Why should I care about living a wholesome life?

The Watercooler
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Greetings.

My mind has been circling a question recently that I just can’t seem to answer from any direction. It may sound silly, or may be a product of not having read enough, but I ask more knowledgeable people to kindly understand where this inquiry may be coming from and point me to the correct direction.

This question may sound provocative, but it really isn’t. I did not come up with it, and it is not something that I consider to be a valid line of reasoning, but my friend, with whom I recently shared my interest in Buddhism, asked this question and I was a bit stumped, and I did not want to respond with something that may reinforce the idea of a self, eternalism or what have you.

In short – why should anyone care about living a noble life, a wholesome life, avoiding bad deeds, being kind and compassionate towards all, if there is no-self, the consciousness doesn’t transmigrate with memories to future lives and any reaping of good or bad kamma that is not immediate but more longitudinal, cannot be observed?

Surely, this may be rooted in an Abrahamic understanding of morals, the world and afterlife, but it may be logical to ask, that if I can, with my consciousness and mind, memory and “right-here-right-now-ness”, lead a pleasurable and hedonistic life (it is understood, that hedonism by no means leads to an actually fulfilling life; Dopamine baselines adjust, constant stimulus craving creates more dissatisfaction, but to many, going partying and having sexual encounters frequently, living in a debauched manner and all sorts of such things create more tangible and ongoing pleasure and satisfaction than e.g. living at a monastery and mediating 10 hours a day; even if we scientifically or “spiritually” deconstruct this idea and expose its faults, it still remains a widely held perception), why one should care about the extinguishing at all? I will die, be reborn (yes, conditional arising, it will be like a river joining the ocean, not quite the river anymore but its “particles” still existing within a greater system — but please allow me to speak plainly for the sake of length) and my bad kamma will be “someone else’s” (as per anatta, someone that’s not me but not not me, at least certainly they will not have my memories and understanding of “self” and I will not be the one to, after death, “wake up” in a different realm and suffer as “me”) problem to deal with, whether in Niraya or the animal realm, etc.

This is not to say that the fear of cosmic retribution after death is the crux of the issue like in the Abrahamic religions. It’s more practical – why bother and hassle, enrobe and “miss out” if I can steal, lie, have sex and live an opulent life and suffer no cosmic, realistic and long-term consequences as me?

Consider going forth. You become a monastic, practice diligently and attain stream-entry. And what? You die and the stream-enterer reborn elsewhere is certainly not you, as there is no you (I realize here that the above kind of self-conception may be inherently tied to memory as a device of continuity), and so forth. So why care? The axiomatic truth, that it is always a wholesome thing to reduce suffering in general (by leading a good life and not inflicting pain and violence upon others) is great, but also, why should it be one’s “responsibility”? Certainly no creator God is there to furl his eyebrows at you and throw you into a fiery lake!

Sure, rebirth is neither identity nor total otherness, since there is no permanent entity but a causal stream (vinnana-sota) and each moment conditions the next, whereby death is just a particularly dramatic transition in that same process. The future experiencer is not a self, but it is a causally continuous with this stream of events – all of this is fine and well. And of course, Buddhist critique of Hedonism is not Victorian morality, but a structural look at how even the greatest wealth, travel, sex, food and stimulation increases craving, pleasure reinforcing wanting>reinforcing becoming>reinforcing rebirth, and even while enjoying the most luxurious foods and pleasuring sex, it sharpens the addiction cycle of pleasure>attachment>fear of loss>stress>clinging>suffering. Therefore, the issue here cannot be morality, but the mechanism behind it all.

Empirically (from this point forward, this may seem like self-assuring rambling, but I am really trying to dissect this and would encourage you keep following to understand why I am bothered by this question), you can live indulgently but won’t be free from insecurity, comparison, aging, illness, jealousy, death, etc, and nibbana is freedom from such psychological compulsion. Buddhism says that to say that reducing suffering in general isn’t one’s responsibility would only be correct if we assume a bounded self, which it doesn’t. As far as I understand, it says that there is no solid self, no boundary between “my suffering” and “others’ suffering” except conceptual labeling and harmful actions strengthen greed, hatred and delusion. Even selfishly, harming others may be irrational because it can condition paranoia, fear, coarseness of mind, etc (here I recall the Dhammapada, which says that the evil-doer suffers both here and hereafter, but this in my view is not as punishment, but as causal psychology). If we say that maximum stimulation, with high peaks, high crashes, dependency and rebirth risk (if we accept such to be true) is option A, we opt for option B – gradual disentanglement, therefore lower highs, lower lows, increasing stability and eventual cessation. Option A clearly never actually satisfies the underlying drive, but it’s also much more available and “tangibly good” to the average person.

