I’d like to explore dispassion, renunciation, and the notion of pleasure or enjoyment. I welcome challenges / affirmations / questions / insights on any of the writing below.
Last year, I started with consistent contemplation of the three characteristics / perceptions in daily life and in meditation. I saw the fruit of this as I felt more and more disenchanted with worldly things. Then, two months ago, I came across the work of Allen Carr who created the ‘easyway’ method for quitting any addiction. I was astonished. I’d gritted my teeth and struggled for years to let go of addictive behaviors with sugar/processed foods, technology, and caffeine - with very little success. Upon reading Allen Carr’s work related to these areas, letting go of them became easy and enjoyable.
In essence, he teaches dispassion by stripping away the brainwashing / acculturation that these substances bring us any kind of real pleasure or benefit. He likens using an addictive substance to wearing a tight shoe only for the relief of taking it off. Likewise, that we use the substance only to feel like a non-substance user does all the time. Or, that getting your fix is only a partial relief of the withdrawal symptoms created by the last time you used your substance. Again, he emphasizes that there is no real / genuine pleasure in these substances, that it is a form of delusion. The mind of the reader thus becomes disenchanted with the substance and no longer desire the substance, therefore, nipping the addictive behavior at the root. This concurs with SN 22.95 - “Being disillusioned, desire fades away.”
I started to think deeper about his teachings as they relate to the Buddha’s teachings, and to activities that don’t have the destructive downsides of addictive substances and are widely considered to be a natural or genuine pleasure - companionship with a lover, eating, or taking a walk in nature.
Do these activities also have no genuine / substantial pleasure to them? It seems any pleasure is based on a conglomeration of the five aggregates, especially perception. For example, taking a walk on a sunny day may bring one person joy / pleasure, while for another it brings anxiety / suffering about getting sunburnt. Each person attends to different forms / sensations and perceptions thus creating different feelings. So, I think pleasure comes from a fixing of the aggregates but cannot be inherent in any activity. Then I wonder about things like endorphins from taking a run, or the ‘feel-good’ chemicals released when having intercourse. Is this some kind of ‘genuine’ or inherent pleasure? Or is this just a matter of form (sensations/workings of the body) that we perceive as pleasurable.
I’ve read through SC D&D for matters related to dispassion and pleasure and I’ve found some helpful suttas below to inform my perspective.
SN 22.95
In the same way, a mendicant sees and contemplates any kind of form/ feeling / perception / choices / consciousness at all … examining it carefully. And it appears to them as completely void, hollow, and insubstantial.
AN 9.36
Take a mendicant who, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, enters and remains in the first absorption. They contemplate the phenomena there—included in form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness—as impermanent, as suffering, as diseased, as a boil, as a dart, as misery, as an affliction, as alien, as falling apart, as empty, as not-self.
AN 4.49
“Mendicants, there are these four perversions of perception, mind, and view. What four?
- Taking impermanence as permanence.
- Taking suffering as happiness.
- Taking not-self as self.
- Taking ugliness as beauty.
The Buddha seems to confirm the notion that there is no inherent pleasure in the five aggregates - or in any activity.
I sense there is a potential leverage point in the mind whereby one recognizes that these more ‘natural pleasures’ are equally as empty and void as the more obvious harmful pleasures. And that these ‘natural pleasures’ actually have no inherent pleasure to them, it is a kind of brainwashing, delusion, or perception that makes them seem so. It doesn’t mean that you would avoid taking a walk in nature or connecting with a loved one, but you would see the concoction of aggregates that creates a sense of ‘pleasure’, thereby making it easier to be detached, disenchanted, and equanimous.
I think part of what makes renunciation / letting go of ‘pleasurable’ activities is thinking that there actually is some inherent pleasure or benefit to them. But by recognizing there is literally nothing inherently worthy in any of the aggregates, dispassion can be further developed. It starts with obviously harmful substances, but then can be applied to more subtle attachments to activities such as idle chatter, entertainment, food, companionship, etc.
Thus, this is also true for meditation, concentration, and the like, although they are among the highest wholesome activities that we have access to now - and we are encouraged to form perceptions of pleasure within these activities(?). While they are based in the aggregates and are ‘empty and void’ in some sense, they are essential to reaching the ultimate pleasure / bliss / unbinding, and are abandoned much later in path.
Thank you for reading, I look forward to discussion and reflection.