Pleasure, Pain, and the Doorway to Truth

We often imagine the spiritual path must be paved with thorns. That discipline, denial, and suffering are the proof that we are “doing the work.” Many of us have grown accustomed to seeking out the trauma, the wounds, the parts we feel guilt, shame, or judgment around. We keep digging, as if the endless excavation of pain itself is the way to freedom.

Or we swing to the opposite side, believing spirituality should be nothing but light and bliss, chasing one peak experience after another. If it feels good, then surely it must be the soul expressing itself.

Both carry their seduction. And both can easily become traps.

What if the truth does not live at either extreme? Or, lives in both? What if every experience, whether pleasurable or painful, could be a doorway, if only we let it reveal the one who is experiencing?

“The Self is not attained by renunciation or by indulgence, but by seeing the Self in both.” — adapted from the Upanishads

In my own path, I once believed suffering was the way. It had an appeal.

Purity. A subtle inheritance from the conditioning of “original sin,” the belief that life is a redemption story and suffering is purification.

Discipline. Pain seemed to offer structure. If I denied my human self, I must be on the right track.

And perhaps the hardest to overcome, specialness. When seeking enjoyment fell short, austerity gave me a sense of being strong enough to endure what others could not. A sense that happiness was overrated and suffering was where the real juice was.

But beneath all this was a quiet frustration. Suffering only seemed noble because joy had disappointed me.

Enjoyment, of course, has its own sparkle. The senses meeting the objects of desire bring a rush, as the Gita warns, but they also bind us to the wheel of craving and loss. “The pleasures that arise from contact are verily wombs of suffering,” Krishna says (Bhagavad Gita 5.22).

We suffer not because joy is bad, but because we mistake the object as its source.

And yet there are moments when enjoyment reveals something more. A song, a sunset, a connection with another can outshine the little self and its story. Suddenly it is not my joy, but joy itself shining through. In those moments, gratitude arises. Wonder arises. We glimpse that the current of joy is always flowing, and the experience only makes it visible.

Some say suffering is necessary, that pain is what wakes us up. And it is true that pain can break the illusion of control, strip away pretenses, and turn us inward. But if we cling to suffering as identity — if I am the sufferer, the ascetic, the martyr — then we are just as lost as when we cling to pleasure.

The Buddha was clear: “Both extremes, devotion to indulgence and devotion to self-mortification, are to be avoided.” (Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta)

Suffering does not purify us. Presence does. Sometimes suffering shakes us into presence, but it is the presence, not the pain, that reveals the truth.

Others say enjoyment is illusion, a trap. And again there is truth in that. If you chase enjoyment thinking the next high will deliver you, it will never be enough. But if you allow enjoyment to reveal what is already here in the joy of being itself, it becomes a doorway.

As Rumi put it: “Be with those who help your being. Don’t sit with indifferent companions. Be with the friend whose presence calls you to yourself.”

Experiences can be those friends. They are not the source of joy, but mirrors of it.

The deeper problem is not suffering or enjoyment. It is our clinging and our aversion. We push suffering away. We pull pleasure closer. And in doing so we lose sight of the one who is aware of both.

The Gita again: “He who is not attached to happiness or distress, who is steady in both, becomes fit for liberation” (6.7).

The same moment can either bind you or free you. The fire of pain can burn you or illumine you. The sweetness of joy can seduce you or reveal you. What makes the difference is not the experience itself, but the seeing.

Next time joy rises, do not only consume it. Turn and notice the one it is arising within. Next time pain grips, do not only resist it. Turn and notice the one it is gripping. That turning is the doorway.

Even our wounds can become costumes we wear. We become attached to being the one who suffers, the one who heals, the one who is perpetually processing. But identity, whether woven from pain or from bliss, is still identity. And the truth of who we are is prior to identity.

Presence is not indifference. It is intimacy. When we stop clinging, we do not feel less, we feel more. Pleasure and pain are no longer filtered through fear of losing them or being trapped in them. They are free to reveal the one who is beyond both.

There is no judgment here. Play in the illusion if you need to. I know I certainly did……and do. Taste the highs and lows, wrestle with discipline or float in delight. Just do not mistake either extreme for the depth of reality. The doorway is always closer than that.

The real path is not made of suffering or pleasure. It is made of presence.

“Happiness and sorrow are like passing clouds. They are not you. Look within, you will see the sun.” — Ramana Maharshi