SuttaCentral
Hi guys,
Everything connected with comfort, nice food, so to speak, is rooted in greed. Everything connected with dislike is rooted in hatred.
The short question is, how if I recite “may all beings be well and happy” and I feel warm feeling and experience peaceful mind. And then I recite it again because it brings mental pleasure. Can we say it’s connected with greed therefore is not the right thing to do. Can anyone share your thought please, thank you.
MN19
Bhikkhus, before my enlightenment, while I was still only an unenlightened Bodhisatta, it occurred to me: ‘Suppose that I divide my thoughts into two classes. Then I set on one side thoughts of sensual desire, thoughts of ill will, and thoughts of cruelty, and I set on the other side thoughts of renunciation, thoughts of non-ill will, and thoughts of non-cruelty.
They’re the flip side of each other 
Greetings Pasanna, correct me if I’m wrong. Did you say it’s connected with non cruelty or sensual pleasure?
The wholesome is a common understanding, its objective is to communicate peace and common bond. it is the building block of all discussion. may the wholesome listen to the hatred as you put it, and the wholesome listen and understand the hatred! the paradox for learning a better way.
What you describe sounds to me like what we do in metta meditation. We’re cultivating this sense of peace and happiness in the mind. And the Buddha says with reference to joy and peace in meditation that this happiness is not to be feared! Yes, it is connected with desire, but this is the path to ultimately overcome desire!
Craving (tanha) is not the same as desire (chandha). Craving can be seen is a subcategory of desire.
For example, you could have greed for the sensual pleasures of good food. This is can be seen as a form of desire because the goal of that desire is an object of greed.
OTOH, you could also have desire to have a mind free from sensual pleasures. This is a desire, but not greed because the goal of that desire is not an object of greed.
If it still sounds the same, look at your own experience. Greed is easier to follow, desire, especially wholesome desire, is not. For example, you may desire to eat healthy and exercise for good reasons, but the easy path of greed is to eat crap and be lazy.
Wise motivation: delaying gratification, doing what is unpleasant (developing repulsion towards aggregates) to further the training ALSO doing what is pleasant (say metta meditation …again!) when one doesn’t feel like it
Canda: desire to abide in the quietness of a jhana
Craving: craving to end samsara
Conceit: wanting to be an attained person, wanting jhana (‘spiritual materialism’) to be an ‘advanced’ spiritually.
My feeling is that metta, and the other brahmaviharas, are exceedingly pleasant states of mind, but are among those pleasures which are not physical pleasures, and so the Buddha extolled their cultivation.
These purer pleasures might be accompanied by physical pleasures. For example, if you experience a sudden arising of metta during a bad day, you might feel a warm tingle, or get very excited and feel ordinary elation. You might even get sexually aroused! But if you do not endeavor to let go of those courser pleasures, and redirect your attention to the cultivation of the higher, then your effort is wrong.
But even higher pleasures can become an object of craving. I think the idea ultimately is to cultivate release, and allow even those higher pleasures to arise naturally without being sought, and not to turn them into objects of attachment when they do arise. But this degree of liberation occurs only at a high level of attainment. The Buddha said that the perfection of the brahmaviharas allowed one to be born into the Brahma realm. But even that is not the goal.
I’m suggesting that metta is a thought of non-ill-will and non-cruelty. The Buddha said we could practice this all day 
I think the practice is there to bring mental pleasure to all beings. When it works and you bring mental pleasure to yourself, that’s surely a sign that it is working and I would be encouraged rather than discouraged. In short, you’re a “being” too, you can accept the gift of your own practices and once more share this with all beings. Generosity is like this, by giving and sharing the love we only create more love to give and share.