Yes, I am aware that there are plenty of logical inconsistencies in such a line of reasoning, and it violates Buddhism’s understanding of many concepts (certainly, no Buddhist would agree that a hedonistic lifestyle, even if luxurious and satiating on the surface, is actually a good and happiness-bringing lifestyle, even in this lifetime, for a variety of reasons – nor would science and neurobiology in the main; nor would they accept this kind of understanding of self and rebirth memory logic, etc), but on a superficial level, to an average person, it may seem quite a valid question to ask. I did consult the forbidden oracles (AI) and they did give me a pretty satisfying answer from a Theravada standpoint, but I want to hear more, from actual people with actual knowledge and feelings!

My project here is not proselytizing or convincing anyone around me, but to be logically consistent myself and have sufficient knowledge to hold such conversations productively. I know that you can live hedonistically and no cosmic police will stop you, so the question is not moral, but strategic. If there is no self and nothing tangible migrates as such, why care about post-mortem results at all, whether good or bad? At a glance, without a persisting ego, moral motivation cannot rely on anything. But the “problem” is that there is no stable self even now, it is a convenient fiction riding on a process. Maybe somewhere along the line I have answered myself, but my thought process has been so chaotic, I would appreciate a bit of structure and clarity.

Much Metta!

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Why should you eat breakfast if there’s no self to feel full afterwards?

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This, you can be sure of: 1) The pleasant fruit can not come from unpleasant seed alone. 2) The unpleasant fruit can not come from pleasant seed alone.

This, you can not be sure of: 1) When an unpleasant seed now in this life will be experienced as unpleasant fruit, can be in next life or can be in this very life. 2) When a pleasant seed now in this life will be experienced a pleasant fruit, can be in next life or in this very life.

The logic conclusion is: it’s better to put down pleasant seed than unpleasant seed in this life because the pleasant fruit can not come from unpleasant seed alone, and also because the time of ripen unpleasant fruit can be uncontrollable to be in this very life.

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Because if I don’t for some time, I will die?

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Are you saying that there’s a self who eats breakfast and later the same self who receives the reward of staying alive? That the purpose of performing an action, eating breakfast, is to receive a reward?

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Because there is rebirth and the ripening of kamma. Bhikkhu Bodhi puts it well:

"According to the Buddha, there is a continuity of consciousness, so that the consciousness in a sense moves on from one state to another, and it’s compared to a seed. So we could say that the consciousness of the previous existence is like a plant that has brought forth the seed and then that seed at death the plant comes to an end dies but the seed drops into the soil and springs up again, bringing into being another type of existence, another sentient being that inherits that stream of consciousness from the past life the past existence. And what keeps this process moving, what keeps living beings moving on roaming from life to life is ignorance and craving.”

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With respect to just this life and not regarding the benefits ensured by a good rebirth, the following are some of the results of living a wholesome life:

You become dear and beloved to many.
Good people associate with you.
You gain a good reputation.
(Sorry. I can’t remember the sutra)

If you don’t live a wholesome life: you end up in the Epstein files, get stripped of your princedom, no one wants to associate with you and you get arrested by the police. :wink:

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I understand the analogy but I am having trouble with this line of reasoning and I think it glosses over an epistemic gap. Within one lifetime, causal continuity is empirically evident. Across death, it is doctrinally asserted. My question concerns motivational coherence when post-mortem continuity lacks experiential memory and verification.

If you replace “why act now if I won’t later receive the result?” with this breakfast analogy, I get where you are coming from and I am not saying that I disagree – you are trying to dissolve the demand for a “reward receiver” in the first place and that is something I am also trying to grasp.

I’m also not saying there’s a permanent self who receives a reward, in this case food. I understand there is causal continuity. The organism that eats is causally continuous with the organism that avoids starvation. That doesn’t require a self. My question is about whether that same kind of observable continuity applies across death in a way that generates rational motivation.

In the breakfast example, the continuity is directly experienced and anticipatable. My question concerns post-mortem continuity, where memory and psychological anticipation don’t carry over. My friend’s question assumes that this weakens the intuitive motivational link, which is true. That’s what I’m asking. I am not trying to get at metaphysics (in posting here, I have already somewhat accepted anatta and rebirth as conceptual frameworks), but at “motivation”. Within one life, the future experiencer is psychologically continuous with this present stream. Across death, that continuity becomes impersonal and memoryless. Why should that impersonal continuity generate concern?

