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THE RHYTHM OF JOY
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much that makes for happiness in life, we really leave oat of account the suffering undergone at the misery of those dear and near ones whose welfare causes us deep concern.
Thus, pain is seen to abound all round in embodied life; it surrounds it on all sides ; none is free from it. It is real! But, senseproduced, that is worldly pleasure is not real! It is not sukha (happiness), but sukhābhāsa (appearance only of happiness). To the man who has no desire to smoke the soothing quality of tobacco holds out no charm. The delicacies of the palate appeal only where a taste has been created for them. The same food has a different effect on different individuals. All this shows that unless a taste is acquired for a thing it is not appreciated and enjoyed. This is what is known as the cultivation of a taste in the refined phraseology of the fashionable world. Some even cultivate such refinements as are simply offensive to others, as the taste for high" meat.
Sense-produced pleasure thus, in its real nature, resembles the iced drink which is cooling because of the high fever from which the patient is suffering. If there be no fever to give rise to the affliction of thirst there would surely be no quenching of it either!
Sense-craving stands for an agitation of the individual will - the soul-which in the worst cases may be simply overpowering. In its milder form, as an ordinary instinct or desire, it is feeble and easily controllable. This agitation is known as manovritti in Sanskrit. There are many kinds of manovrittis ; they resemble the breakers that are seen in a tempestuous sea. If the element of desire be eliminated from the mind it will be like the placid surface of a lake, transparent and calm. All our appetites whether natural' (instinct of hunger and the like) or artificial, that is acquired, are only so many forms of internal agitation (manovrittis). Under their influence the sense of enjoyment that is experienced in connection with the objects of the senses is exactly like the iced drink which is so cooling in the case of high fever. As already stated, if there be no affliction of thirst there can surely be no quenching of it, and the cooling draft would then simply taste 'flat.' This is why sense-produced pleasure is described as sukhābhāsa (mock happiness). It simply depends on the craving, longing or desire, and may even be transformed into disgust
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