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Search for the Original Source
of Pleasure and Pain
Yuvacharya Mahaprajna
The Jaina philosophy has considered all things in a given frame of reference. References may relate to many points of which the minimum are four, i.e., substance, space, time and form (state of being). From the Substance point of view, pleasure and pain are our feelings which do not exist either in the objects or in events. There are two types of causes : the primary and the secondary. The primary cause of pleasure and pain is within us. Their secondary causes may be found in the external world, but they are not so in.
Causation of pleasure and pain have been imposed on external things in themselves. Some things are supposed to produce pleasure and others pain. According to these suppositions man goes on accumulating the desirable and getting rid of undesirable things. Because of over-emphasis on the secondary causes, we have become more conscious of these and have neglected the primary cause our own self). All our ideas of pleasure and pain centre around material objects. That is why a person with a lot of material wealth is considered to be fortunate and one with little or no wealth as not so fortunate or positively unfortunate. But does wealth produce any pleasure or pain indeed ? If it could, it should even to the dead which it does not. It is thus evident that pleasure and pain are directly related to our conscious feelings and not to external objects. A living and conscious but sleeping person does not feel any pleasure or pain even though he may possess enormous material wealth, and so is the case of the non-attached person. It is therefore clear that the feelings of pleasure and pain are exclusively internal to each individual. Supposed material objects can only enhance or instigate the feelings, but they cannot become their primary cause.
The Primary Causes of pleasure and pain are-(i) our body and (ii) pureimpure consciousness. Our body consists of vital energy and bio-electricity, some bio-chemicals and glands. Some specific vibrations in bio-electricity as well as those in the bio-chemicals produce pleasure or pain. The same function is
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