P.S.: I am trying to play devil’s advocate to me myself be able to understand this entire conceptual matter better, please do not take this as a confrontation. Metta!

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I think you may be referring to DN 31?

The examples given (reputation, police, social disgrace and the such) don’t actually address the core issue I raised because they assume exposure.

Take it this way (and I know it may sound banal and beaten like a dead horse): what about the intelligent, powerful, discreet wrongdoer who is never exposed, never arrested, never ostracized, and continues living comfortably and indulgently?

If the argument for wholesome conduct is primarily “you’ll end up disgraced or arrested,” then morality collapses into risk management because the Dhamma becomes virtue-as-a-public-relations-strategy, no?

Much Metta, thank you for engaging!

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Isn’t this what the Buddha tries to explain when he starts with:

There are some ascetics and brahmins who have this doctrine and view: ‘There’s no meaning in giving, sacrifice, or offerings. There’s no fruit or result of good and bad deeds. There’s no afterlife. There’s no such thing as mother and father, or beings that are reborn spontaneously. And there’s no ascetic or brahmin who is rightly comported and rightly practiced, and who describes the afterlife after realizing it with their own insight.’

And there are some ascetics and brahmins whose doctrine directly contradicts this. They say: ‘There is meaning in giving, sacrifice, and offerings. There are fruits and results of good and bad deeds. There is an afterlife. There are such things as mother and father, and beings that are reborn spontaneously. And there are ascetics and brahmins who are rightly comported and rightly practiced, and who describe the afterlife after realizing it with their own insight.’

Then he explains the “sure bet teaching” in MN 60.

And besides any care about a possible future life, doing something good simply makes you feel very happy in this life! :cherry_blossom:

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I think you would find that most if not all the teachings about kamma are mainly about doing the right thing in the moment for the immediate good effect and liberation in this life, rather than a future reward. :slight_smile:

Yes, there’s many places where merit is mythologised, and cast as a piggy bank of some sort for future benefit… And doing good things starts a kind of train (again, like with Lego examples) that progressively make life easier to deal with and make you feel safer, because you pick up good habits along the way, you interact with good people, you learn new things.

Think of it this way - eating McDonalds used to feel great to me as a kid, now it feels disgusting. I’m sure there are plenty of other examples you can find in your life, that something you once cherished (perhaps obsessively) no longer interests you, in fact disgusts you.

Sensual pleasures are a bit like that. It’s not necessary that they should lead to some future bad kamma - it’s that they’re a burden this very moment.

The way I understand anatta, that’s relevant to this discussion, is to see it as strategies that allow you to disassociate from things usually referred to as “Self”, rather than arguing that you or your experiencing or the world of experiencing doesn’t in fact exist. :slight_smile:

It’s to show that it’s all a construct built up together without a solid, tangible core you can hold on and claim as a personal, discreet, completely independent, autonomous “Self”. There’s no such thing - but dropping a hammer on your foot still hurts, so it’s better not to shoot yourself in the foot! :smiley:

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Thank you for the response, Venerable! This is basically where I am currently at. I was at one point considering if this is just a less theistic version of Pascal’s wager (which it overall is, but that is not a bad thing), but I think it still is a practical standpoint and that is why I’d rather try to be ethical regardless of the existence of rebirth and such.

I understand this as a radical psychological realism about suffering here and now, which is definitely Buddhism’s strongest suit. But how about “cosmic” long-term strategy? Is causal continuity without memory enough to generate intrinsic moral concern, or does the motivation ultimately rests on immediate psychological consequences in this life? If the latter, then the Dhamma’s power seems to lie primarily in its structural analysis of mind rather than in post-mortem outcomes, which is what I am trying so so hard to understand. This line of reasoning can make me a satisfied and happy lay Buddhist, but would make it more difficult to think about the monastic life very seriously.

Humbly, and with much Metta!

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Buddha makes it explicitly in AN 3.65:

When that noble disciple has a mind that’s free of enmity and ill will, uncorrupted and purified, they’ve won four consolations in this very life. ‘If it turns out there is another world, and good and bad deeds have a result, then—when the body breaks up, after death—I’ll be reborn in a good place, a heavenly realm.’ This is the first consolation they’ve won.

