It’s a pleasure that doesn’t depend on sensory input or sensual desire. It’s a different kind of pleasure and, as a result, a much clearer pleasure. The mind is less intoxicated by it because you’re not harming anyone.

"Take the noble eightfold path. The Buddha teaches it as middle that avoids sensual indulgence and self torture. This doesn’t mean that you lead a middling life halfway between torture and indulgence, torturing yourself a little bit and allowing yourself a little pleasure. The path actually involves a very intense level of pleasure in right concentration. But it’s a different kind of pleasure, and you relate to it in a different way from how you normally relate to pleasure. That takes it off the continuum.

To begin with, it’s a pleasure based not on the pleasures of the senses, but on the ability of the mind to settle down and be still. This is off the continuum of sensual pleasure and sensual pain. It’s a pleasure that comes simply from inhabiting the form of your body, being with the breath, the breath energy all around the body, all through the body, experiencing it from the inside. That’s form. It’s also a pleasure that can come as you learn how to direct the energies in the body — finding out where they’re flowing well, where they’re not flowing well, what ways you think about the energies that help them to flow better, where you focus your attention to loosen up the tension. That’s a pleasure that doesn’t depend on sensory input or sensual desire. It’s a different kind of pleasure and, as a result, a much clearer pleasure. The mind is less intoxicated by it because you’re not harming anyone. The pleasures where we have to intoxicate ourselves are the ones where the mind intentionally puts blinders on itself."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Two Kinds of Middle"

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