Pleasure.....

Yesterday, I decided to buy a water heater, and I did just that. After that I went home and heated up some water and soaked my feet in it. I was listening to some music and what indulgence! It felt like warmth was entering through my soles and permeating throughout my body. Then I cut my toenails and massaged my feet with oil. Oh what pleasure! Oh what pleasure!

Then a real hot shower, in candle light. Farida Khannum was glorifying my hedonism with her fleeting voice and wonderful lyrics…. Jab us zulf ki bath chali…the water was steaming, like my senses at that time.

We are all hedonists. We will all the time seek pleasure over pain, not because pleasure is good to feel rather than pain, but because pleasure is such a convenient allegory to the assurance of existence. Pleasure creates a stratum where pain seems too remote to be able to affect us. It is like a veil that hides the undesirable from us, though not fully, but enough to assure us the permanence of its expression.

The expression of pleasure is infinitely more complex than the experiencing of it. More difficult is giving pleasure, i.e., making pleasure happen. That is because, in my opinion, pleasure seeks a finer niche than pain, a finer point to converge upon. Pleasure always occurs in multiple planes, with each plane that is surpassed leading to a higher level and higher sensitivity.

Pleasure seeks a gratification of a sense or a need to fulfill, like water that must flow down, if there is a downgrade. So pleasure exists as an object, shapeless and expressionless, till it finds a channel. Then it flows into the spirit, and starts ruling it while it can, till reality steps in rudely. When reality comes into the picture, we realize that we had been put to sleep by pleasure and this creates guilt and moroseness.