‘If it turns out there is no other world, and good and bad deeds don’t have a result, then in this very life I’ll keep myself free of enmity and ill will, untroubled and happy.’ This is the second consolation they’ve won.

‘If it turns out that bad things happen to people who do bad things, then since I have no bad intentions, and since I’m not doing anything bad, how can suffering touch me?’ This is the third consolation they’ve won.

‘If it turns out that bad things don’t happen to people who do bad things, then I still see myself pure on both sides.’ This is the fourth consolation they’ve won.

Pretty much agreed. :slight_smile: I think a more skillful way to understand the teachings is (especially if you’re on the fence about rebirth) not to say “For a better future life, I must do XYZ”, but rather, “Even if there is a future life, then what I’m doing is going to be the best thing for me anyway.”

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Yup, this is what I was referring to. But I think what makes this much better than Pascal is that it is not belief-centered, but behavior-centered. Pascal’s “even if you doubt, belief maximizes expected value because stakes are infinite” is much poorer, for me at least, than the Buddha’s “even if you suspend judgment about rebirth, wholesome conduct has no rational downside”, which is logically, rationally, scientifically and everything-ly correct. But then the question becomes, why go forth? Why not? This is a separate discussion but still something I think about actively, because there is no necessity to be a monastic, but I think it can be argued that if you are a Buddhist, it would be a logical outcome.

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Yes. I think that is covered by the first two knowledge’s mn36:38.1 ff?

To get to that stage you need to engage quite heavily with the path in the first place, so that’s a conundrum. But, you know, samsara is problematic like that.

It’s not my primary argument. If we excluded rebirth as an motivator, we have both hiri and ottapa operating. It depends if the person asking has an internal conscience. If they do, then the reasoning is straight forward. We lead a wholesome life because it feels great.

It’s a delight :heart:

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Of course, no worries :slight_smile: This is a very common question you are grappling with, so it’s nothing to be ashamed of considering. But it’s easy to make it more complicated than it actually is.

One simple answer is “faith.” For many convert-Buddhists from Christian backgrounds that might sound eerily similar to Christianity, but the truth of the matter is that faith in the afterlife and its consequences has probably been near the number one force of motivation across religions and cultures.

It’s important to remember that faith in an afterlife and in the consequences of moral decisions is not the same as faith in unverifiable claims. Some scholars would say (early) Buddhism is not “metaphysical.” Another way of expressing the same idea is that early Buddhist metaphysics are all theoretically verifiable, whereas many aspects of, say, Christian metaphysics are theoretically unverifiable. In this case, faith in an afterlife is different from faith in an eternal afterlife.

Why have faith in continuity across lives? One reason is because people who are more kind, more peaceful, and more wise honestly claimed that they could verify it. For example, the Buddha. He also explained how one could verify it and many of his disciples through history have claimed to have successfully done so.

The next part of your question, assuming continuity, also can have some simple answers.

In the hell realms, the suttas indicate that beings are interrogated on their actions and then punished for them. There’s no reason to think that you forget what you did and why you are being punished. So assuming that, the barrier between death and the next life would be similar to one day to the next with sleep between. The same applies to the heaven realms. From the suttas themselves, it seems that heavenly beings often have clear memory of who they were in a past life and what they did to end up in heaven.

Then, consider the case of dreams. Imagine you have a horrible nightmare. In the nightmare, you don’t remember your waking life. When you wake up later, you realize it was a nightmare and not reality. So at no point during the process is there a sense of ‘continuity’ in the same waking sense. And yet I think almost everybody would agree that it’s unpleasant to have bad nightmares and can terrify people from going to sleep, even though they might not even remember their waking life when the nightmare happens and will realize it was fake upon waking up.

In terms of dreaming, you might recall your dream after the fact. In the same way, even if you are reborn in several lives without memory of your previous lives, at a certain point in the cycle of rebirths you probably will recall them all with a sense of continuity, so it could catch up to you, possibly many times over.

The idea that “I won’t experience the future life; it will be like some other being” is an illusion or delusion based on the notion of self. It assumes there’s an experienceable, continuous ‘me’ in this life which then dies and turns into a separate continuous ‘me’ in another life. But actually all experience of a continuous ‘me,’ while it is real, is a kind of hallucination. And so it is not as stable as it might seem.

