Joy and Pleasure

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What is the difference between Joy and Pleasure? Authored by Ashwin, Faculty, One World Academy



What is the difference between Joy and Pleasure?

The very two words when we utter, give two different feels. One can feel the difference when someone says:

a. It was a pleasurable time
b. We had a joyous time

At OWA, Joy is in awareness, pleasure is about gratification.

As we try to distinguish, the term pleasure caters to physical and psychological comfort.

Starting from better to the best physical amenities possible, as we ponder we see that man has discovered various ways of deriving pleasure in the evolution of life, of which some could be called as constructive means and some less constructive.



At the physical level:
a. In today’s world the popular belief is that it is seen to be progressive if we try to make our standard of living better so that it could be more pleasurable and there are of course the others who are content with what is there and try to maintain it. With capitalism, we literally see every kind of ad campaign today prompting people to keep acquiring enhanced products so much so that one almost feels left out if he/she is not updating all the time. From cars to gadgets, from superior houses to cuisines prepared in the most exquisite manner, this world never seems to stop enticing man. People like to forget
themselves in various experiences and those moments are considered as moments of true pleasure. But it easily gets old and there is a constant look out for more and new.

b. Then we see people getting addicted to physical pleasures including various kinds of intoxications which eventually turns out to be destructive. Though during moments of intoxication one gets carried away, it is not sustaining and has after effects and doesn't prove to be enduring and constructive.

c. Then we have people who feel saturated with the mundane and want to do something extraordinary to keep that excitement going. From feats like bungie jumping, skies diving etc to all kinds of mind-blowing pursuits are taken up to feel that added adrenaline rush.

At the psychological level:
a. Mind is invariably looking for pleasure most of the time though it might have an ultimate ideal namely love, peace and joy but it still wants to make sure that pleasure is not denied.

b. One of the ways are when we hold up an image in every relationship and we look for acknowledgement all the time, and as we do receive it, it is indeed a pleasurable experience. At any point of time the mind goes into different modes to feel good about itself and there is constant look out for praise, attention and appreciation.

c. Every event that is giving a sense of security to our identity is cherished. We feel such pleasure when we are a prominent somebody in every instance of our life. We literally feel on the high and in fact try reliving those moments and reinforce that feeling of significance. That’s why we look for it to happen in the upcoming situation and if not we keep reviving past moments of gratification.

d. Mind at times even goes into modes of self pity, blaming others. As in those thought processes you feel good about yourself being the poor me or being right. These modes could get so addictive that when everything is going fine in our life we still almost ache to have some grievance so that we could slip back into these modes and derive pleasure. Sometimes just to see that you are on a pursuit that could fetch gratification gives pleasure.

e. In many cases the very lack of success to receive psychological comfort makes people land in physical addictions to somehow feel that ease.

As we pursue any kind of physical or psychological pleasure, if we observe we could see that after that initial excitement, it slowly begins to decline and every time there is expectation to repeat the same, there is some kind of shortfall. It keeps reducing until it almost looks monotonous.

If we see it from a neurological perspective, it is dopamine released by the hypothalamus. This happens every time when we get excited and brain has this function of releasing lesser amounts of dopamine every time when the same experience repeats. So naturally the brain is designed to feel less pleasure when the event repeats.

We could even say that there is a constant effort to move from fear into pleasure. Man often looks for every kind of comfort to evade from fear.

Now what is joy?
At OWA, we describe joy to be absence of conflict. When one comes out of conflict, he is invariably in joy.

By and large, these are the two predominant mental states that one stays in or moves back and forth. It is either conflict or joy.
Joy is not much about the self; it is more about the experience.

Man is basically filled with frameworks i.e Ideas, notions, beliefs, dogmas etc. Most often these frameworks make use of us in lack of awareness.

In the awareness of these frameworks, in that attention the framework doesn't make use of you and what is there is joy.
There are of course spontaneous moments of joy and secondly in our courses we take people through the process of self enquiry which leads to awareness and that awareness is joy.

It is then that you are not made use of and you are not stuck.
So one important insight we could see is that when there is growth, there is joy. The very feeling that i am growing gives us joy.
Joy in a way is a journey from unawareness to awareness.

That’s why in our ANB course we talk about the growth formula which is -RT+RA+F=G=J

We cannot really call joy and pleasure as an antithesis of each other. Even during a pleasurable moment one can feel joy due to absence of conflict.

It is possible for one to be traveling in a private jet crossing the atlantic and still feel a deep sense of joy inside.
It is only that pleasure alone is` not the solution in order to avoid inner conflict, though pleasure by itself is perfectly fine.
At OWA, we don't really call anything to be inferior or superior. Pleasure tends to get saturated after a while for various reasons including neurological factors as we saw. As long as one pursues for pleasure in a constructive manner, it is wonderful to have a comfortable life of course with an added mental state of joy, that could elevate the experience to a all new level.

While pleasure is more about achievement, joy is all about moving forward and enjoying the very journey and even the end. Well in that case one cannot really determine where one ends and the other begins.

Even awareness of pleasure is joy.

What does man simply want?
He just wants to feel ease at varying degrees from the time he gets up until night though sleep itself does give him a whole lot of ease. How does he go about pursuing this ease in him.

The question is whether he wants an ease that evades conflict or an ease that is free from conflict. Joy is a process of growth which frees him from conflict.

This joy is happiness.
Quite often one even feels this joy while in service and contribution. When we see ourselves being a medium in bringing smiles to people’s faces, it is for sure a very beautiful feeling of fulfillment which is joy. Starting from random acts of kindness to a heartfelt mission for helping people, it is always a feeling that nobody can regret.

At times this very passion to serve itself could be so addictive that one forgets about personal pleasure.

From conflict free life to candid moments of services it is all one beautiful life that we could live.