The Concealment

The Nature of the phenomenon is this, the pleasure derived from the objects of the natural world appears to exist in the objects themselves.

This is the delusion that plagues the pleasure seeker. Pleasure is concealed in the objects of corporeality, but it does not reside in them.

Imagine it this way,

You visit a new restaurant and try a piece of chocolate cake for dessert. It is absolutely decadent. It is everything you could have hoped for. Pleasure is maximal. Since you had this very tangible experience, you attribute the sensory satisfaction to the object that you received it from. You fully heartedly believe the cake is responsible for the pleasure.

However, say you were to return to the restaurant the following day and let's assume all the preparations were the exact same. Essentially in every way, this piece of cake is a replica of yesterday's slice.

Today when you try the cake it still tastes good, but it's lacking the intensity of the pleasure sensation.

Most people will say that is because it is no longer a novel experience, once you've experienced something for the first time, you're unlikely to derive the same amount of pleasure from it.

This is the idea behind " chasing the first high." Whereby drug users are often seeking the euphoric experience they first had from a drug.

The science behind that may be far more complex than the analogy is suggesting, but the point stands. The objects of the natural world do not within themselves offer pleasure. If they did, in truth we would receive pleasure from them every time we interact with them.

The pleasure is not in the object, the pleasure is in the consciousness of the individual.  The objects give us something to project that experience onto. This is the nature of the concealment. The true source of pleasure remains hidden.

Seeking pleasures from worldly objects is actually a very finite process. There is only so much we may derive there. Any source of pleasure in corporeality will eventually lead to pain if overindulged.

Beyond the pleasure pain dichotomy is the true infinite source of fulfillment. This state is known as " peace that surpasses understanding,"

From this space we are merely observing the objects and the sensations whether they be painful or pleasurable. With enough practice, we come to understand that these two extremes are really the two extremes of the unified process of sensation. All sensation exists somewhere between these two extremes and going too far in either direction will lead to the other.

Being centered situates us right in the middle of these two extremes and eventually to transcendence of them.

In the transcendent space, we are undisturbed by the objects of corporeal reality. They merely exist as content of our conscious awareness in a space where fulfillment is the constant because it is perfectly united with its source.