If you examine your sense of continuity, you’ll see that it’s actually shifting within this lifetime. For example, do you feel like the same “me” that was a 6-year old? Do you feel like you are the 6-year old self just older now? Or do you feel like the 6-year old has died and a new “me” is now going through life? How often is a new “me” generated in this life? I already gave the example of dreams, where you might actually have a sense of self last only for a few hours before another sense of self arises.

So the sense of self can change radically even in one life. There’s nothing actually particularly unique about going from a child-self, to a teenager-self, to an adult-self, back to a child-self if you get reborn as a human. It’s just another hallucination of a ‘me’ in a continuous series, and that has never been a problem for us so far. Some children also do report past life memories and suffer over them, such as feeling estranged from their old parents.

You will also have to face your actions when you die, which in an of itself will be unpleasant if you have acted poorly. There is no indication that the process transitioning from death to another life is like a switch turning on and off. Even in the commentarial Theravāda tradition which does not have the idea of an intermediate-existence, it still has the teaching that beings may review their actions and may even see signs of their future destination. The cut-off point from a first person perspective will likely be much more of a flow than a binary change.

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Apart from all of the above, there’s another aspect to your question which some of the other friends here on the forum have addressed some. That is, what are the benefits of wholesome action and renunciation in this life. Even in recent history, you have people like Leo Tolstoy who lived indulging in sensuality immorally and later turned to Christian ethics because it gave actual meaning to his life even without an afterlife. He’s by-far no exception. To be full of greed, aversion, and confusion is not a pleasant state, and you pile up those qualities the more you act out of them. To have done cruel, selfish actions also does not feel good inside, and you can only hide that so much.

If you aren’t sentenced to prison, people will know about your general conduct and character. And if you put forth a lot of effort and trickery trying to hide it the best you can, even that sounds pretty awful and stressful! Having to try and trick and hide what you do all the time? Not exactly a relaxing life. Whether or not people find out, you will also live in fear that they might find out or you might be punished if you do punishable things.

Beyond the negative side of things, there’s the positive side. If you train your thoughts and actions to be wholesome, you will have less greed, anger, and confusion. That means you will be a more contented, loving, & wise person. That is already a much more pleasant state to be in. You’ll be more peaceful, more happy, more energetic and bright. You’ll be able to feel good about yourself and the opposite of hiding, you’ll have nothing to hide. You’ll also be able to meditate with much more happiness, ease, and comfort, which connects to renunciation. The Buddha said that the pleasure of deep meditation is much, much better than any pleasure someone might experience in the sensual world. And the pleasure of deep meditation is based on wholesome, virtuous thoughts and actions.

And even if you aren’t sure about an afterlife, if you want to become enlightened in this life, that will require living a wholesome life. The goal of Buddhism isn’t a good afterlife anyway, it’s to end the afterlife, and either way it requires virtue and consists of virtue. As I mentioned above, you can observe very simply in your experience that desires and aversions (craving) is uncomfortable even in this life. So if you want to be free of, or lessen, that discomfort in this life, that will mean lessening desire (greed) and aversion (hate). And that means you will inevitably not act out of those as much, i.e. you will be virtuous, and virtue will be part of that training.

Virtue, sīla, is imitating the behavior of enlightened beings in a limited respect. The suttas even say that when someone takes the eight precepts, they can reflect that they are temporarily living like the arahants do (in that respect). So even if you don’t think full enlightenment is possible, then if the idea of it is something interesting, getting closer that ideal will also involve virtue.

The Buddha also teaches that someone who is virtuous can actively reflect that whether or not there is an afterlife, they don’t have to worry about it, so that they feel relief and safety and joy. So the whole question of personal continuity or no personal continuity isn’t really relevant if you know that, either way, you’re building conditions for happiness and peace.

There’s a lot to discuss. But in reality, theories aside, if someone just practices then they’ll know the benefits. It’s like someone asking you to prove to them logically why they should stop being sick. If they just try the medicine and get better, they won’t need logical proofs. So you can also encourage your friends in conversation that the Buddha’s teachings are “sandiṭṭhiko” — visible in this life — and “paccattaṁ veditabbo” — should be experienced individually.

Hope some of that is helpful.

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The “Why bother? (Identity, rebirth and Nibbana)” thread starts by asking essentially the same question. You may find it of interest.

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Why should you care about the way you live at all? Why does anyone? What’s your motivation for how you live right now? Why would motivate you to consider changing how you live? What is the purpose of Buddhist practice for you? Just some rhetorical questions, food for thought.

And here’s a relevant excerpt from a sutta that responds to the gist of your questions.

