Can one be free from pleasure?

And we become addicted to ‘pleasure’ because of the perverted image of what we are conditioned to believe we ‘are’: not the World but a pathetic little isolated ‘thing’.

We have to die to the self. This is not so hard as it sounds. In meditation, the body relaxes, the mind relaxes, and this surrendering of emotions, surrendering of effort, which we can see is a lot of subtle senses of an individual presence, which we are habitually maintaining, all this gives way. Then we are beginning to learn about a true nature.

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K said ,take a small experience that was pleasurable to you and die to that experience.
(start from small pleasures).

I don’t recall his exact quote, but if ‘you’ can “die to” an experience, why not just die to the ‘self’?

Experience is self, self is experience. Why split hairs?

The craving for experience is the activity of the self? Or is it only in certain areas that is so? Acquiring technical knowledge , experience, for example, the self image is not necessarily involved is it?

Looking at myself, all of it, the pleasures, desires, identity, is thought, and image. This is looking at a fundamental process, and what follows are the usual distinctions, exceptions, rationalisations, etc. which are a part of image.

The “image” you refer to is the ‘self-image’? (Or the whole enchilada as we say in Latin.)

If you want to go big why not die to thought which is the producer of the self and pleasure.

Since there’s no other factor in play here in the psyche but thought itself, it has to do its own “dying” to itself doesn’t it?. Any attempts to ‘do’ something with thought brings it into conflict with itself. Can it through awareness of its own activity, bring itself to only operate when it’s appropriate? To not continuously create a “center” or self? To not create this false time for “becoming” which are the words JK has used.
Haven’t we since childhood learning about death, loss, suffering, cruelty, etc. been encouraged to overcome our fear about the future. To be brave. To layer it over with an ‘opposite’. To be strong…and the fear and confusion was never directly dealt with, just suppressed and covered over. Isn’t that the “door” to ourself that has to be gone through? The deep buried motive behind the obsession with ‘stimulation’, sex, entertainment, pleasure, etc.?
How do others see it?

Apart from thinking about and using words, what does anyone actually do to look at themselves, and then see all this conditioning which is their selves?

It seems that our first reaction to any challenge is to oppose or negate to prove that we are right and others are wrong.
As if strengthening the self can possibly resolve the conflict…

Why you say that, as if thought is God and we are not supposed to question God!

One must question everything , because everything is crumbling in this world.

@Incognito

Even I too observed that questioning everything is removing most of the conclusions inside the mind and I see deeply that questioning is an art.

Can share your views on the questioning part?

Questioning one’s motive ,questioning one’s feeling, questioning one’s behavior which means doubting the whole content of one’s consciousness .

@Incognito

I never had a thought in these aspects (motive, feeling, behavior) but it seems acceptable on what you said.

When I am alert, I am aware I have tensions, stress. Then, although it is uncomfortable at first, the attention to my stress, gradually relaxes the tension. Then with this attentiveness, alertness, I am aware I have a lot of thoughts on my mind. I ask myself, what is all this? I’d say it is some kind of habit I have acquired. What is the root of this? There is some kind of psychological disconnect, some unease, and I am constantly exercising the brain, all this thought, as if to overcome, or improve, whatever it is. Anyway, back to the alertness.

@Inquiry

What is the relation between pain and pleasure?

They are both sensations, but we experience them as opposites because the mind, thought, associates pleasure with what it wants, and pain with what it does not want.