Stop Optimizing Your Life for Pleasure! | Śreyas vs. Preyas

[00:00:05]From the moment we're born, we are conditioned a certain way. Society gears us towards certain beliefs, certain ideas, certain pursuits.

[00:00:14]From your parents, from the holidays that we celebrate, from the cultural events around us, especially in the West.

[00:00:21]Um school, high school, university. All of those things are designed to maximize your pleasure.

[00:00:29]You are conditioned by media, movies, books, cartoons.

[00:00:33]Everything that you consume is all directed towards that, entertaining you, grabbing your attention, making you feel attraction for that which brings you pleasure. Pleasure to what?

[00:00:46]To your five senses.

[00:00:48]And so we become, knowingly or unknowingly, slaves to our five senses.

[00:00:53]Our senses that demand constant satisfaction, constant nourishment.

[00:00:59]You see in the fact that in very simple things of life, the the joy we have in eating a tasty meal. Why? What is the joy really coming from?

[00:01:10]Well, your tongue. Your tongue enjoys the flavor. It's not food for the sake of nourishment. If it was, we wouldn't really care so much about the taste. In fact, many of the healthiest foods aren't necessarily the most pleasurable for our palates. I don't ever see children running to the salad bowl saying, "Yay, salad!" But they do for cake, chips, ice cream, you name it.

[00:01:33]We grow up as adults and we're the same.

[00:01:35]We do it not only for our tongues, we do it with the things we want to see, the things we want to hear, the things we want to touch. It's all about optimizing our lives for pleasure.

[00:01:46]For fulfilling our desires. But the desires aren't even that articulated. They're not really constructed, formed. They are almost desires born out of an autopilot conditioning, the senses need to be satiated, the senses produce their desires, i.e. their attraction for their sense objects, and we, their servants, their slaves, run to build a life that can fulfill their wants.

[00:02:16]What does that look like? It means that when we choose our job, our career, our partners, our social circles, our hobbies, we optimize for something.

[00:02:25]And what are we optimizing for? Well, most often we're optimizing for convenience, which means the ease with which we can attain what we want, prestige, so how much can it inflate our sixth sense, the mind, the ego, our conception of self, our image to others, um our pleasure, right? So, as I was talking about earlier, these are the things we optimize for. Convenience, prestige, pleasure, comfort.

[00:02:54]But, they come at a cost. There is a hidden cost to all of this.

[00:02:57]And it's often unseen, it's often unconsidered until it's often too late, or until it is made abundantly clear to us either through the lessons we have learned through life, or if we're lucky, those who are a little wiser than us opening our eyes for us. The costs are our growth, our peace, connection, real connection.

[00:03:19]Why do I say growth? Because growth usually doesn't happen. We don't usually grow, transform, improve in our comfort zone.

[00:03:28]When we have comfort, when we have pleasure, we often relax, we often settle. And so, I think that growth is something that we often lose in the process of chasing our, or rather living in accordance with our conditioning.

[00:03:45]Peace. Well, why should it seems almost contradictory. If if if we're saying we can't grow because we're at comfort, and we need to be challenged to grow, then then why is peace also something that we're uh supposedly losing?

[00:04:00]Because these pleasures, the pleasures of the senses, they come and they go.

[00:04:02]They have an end. And when they end, we are again restless. We need to get the next and the next and the next and the next to keep our senses constantly satiated. There is the constant fear, the restlessness, the mental anguish of "Can I lose this? What am I without this?" And and all of these things keep us away from what true peace looks like, true acceptance, an ability to be happy independent of what we have external to ourselves.

[00:04:31]And lastly, I said the cost of true connection.

[00:04:34]Connection to what?

[00:04:36]Ancient traditions told us, be it through yoga, be it through the word religion, these words, they both mean connection, to reconnect, to unite.

[00:04:46]The connection with our true self, the connection with the source of that true self.

[00:04:50]Why do we lose those things if we're just chasing pleasures? Because as we externalize our consciousness and as we fixate our consciousness on these items, on these sense objects, and the life that we construct, the hobbies, the friendships to go and achieve these things, we are left with no time, no attention, no dedication, no commitment to building a life that would lead to a connection, a realization of who we truly are and the source of that very being.

