Pleasure: recapturing the experience of yesterday
I had posted couple of comments about happiness on this thread. Maybe one can look briefly at the distinction OP had made between pleasure and joy.
When one looks at a cloud, a leaf, a mountain with a sprawling green valley, a nice art piece, drives a finely tuned sports car and so on one gets a pleasure. But evidently that isn’t enough for us. We want to carry it over to the next day, the next week, the next year and so on. The search for continuity has now begun, with all the hysteric effort that goes into it. Then, if having failed in securing the better quality pleasures, the neurotic and corrupt mind starts to pursue pleasure in perverse ways such as hurting self and others, drugs and alcohol etc. This in brief is the movement of pleasure as observed in our human environment. If one looks deeper they will find this movement of pleasure and seeking its continuity is rooted in biology. For most it’s either directly or indirectly a form of biological sensation.
But joy on the other hand is not mere sensation. It requires extraordinary refinement of the heart and the mind, but not the refinement of a burdened accumulating mind that is trying to gather more and more to itself. It’s not the pursuit of dead memory of a pleasure from yesterday. It cannot be sought in the dead imprint of a sunset, as an example. Joy isn’t derived from memory but is immediately available to the innocent mind. It’s there in the flight of a bird, in a beautiful child, so on and so forth. It seems Joy needs a sensitive mind. A mind that is able to see and respond to beauty, to ugliness, to everything that comes into its vision without the burdens of the past.
When one looks at a cloud, a leaf, a mountain with a sprawling green valley, a nice art piece, drives a finely tuned sports car and so on one gets a pleasure. But evidently that isn’t enough for us. We want to carry it over to the next day, the next week, the next year and so on. The search for continuity has now begun, with all the hysteric effort that goes into it. Then, if having failed in securing the better quality pleasures, the neurotic and corrupt mind starts to pursue pleasure in perverse ways such as hurting self and others, drugs and alcohol etc. This in brief is the movement of pleasure as observed in our human environment. If one looks deeper they will find this movement of pleasure and seeking its continuity is rooted in biology. For most it’s either directly or indirectly a form of biological sensation.
But joy on the other hand is not mere sensation. It requires extraordinary refinement of the heart and the mind, but not the refinement of a burdened accumulating mind that is trying to gather more and more to itself. It’s not the pursuit of dead memory of a pleasure from yesterday. It cannot be sought in the dead imprint of a sunset, as an example. Joy isn’t derived from memory but is immediately available to the innocent mind. It’s there in the flight of a bird, in a beautiful child, so on and so forth. It seems Joy needs a sensitive mind. A mind that is able to see and respond to beauty, to ugliness, to everything that comes into its vision without the burdens of the past.
Comments (5)
What is the joyful experience that comes to your mind first when I asked just now?
Interestingly when I ask myself that question I am taken back to a time when my family consisted of my brother, my Mom and I. It was really hard on the house emotionally and it began to rain just as I was leaving to go to the next door neighbor which crushed me because I thought for sure Mom would say no.
When she saw my sadness at the rain she put her shoes on to walk me over and I said but you are going to get wet. She said no I won't, I am going to dance between the raindrops.
Lovely memory :flower:
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Note: An unrelated musing...