silence shared in words
presents
My Teaching Is not for Pleasure but For Blissfulness
We start from the idea of pleasure.
Can enlightenment be the topmost pleasure, as a definition?
It is not pleasure.
Pleasure is always
something opposed to pain
It is never separate from pain.
So pain can become pleasure.
That's why there are masochists in the world
who torture themselves
and enjoy
Your so-called saints are nothing but
people
who know the art of changing pain into pleasure.
Pain can become pleasure
vice versa is also true
pleasure can become pain.
For example, it is a great pleasure to kiss someone
you love.
But if you are forced to continue kissing
a gun behind you
How long is the pleasure going to be pleasure?
Soon
the pleasure will become a pain
You eat something: it is pleasant, there is pleasure;
but if you eat too much it becomes pain
otherwise you wouldn't see so many
obese people.
Thirty million people in America
are suffering from this disease
They cannot stop eating.
The pleasure is so much
that they go on eating, knowing perfectly well that it is going to become pain.
So one thing has to be understood:
enlightenment is not pleasure
because it can never become pain.
There is nothing opposite to enlightenment.
The unenlightened person,
his state of mind,
is not opposite to the enlightened person
and his state of mind.
The unenlightened state
is simply the absence of enlightenment -- it is not opposed.
It is like darkness
You just bring a candle in the room
and there is no darkness.
It has never been there;
it has no positive existence of its own,
it is simply absence of light.
So the unenlightened person is simply asleep,
the enlightened person is awake.
There is no opposition.
Enlightenment is the transcendence of all dualities:
pleasure, pain;
love, hate,
life, death
all oppositions.
Enlightenment is
the situation
where you have come
to a point of witnessing
all the opposites
as complementaries
and you are only a witness.
So I cannot say it is pleasure
I can say it is bliss.