[00:05:20]Now, is it impossible to experience pleasure whilst pursuing those things?

[00:05:26]While growing, while being at peace, while attaining true inner connection?

[00:05:31]Of course, it's not impossible. Of course, it's compatible.

[00:05:36]But then, what brings us pleasure, how we derive pleasure, becomes completely different. The question we must ask ourselves is, what if we optimized our lives differently?

[00:05:47]What if instead of optimizing our lives for as I said, convenience, prestige, pleasure, what if we optimized our lives for growth, for self-transformation, for service, for helping others, and for true fulfillment, a settled, constant sense of satisfaction?

[00:06:09]What would our lives look like if we optimized for that?

[00:06:13]The Vedic tradition speaks of exactly this choice, this choice to optimize for something higher.

[00:06:20]In the Katha Upanishad, in the first section, chapter 2, verse 1, it says the following.

[00:06:26]The good is one thing, the pleasant another.

[00:06:29]Both of these, serving different needs, bind a man.

[00:06:33]It goes well with him who of the two takes the good, but he who chooses the pleasant misses the end.

[00:06:42]What does it mean? It means essentially that there are two ideas here, shreyas and preyas. Shreyas means that which is beneficial, that which is truly good.

[00:06:51]And preyas, that which is pleasant, that which feels good.

[00:06:55]And the verse suggests very clearly, he who chooses what is pleasant, what feels good, misses the end, meaning misses the higher outcomes of life, misses true fulfillment, a true outcome.

[00:07:07]This is further explored in the Bhagavad Gita, in chapter 5, verse 22.

[00:07:13]Krishna says, "Pleasures that arise from contact with the external world are indeed sources of suffering alone.

[00:07:20]Having a beginning and an end, a wise person does not rejoice in them."

[00:07:25]You see, what these two verses are trying to tell us is there are two pursuits in life, two things that you can optimize for, fork in the road.

[00:07:35]The truly beneficial and the pleasurable. But the wise don't rejoice in the pleasures of the senses. Why?

[00:07:42]Because they have a beginning and an end.

[00:07:45]It isn't to say that they are fake. It isn't to say that they are just Maya illusion.

[00:07:50]>> [clears throat] >> No.

[00:07:51]But they are finite.

[00:07:53]And because they are finite, as much as you may experience the high, you will inevitably experience the low.

[00:08:00]A lot of people will tell you, "That's just life. That's normal. Why would you rob yourself of this wonderful journey that is life, the ups and the downs, the gains and the losses?"

[00:08:11]But the truth is is we say this to cope.

[00:08:13]We say this to mitigate what is otherwise a hard and bitter pill to swallow. That the things we most love in life, the things that we most covet in life, the things we have worked tirelessly to achieve can and will be taken from us at some point in our lives.

[00:08:30]In fact, the thing which we love the most, our very life, will also come to an end at some point. Mostly against the will of the people whose life it is.

[00:08:40]Understanding this, the wise don't rejoice in a life optimized for that.

[00:08:45]But they do still rejoice. They still do experience bliss, but in a different pursuit, in the pursuit of shreyas, the beneficial.

[00:08:53]Well, what is that? How can we get to a life that is truly good, a life that is worth living?

[00:09:00]A life that is not going to be taken from us. A life that is not full of ups and downs. And the fear that is inherent to living such a life, the fear that at any moment that can be taken from you.

[00:09:13]If my motivation for acting, if my motivation for waking up in the morning, getting off my bed and doing something is not, cannot be my pleasure, cannot be results, outcomes, goals, then what could be my motivation?

[00:09:30]Well, the Bhagavad Gita in chapter 3, verse 25 says, "Just as the ignorant act with attachment to their work, so should the wise act without any attachment, being intent on the welfare of the world.

[00:09:45]Intent on the welfare of the world without any attachment.

[00:09:50]Act for the benefit of others. Act out of a righteous duty, out of a righteous desire to serve, to benefit, to be of benefit to others.

[00:10:00]When the Katha Upanishad said shreyas, the life of good, the life that is beneficial, be beneficial. Be a person that by your very life brings goodness to this world.

[00:10:13]Now, it isn't that you won't enjoy. You see, this is the thing people often miss.

