Now let’s talk about pleasant feeling. What exactly is its relationship with affliction? At first glance, pleasant feeling seems to be in direct opposition to affliction, as if the two have nothing to do with each other. But is that really the case? No. As mentioned earlier, pleasant feeling is impermanent. Once we become attached to a pleasant feeling that arises, affliction will inevitably follow. Why? Because whatever we cling to is constantly changing. When our mind senses that this happiness is gradually fading or even disappearing, it turns into suffering (duḥkha-vedanā).
There are countless examples of this—romantic relationships, for instance. At the beginning, how joyful it feels! Confiding in each other brings about pleasant feeling. But as the process unfolds, various factors cause change, and the pleasant feeling begins to decline. At first, the happiness may be pure—lasting three days, three hours, or at least three minutes. Then pleasure and pain become intermingled, with suffering growing stronger and happiness diminishing, until eventually it turns into pure pain and affliction. Thus, pleasant feeling is actually a cause of affliction, because in this world there is absolutely no happiness that can remain constant.
Some people have slightly better karmic fortune (puṇya), so their pleasant feelings last longer and suffering comes more slowly. But this is actually quite frightening, because they are unable to generate genuine renunciation (nekkhamma). They may have the concept of renunciation, but not the real thing. Ordinary people are already deeply attached to pleasant feelings, and those with a petty-bourgeois lifestyle are simply attached to ordinary pleasures. I once heard a song describing someone lounging on a sofa with a glass of red wine and a movie. But if that wine were spiked with something, or if you were diagnosed with cancer, could you still enjoy that same scene? Yet people remain attached to such pleasures.
There really are people who go through life with very little suffering. They are born into good families, do well in school, find good jobs with pleasant environments, enjoy smooth promotions, marry good partners, have good children, and grow old peacefully. They retire without major illness and live a happy and comfortable life. Ordinary people would call this a perfect life—a “winner in life.” But from a Buddhist perspective, this is actually quite tragic, because after death they may fall into lower realms.
Where does pleasant feeling come from? It is the result of many wholesome causes (kuśala-karma) planted either earlier in this life or in past lives. Nowadays, everyone experiences some degree of suffering. Those whose lives are mostly filled with pleasant feeling are rare, but they do exist—we can observe them.
As human beings in the Saha world (Sahā-loka), existence is half suffering and half happiness, with suffering predominating. Some people may appear very happy—but do they have suffering? Of course they do. Even if someone lives a life of great happiness, if they never encounter the Dharma, it is still tragic—like a frog slowly boiled in warm water. Because there is one thing that will not be avoided just because you experience pleasure: death. Where you will go in the next life, what kind of body you will have—these are completely unknown. What if you fall into hell?
Therefore, pleasant feeling is not necessarily a good thing. Especially in this degenerate age (kali-yuga), there are countless examples of pleasure leading to suffering—the most typical being romantic relationships. In our time, especially among young people, love is considered one of the greatest sources of happiness. And not only the young—even some elderly people think this way.
I have a friend whose mother, in her seventies, is still in a relationship. She even follows her boyfriend around to see which another elderly lady he is with—her boyfriend is over eighty. From a worldly perspective, having such strong hormone activity at that age seems admirable, like a happy life. But from another perspective, it is not so.
Romantic love easily gives rise to pleasant feeling, but it also easily gives rise to suffering. The same applies to money. Drugs can also quickly produce intense pleasure, but that pleasure soon turns into pain.
We need to recognize that we now like pleasant feeling, pursue pleasant feeling, and do everything for the sake of happiness. Why? Because it feels good—so we indulge first and think later. In Cantonese, this is called “enjoying life.” We travel, fall in love—like today, my daughter dragged me to the Ocean Park… it’s all the same. Due to attachment to pleasant feeling, suffering will inevitably follow in the end.
In other words, pleasant feeling and affliction are actually like a pair of “sisters,” or more precisely, they are linked by cause and effect. The reason lies in our attachment. So should we then reject pleasant feeling altogether? No. We can still experience it—but the key is to cultivate a quality called non-attachment (anupādāna) while enjoying it. And that is extremely difficult.
——Excerpted and adapted from The Arising and Remedy of Afflictions
This article is a preliminary translation draft and has not yet been reviewed or proofread by the speaker.
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