“How is it, Master Gotama: is suffering created by oneself?”

“Not so, Kassapa,” the Blessed One said.

“Then, Master Gotama, is suffering created by another?”

“Not so, Kassapa,” the Blessed One said.

“How is it then, Master Gotama: is suffering created both by oneself and by another?”

“Not so, Kassapa,” the Blessed One said.

“Then, Master Gotama, has suffering arisen fortuitously, being created neither by oneself nor by another?”

“Not so, Kassapa,” the Blessed One said.

“How is it then, Master Gotama: is there no suffering?”

“It is not that there is no suffering, Kassapa; there is suffering.”

“Then is it that Master Gotama does not know and see suffering?”

“It is not that I do not know and see suffering, Kassapa. I know suffering, I see suffering.”

“Whether you are asked: ‘How is it, Master Gotama: is suffering created by oneself?’ or ‘Is it created by another?’ or ‘Is it created by both?’ or ‘Is it created by neither?’ in each case you say: ‘Not so, Kassapa.’ When you are asked: ‘How is it then, Master Gotama: is there no suffering?’ you say: ‘It is not that there is no suffering, Kassapa; there is suffering.’ When asked: ‘Then is it that Master Gotama does not know and see suffering?’ you say: ‘It is not that I do not know and see suffering, Kassapa. I know suffering, I see suffering.’ Venerable sir, let the Blessed One explain suffering to me. Let the Blessed One teach me about suffering.”

“Kassapa, if one thinks, ‘The one who acts is the same as the one who experiences the result,’ then one asserts with reference to one existing from the beginning: ‘Suffering is created by oneself.’ When one asserts thus, this amounts to eternalism.

But, Kassapa, if one thinks, ‘The one who acts is one, the one who experiences the result is another,’ then one asserts with reference to one stricken by feeling: ‘Suffering is created by another.’ When one asserts thus, this amounts to annihilationism.

Without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma by the middle: ‘With ignorance as condition, volitional formations come to be; with volitional formations as condition, consciousness…. Such is the origin of this whole mass of suffering. But with the remainderless fading away and cessation of ignorance comes cessation of volitional formations; with the cessation of volitional formations, cessation of consciousness…. Such is the cessation of this whole mass of suffering.’”
-SN 12.17

The Buddha is teaching to see things in terms of cause and effect, kamma and its result, idappaccayata, dependent origination/cessation. Not in terms of self, I, me, mine, identity, eternalism, annihilationism—our long-ingrained samsaric ways of thinking.

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I can only speak from personal musing.

Sometimes when I felt unlucky, or not getting enough things, I would think “Why my previous self didn’t accumulate enough merit, so I am not this poor”

Or when I experience pain, “What did my previous self do that cause this suffering?”

To imagine my future self, even if he/she not really myself anymore, thinking the same things like I do now, that create a motivation. Maybe I should do better, do more merit, etc.

And when I contemplate the suffering of samsara, I sometimes think, “This suffering is overwhelming, and I have been in this cycle for uncountable lives? Why didn’t I get out sooner? Why my previous self just linger here?”

Imagining my future self thinking the same thing about me, I get motivated to practice.

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hedonism, in ethics, a general term for all theories of conduct in which the criterion is pleasure of one kind or another. The word is derived from the Greek hedone (“pleasure”), from hedys (“sweet” or “pleasant”).

Buddhism doesn’t actually think hedonism is bad. Buddhism criticizes sensual pleasures as short term, coarse, not leading to good, based on karma etc.

If we take the goal as happiness/pleasure(hedonism), we will also find that Nibbana is the correct goal. According to Buddhism, there are 3 kinds of feelings(pleasant,unpleasant,neutral) and these feelings are impermanent. So the best we can achieve is having pleasant feelings constantly(while they are also changing). Sensual pleasures can’t achieve this - drinking,partying,sex etc all give impermanent pleasure that are tied to suffering. Ex: You have to behave a certain way during a party, try to entertain others, judging others and ourselves etc - these are all suffering(perhaps minute). In contrast 1st Jhana gives “constant” pleasure that is without those associated suffering .

2nd Jhana removes the need to keep attention and removes another factor of suffering. Similarly 4th Jhana sees Joy as coarse,suffering and maintain equanimity. So the whole path is looking to remove suffering and attain happiness.

Regarding Anatta, if you think the current you should take actions for pleasure(aka partying etc) - then you should take actions for the maximum pleasure(Jhana->Nibbana).