[00:10:17]It isn't that in serving you lose. You you somehow fail to achieve happiness, fail to have a smile on your face.

[00:10:26]No, actually it's very much the opposite. When you make your life not about yourself, not about your ego, but about what you can bring to this world, what you can contribute to this world, and the service that you give others, it is by putting a smile on the face of another that you get a smile on your own face automatically.

[00:10:43]Often people hear something like this and they say, "Right, but what can I do to serve? I'm I'm not very good at anything. I don't have a huge platform.

[00:10:50]I don't have huge resources. I I just live a simple life. What can I do to make a difference in this world?"

[00:10:57]But the Bhagavad Gita has an answer for that, too.

[00:11:00]In chapter 18, verse 47, Krishna says, "Better is one's own dharma, one's own duty, even if imperfectly done, than the dharma of another done perfectly."

[00:11:11]Well, what does he mean by that?

[00:11:12]Accept the life you have. It is not wrong. There's no use in looking at someone else's thinking that's a better one or that this job is is uh not meant for me just because I'm not very good at it. We often do this. But what is it again? It's back to the first issue that I pointed out. We're optimizing, once again, for convenience, for comfort. It is convenient to do that which you're good It is comfortable to do that which you're good at. It is prestigious, it is glorifying to you to do something that you're very good at. Others will think great of you.

[00:11:43]It is uncomfortable.

[00:11:45]It is challenging. It is humbling to do something you're not very good at.

[00:11:51]But aren't those the exact things that mold you? That build character?

[00:11:55]That transform you into the very person that could be of benefit to this world, not somebody with a puffed-up ego, but somebody that is humble, somebody that is willing to serve, somebody that is not a servant to their own desires, to their own ego, but rather a servant to humanity, a servant to God.

[00:12:12]That is what a life optimized for transformation, for growth, and actually for peace, is going to make you do.

[00:12:21]But there is a problem to all of this.

[00:12:23]And the problem is something that I've experienced in my own life.

[00:12:27]It's very hard to sustain a life lived for others, a life of duty, a life of doing what's right simply because it's right.

[00:12:38]We are so conditioned to live for some personal gratification, for some personal reward, that I have seen it happen time and time again in this community and other communities and throughout history, people eventually hit a wall. They They can't They can't keep going time and time again in duty, in duty, duty, service, service, service.

[00:13:00]Parts of them shut down. Parts of them are closed off and they never truly achieve fulfillment, true peace, true satisfaction.

[00:13:10]So, I What did I do? I I I thought about it. I listened to the teachings of my guru, Paramahamsa Vishwananda. I studied Western philosophy and I was scouring for a solution to this.

[00:13:21]How can we move away from this, you know, self-serving pleasure-seeking life that only ends in emptiness to a life of duty and righteousness that feels unsustainable and and not ultimately fulfilling.

[00:13:36]How can we find a source of boundless motivation?

[00:13:41]And there's only been one thing throughout history, throughout cultures, throughout religions.

[00:13:47]Love.

[00:13:48]You see the only time I've ever seen people act selflessly and with drive is when they act out of love, when they're in love. Then they wake up excited and they never run out of energy. They're always ready to serve, to show up, to do what it takes to please, to to be there, to be present because they're in love.

[00:14:11]Aside of that, I have never seen it happen consistently, sustainably.

[00:14:16]And so where did I find these solutions? Where are these solutions like well described?

[00:14:21]Let's put it like this.

[00:14:22]Uh Søren Kierkegaard, I've mentioned him before and I think he continues to be mentioned on the channel because he had wonderful insights. He mapped this out as the three stages of life. He gave it different names. His names were the aesthetic stage, the stage where we're only looking to satiate our uh desire for excitement, for pleasure, for aesthetics, for beauty um avoiding boredom essentially. And that is the aesthetic stage of life. But eventually we we graduate from that because it becomes repetitive, it becomes ironically boring.

[00:14:55]And so we move into the ethical stage of life. And the ethical stage of life is what he calls the dutiful stage, when we are mature, wise adults and we have responsibility and we do what's right, our civic duties.

[00:15:08]But as I just said, eventually we hit another wall, the wall of that it doesn't actually nurture our heart, nurture our minds, nurture our complete being.

