, you fear losing it. So, between the sorrow of loss and the fear of loss, pleasure is only a flying visitor in between.
None of this matters because we have found pleasure, right? But did we really? Take a walk down memory lane and revisit the last time you lost something important to you, like your house keys. Right now, you probably know exactly where they are, but when they were lost, you probably turned the entire house upside down looking for them. This is not something out of the ordinary for many people, but the question is, ‘Are you still looking for them?’. Right now, knowing exactly where you have left them, are you looking for your lost keys? Of course not. They were no longer lost when they were found, so we stopped looking for them. When they were lost, you had the sorrow of loss; when you have them, there is always a dormant fear of loss. But, when you lost and later found them, you would have experienced vexation and then relief, respectively.

Let us now examine the ice cream scenario from last week…

The New Brand of Ice cream

Remember that after you ate the first spoonful, you experienced pleasure, and every spoonful felt as though it was providing you with an immense amount of happiness. However, after you are fulfilled, you no longer want it. If you really think about it, even at this very moment, you still yearn for a bowl of ice cream. If you receive pleasure when you eat ice cream and ‘find’ happiness, why do we still need ice cream? So, have you not ‘found’ happiness because you are still looking for it? We can come to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with either the happiness we have achieved or the method we used to look for happiness. 

Vexation & Pleasure

Someone who seeks ice cream when they want it cannot claim to have found the paths to absolute true happiness. Ice cream does not provide happiness, but instead it merely plays a part in the mental vexation and pleasure cycle. Even if you ate until you were sick, the vexation and mental pressure will not cease. The craving may reappear later, as usual, or you now start vexing for something else, or you even start vexing for the absence of it; nonetheless, you are constantly under vexation. So, we can say that in seeking pleasure, we can never completely eradicate vexation. Does that mean we do not feel pleasure? Of course, we do. We feel pleasure, but it is not the ultimate happiness that all beings deserve. The truth about pleasure is that pleasure is not something you can achieve from the outside world, but when the vexation is reduced, that relief is what pleasure is. This is the feeling we constantly run after, just a reduction of vexation, nothing more. The constant fluctuation of vexation gives rise to the primary emotions we feel: sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, anger and even more complex emotions like pride, shame, embarrassment, and excitement. 

The mind is incapable of understanding this by itself because when there is a partial release of the mental pressure, the mind has taken in a stimulus; therefore, the mind believes that the pleasure has come from the stimulus, so the more of that, the happier it can be. This is what we call ignorance, not seeing the right way. To put this into context, we want ice cream; therefore, we start to vex (mental pressure builds). Some action is taken to bring the ice cream to the tongue (working, shopping, taking it out of the fridge, etc.), the mind perceives the ice cream, and the vexation decreases; therefore, the mind feels pleasure, but the mind makes the connection that the ice cream is equal to happiness. This ignorance is what keeps this cycle looping. 
Take a moment to reflect; try to see this in your life. Examine the things that are supposed to bring you pleasure. Is it the item itself or the relief of mental pressure? The more you examine your life, the more precisely you begin to understand this. This is the basic mechanism of pleasure. Pleasure is only a replacement word we use for the feeling we receive from the reduction of vexation. This process runs through every mind: you, your parents, friends, neighbours, relatives, and even the minds of animals. To free the mind from the deception of pleasure is to get it on the path to Nibbana. Sabbe satta bhavantu sukhitatta!