Pleasure
Sukha Sutta (AN 6:78)
“Monks, endowed with six qualities, a monk dwells in the here & now with an abundance of pleasure & happiness, and his source for the ending of the effluents has been activated. Which six?
“There is the case where a monk is one who delights in the Dhamma, one who delights in developing (skillful qualities), one who delights in abandoning (unskillful qualities), one who delights in seclusion, one who delights in the unafflicted,1 one who delights in non-objectification.2
“Endowed with these six qualities, a monk dwells in the here & now with an abundance of pleasure & happiness, and his source for the ending of the effluents has been activated.”
Notes
1. The unafflicted, abyāpajjha, is an epithet for unbinding. See SN 43. Given that this sutta discusses the types of delight that get one started on the path, it would seem that to delight in the unafflicted would mean to delight in the prospect of attaining an unafflicted state.
2. “Objectification” is a translation of papañca. Although in some circles papañca has come to mean a proliferation of thinking, in the Canon it refers not to the amount of thinking, but to a type of thinking marked by the classifications and perceptions it uses. As Sn 4:14 points out, the root of these classifications and perceptions is the thought, “I am the thinker.” From this assumption grow such classifications as “me/not me,” “existing/not existing,” which frame experience in terms conducive to further becoming. DN 21 and MN 18 discuss the relationship between objectification and conflict. AN 4:173 states that the range of objectification is identical with the range of the six sense media. SN 43 lists non-objectification, nippapañca, as one of many epithets for unbinding.
