reasons not to indulge in pleasures

[Viking]

such as eating unhealthy food, watching tv series, youtube, etc.

what will one gain from abstaining completely from that if he will at all gain something? 

or do you think one should allow oneself enjoy that stuff in limited amounts?

or should one work on his understanding that there are better things to do with that time gradually?

[NoSelfSelf]

Nothing wrong in pleasure but it will stop you from living good life=peace of mind...abstain from it until you dont need it(addiction) then you can do it if you really want but there will be no need for it...

[UDT]

Hey IIya I think thats a very interesting and actually quite deep question.

When this question is asked, people mostly start talking about balancing pleasure with work // low with high consciousness action.
I believe this "balancing" approach is quite a trap. Let´s observe the junk food example:

 

Take a healthy vegan body builder guy:
He will avoid junk food like the plague, rant about its envrionmental and health effects and shame everyone who goes in a fast food store.
Why? --> He feels best about eating healty and looking good. He would never sacrifice years of training for junk food because the perceived pleasure of looking at himself in the mirror, walking with more proud and confidence is more worth than what the food can offer. Maybe he was skinny when younger and bullied because of it. Maybe his dad died because of obesity.

Take a normal ordinary guy:
He likes junk food but also knows it is quite unhealthy. Occasionally, he will go to a restaurant and eat the food because he lives after the motto that everything is ok if you balance it out. This is his justifcation to give in to his need of eating junk (not saying any action is good or bad). Why? Because the pleasure of eating junkfood is higher than the pleasure of perceiving himself as a healthy person. Now force him to eat junk food for a week straight. He will feel start feeling bad about his diet. Why? The unpleasent feeling of knowingly harming his health is now stronger than the pleasure gained from the food.

Take a everyday obese junkfood guy:
He has a quite rough life, maybe a bad childhood. Maybe he has very bad memories from those times while a few of the good ones where when he celebrated his birthday at Mcdonalds when he was younger. Because his brain connects the feeling of being cared and being loved with the McD place and the food, he will gain loads of pleasure from it. Therefore pushing back the unpleasentness of his unhealthy habit. Of course he knows that the food is not good for him in the long term but it doesnt stop him.

You see, three different approaches to eating habits yet all live according to pleasure maximization.

Society has formed deep opinions on which habits and actions are considered good and healthy and which are not accepted. You have done the same as your character developed and develops.

 

My suggestion to your question would be:

Write down what you consider as pleasure (good and bad ones). Now ask yourself "why is this a good/bad pleasure for me"? Write down your answer ("Because it is wasted time to watch three hours of Netflix"). Then repeat asking why again. "Because I could do more useful things with my time". Why?. "Because productiveness is more important than pleasure". Why? "(...). Why? (...).

Dig as deep as you can. You might find that at the end one just sacrifices short term for long term pleasure.

 

Thank you the great question!

 

Edited December 16, 2017 by UDT

[Faceless]

What is pleasure? 

What gives pleasure continuity? 

 Couple important questions that you might want to ask yourself 

[Joseph Maynor]

You don’t want to obstain completely.  What you want to do is start to build good habits and convince the Mind that healthy things are good for it. So, like I advised you before, don’t turn asceticism into an ideology.  Get the Mind on board with cleaning up bad habits instead.  When you proceed this way, you can slip without realizing you did, and you don’t get that guilt that comes from the Mind attaching to a stubbornly-linear ideology of asceticism.  You’re like a fire-hose not a rifle.  To put a fire out you need to point that fire-hose in the general location of the fire — don’t think you’re gonna solve the problem in one shot, such as adopting some ideology of asceticism.  Without having the requisite habits in place, you’re just gonna be guilting yourself-out all the time which will cause you to seek comfort more — because you’ve caused the Mind to be at war with itself.  So, instead of taking an ideological approach, just start to clean up bad habits in your life, and make sure the Mind understands why this must be done — and become mindful of how your happiness increases as you do this.  The Mind likes happiness, and it will kill weaknesses for you in the moment if it senses happiness is at risk.

Edited December 20, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[bastardday]

In my experience when you have some kind of pleasure all the time it stops being a pleasure and becomes an addiction. TV, video games, junk food, masturbation, social media, etc. If you're constantly doing those things then you aren't really enjoying them, you're just trying to stay stimulated. 

[Viking]

@blazed I came to the conclusion that when you have a decision to make if to indulge or not you should center yourself (like being mindful of your breath) and see what you think is the best thing long term to do that will bring the most happiness. you might find that you dont have enough wisdom to not abstain from a pleasure, therefore by all means indulge in the pleasure. a rule of thumb is do the thing that makes you feel good about doing it.

for example I want to eat pizza, but I know I will feel weak afterwards, so I will feel good about the decision not to eat it, so I dont. However if I dont associate pizza with weakness afterwards and I didnt think deeply how eating pizza might affect my health, if I was just told not to eat pizza "because it's bad" I would feel bad or disappointed about not eating the pizza. it's all about wisdom and consciousness.

[Viking]

@blazed lol sure, this idea just helps to know what to do. you will never be free of suffering except if you have no desires  though habits help

Edited December 21, 2017 by Ilya