A small insight I had into the truth of suffering

[anxious_turtle]

(This is something I wrote down mainly for myself, but I decided to share it here and see you guys' opinions, whatever they may be. Excuse the clumsy language - this is a rather unskillful attempt at recording a personally very significant fleeting insight.)

It is an ever-occurring theme of life that all good things are accompanied by pain. If you do something which feels good at first, it becomes painful after. If you do something that hurts at first, it becomes pleasurable after. And I cannot help but make the conclusion that maybe we aren’t supposed to want pleasure over pain, or to endure pain because of the reward that comes after, because they are intertwined in such a multi-dimensional and surprising way that they are like one - inseparable. And a person who is trying to get as much pleasure as possible, thinking that this will make them feel less pain, is like a child covering his eyes, thinking that no one will be able to see him.

And also, rejecting pleasure because you fear the pain it will bring you is still the same game. It is a game most of us are deeply caught in. At least I know I am.

And it is a duality which prevents one’s consciousness from expanding and experiencing a truth and a beauty which is on a whole other level of reality. 

The bind in which we humans find ourselves in is so profoundly and heart-breakingly beautiful. It is a piece of art across which complex contrasts are skillfully playing together to create the perfect dramatic composition - the work of a most skillful, careful and deliberate artist, inside which there is nothing out of place.

Throughout my life I have tried to chase pleasure and so avoid pain. Then I realized that this couldn’t work, so I decided to avoid pleasure in order to avoid pain, but this also did not work. But now a new possibility has opened for me - instead of picking pleasure over pain, I can pick one drama (which is one whole ball of yarn of intertwined pleasure and pain) over another drama. And it doesn’t matter which one I pick because all of them are just as interesting, and also just as boring. Some may have more pleasure showing on the surface than others, but they’ve all got the same amount of both, believe me (maybe not on the same dimension, but throughout all possible ones - it’s all equal) - it is a very just world we live in. A person who realizes this whole insight and applies it throughout his whole life on all levels, will be a very wise one indeed.

And so from now on the only question is - what kind of drama do I want? What kind of pleasure? What kind of pain?

[Vynce]

Seems like someone got a little wiser here 

The even cooler part about this duality is, that there are many more truths you can discover about the duality of pleasure and pain - this game of becoming an inch more wiser about reality keeps playing for ever

Edited July 14, 2021 by Vynce

[WaveInTheOcean]

One of the wisest post I've read on this forum. 

Read OP again dear reader.

[ardacigin]

@anxious_turtle When equanimity is mastered, all satisfaction and juice out of life would be sucked out of in each moment's pleasure and pain. A great ideal to work towards.