Pleasure and pain

What is pleasure for you is pain for another. What is pleasure for you now is pain after some time. The first two cups of milk give you pleasure. The third cup induces disgust, nausea and retching. Milk does not give pleasure during fever. Therefore, pleasure is not in the objects but in the imagination or inclination of the mind.

Pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness, are false imaginations of the mind. Mind is a false, illusory product. Conceptions of the mind also must, therefore, be false.

Pleasure and pain are in the mind only. It is subjective. Things, when longed for, are pleasant, but are bitter if not longed for. Desires are the cause of pleasures....

Ignorant persons attribute their pleasure to external objects. That is a serious blunder, indeed. Really, there is no pleasure in objects. There is neither pleasure nor pain in objects. It is all mental creation, mental perception, mental jugglery. It is only the mental attitude or a certain kind of mental behaviour towards objects that brings joy or grief, pleasure or pain. Maya has her powerful seat in the imagination of the mind.

When you are in acute agony, a cup of coffee, milk or tea does not give you any pleasure. When you are in acute agony, the whole world that appeared to you to be full of bliss while in good health, appears quite dreary.... A real thing must give pleasure to everybody at all times. Does it not?

June 1, 2024, marks the centenaryof Swami Sivananda'ssannyasa diksha