Pleasure and Pain - Two Sides Of The Same Coin

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Pleasure may be imaginary, but pain is real.

Pain and pleasure go together always. Freedom from one means freedom from both. If you do not care for pleasure, you will not be afraid of pain. But there is happiness which is neither, which is completely beyond. The happiness you know is describable and measurable. It is objective, so to say. But the objective cannot be your own. It would be a grievous mistake to identify yourself with something external. This churning up of levels leads nowhere. Reality is beyond the subjective and objective, beyond all levels, beyond every distinction. Most definitely it is not their origin, source or root. These come from ignorance of reality, not from reality itself, which is indescribable, beyond being and non-being.

Many teachers have I followed and studied many doctrines, yet none gave me what I wanted.

The desires to find the Self will be surely fulfilled, provided you want nothing else. But you must be honest with yourself and really want nothing else. If in the meantime you want many other things and are engaged in their pursuit, your main purpose may be delayed until you grow wiser and cease being torn between contradictory urges. Go within, without swerving, without ever looking outward.

But my desires and fears are still there.

Where are they but in your memory? Realize that their root is in expectation born of memory and they will cease to obsess you.