[00:15:19]Although we have moved away from something that was damaging our being, we have not moved into something that truly has elevated us to our highest potential. And so Kierkegaard mapped out the third stage, which he calls the religious stage, where it is focused on the sublime, the the beautiful, the divine love, the divine itself, something that transcends everything else that is available to us. And only then do we achieve truly our maximum potential and fulfill life, live a good life, a full life.

[00:15:51]Now, in Sanskrit terms, we're talking literally about preyas moving into shreyas moving into prem.

[00:15:59]Divine love.

[00:16:01]St. Augustine, famous Christian theologian, essentially mapped out the same thing, although he gave it different titles.

[00:16:08]He talked about disordered love versus ordered love. What he meant by disordered love is when we love the wrong things. We love, ironically, things, objects, our family, our houses, our food, our belongings. We love the things of this world above loving God.

[00:16:26]Whereas ordered love, meaning love in the right order, in the right hierarchy, that places God, the divine, at the top of that hierarchy as the primary focus of our lives, naturally orientates everything else.

[00:16:39]His argument was that if you are able to truly tap into that love, if you're able to love purely and love God, something that is truly worthy of our love, something that can truly reciprocate our love, then you naturally have tapped into something so exalted, so pure, that you become incapable of doing something unethical, doing something that is designed to harm or take advantage or manipulate someone else. Things which would be commonplace for a life lived or orientated towards maximizing our own pleasure. And so he saw the antidote to all of this being ordered love, love for God in first place and everything flowing from that. His famous quote was, "Love and do what you will."

[00:17:25]His idea was that we will anyway do what we will. Human beings are stubborn. We always want to do what we want. So, he says, "Well, then love first. Love truly and then do what you will because you will be incapable of doing something bad once you've taken root in that supreme divine love." I fully agree with him.

[00:17:44]So, what is the conclusion of all of this?

[00:17:47]I started out by mapping out that there is an issue, an issue that is embedded into our thinking, into our psyche, into our culture.

[00:17:56]The issue is how to maximize your pleasure. And we all are raised to do only this. I was put through school and the the education system that I participated in was essentially teaching me how to build a career that would maximize my wealth.

[00:18:13]They never spoke to me about how I can uh derive joy from this, how I can be of service to others. Maybe one or two passing comments. It was all just about maximize your curriculum, maximize your achievements, get as much onto your uh um sort of extracurricular activities as possible so that you can get to as prestigious an institution as possible, a university as possible. Once you're there, you'll get the most prestigious degree and from there, you'll be given the highest salary so that you can enjoy life to the max.

[00:18:46]And we all buy into this. We all do this the best we can. When people start falling short of that, what do they do as an alternative? They often turn to hedonism. "Oh, I wasn't ever very good at school, so I'm just, you know, living weekend to weekend."

[00:19:01]This needs to change. This needs to change for all of us, but the thing is it's often more subtle than that. Some of us have navigated those waters and we still are in situations in life where we are still bound, still slaves to a system that we've never learned an alternative to.

[00:19:19]The Vedic tradition speaks of shreyas and preyas.

[00:19:23]These paths will both bind you.

[00:19:25]They will lead you down different roads.

[00:19:27]One is a road of ups and downs, mainly downs, a lot of suffering, a lot of difficulty, a lot of loss. Why? Because as Krishna says in the Gita, the wise do not rejoice in that which is fleeting.

[00:19:40]But the good, the shreyas, is that which builds you up, takes you towards something eternal, something that is constant, something that teaches you, makes you, transforms you, challenges you, and eventually you arrive at a place where you become at peace, fulfilled, truly content, whether your senses are being satisfied or not, because your heart is being satisfied.

[00:20:06]The most important part of your being is fulfilled.

[00:20:10]And in that ordered love, in that proper hierarchy, when we have moved from the aesthetic to the ethical to the religious, the divine, the love stage of our life, then everything else falls in place, and we need not worry whether we have the right job, whether we're doing the right service, whether we're doing this, that, or the other. What is my dharma? All these questions evaporate.

[00:20:34]Because when you're acting out of love, you will be incapable of acting in a way that is either harmful to yourself nor harmful to others.

[00:20:44]So, think deeply and love fearlessly.

[00:20:48]Jai Guru Dev.