... FIVE LEVELS OF PLEASURE ...

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Asked what we want for our children, we'd say, "Their happiness."

Let's assume that G-d is the father of all people. All right, so He creates the entire world to bestow pleasure upon His children.

What kind of pleasures do you want your children to enjoy? Good food, vacations, tennis, music. Is that all?

No. You want them to have deeper pleasures than food or tennis - You'd like them to have a rewarding career. You'd like them to get married and have children ... If at age 30, they'd rather play tennis all day than work or get married, wouldn't you be pretty frustrated? You'd want them to reach for more enriching experiences.

That's what G-d wants for us. And that's what the Torah comes to teach. That's why it's called "Torah L'Chaim" (pronounced "chayeem" with a short "a") which literally means "Instructions for Living."

G-d made a beautiful world to give us pleasure. But life is complicated. Whether it's making a marriage work or reaching our potential, the path is often fraught with obstacles. The Torah is the owner's manual. If you want to squeeze all the goodness out of life, you need to study the instructions.

THE PLEASURE PLANE

The second best way? Second class. Notice that no airline calls it "second class." Instead they use designations like, "business class, executive class, ambassador class," etc. Nobody wants to think of themselves as traveling second class.

Third class is called, "tourist, coach, economy," etc. - but never "third class" ... So what's fourth class? That's where they put you down below with the animals in the luggage compartment. And fifth class? ... they give you a rope and say, "Hang on."

The sad thing is that many people travel through life in fifth class, just barely hanging on. And sometimes they let go.

A book called "Final Exit" was on the NY Times Best Seller list for months. It's a technical instruction manual for how to commit suicide in the comfort of your own home. This book sold a million copies in the United States; imagine how many people are not getting enough pleasure to make the effort of living worthwhile.

WHAT IS FIFTH CLASS PLEASURE?

Thousands of experiences fall into the category of physical pleasure - e.g. anything that involves the "five senses." You can smell it, touch it, taste it, see it, hear it.

G-d made a physical world not to frustrate us, but for us to enjoy ... So our Sages teach, for example, that the elderly should sit in the sun ... No matter how much an old person appreciates wisdom and learning, he also has to treat his body well. And so even when his physical strength has dwindled, he can still derive enough delight from the warmth of the sun.

The Talmud say that if a person has the opportunity to taste a new fruit and refuses to do so, he will have to account for that in the World-to-Come.

So what's so special about fruits? The answer is that G-d could have created bland oatmeal with all the vitamins and minerals necessary for our survival. But fruits are the dessert the Almighty made for us. It's a labor of love - Can you imagine making a delicious dinner for your spouse, and then he or she refuses to try it? Refusing to taste it shows a lack of appreciation.

Growing up in Western society, we may have heard the idea that "physical pleasure is evil." This may stem from the Catholic view ... where bodily pleasure such as sex (even within the context of marriage) is considered a concession to man's weaker and baser instincts. And that's why the most spiritual Catholics - priests and nuns, are celibate. Another reason celibacy has been useful to the Church might be (I say 'might') that it insures a lack of inheritance of wealth outside the Church, with the obvious exception of the Borgia family (most interesting reading). Marriage keeps it in the family whereas celibacy keeps property in the Church.

Judaism says that sex is one of the holiest acts we can perform ... In fact, the Hebrew word for the marriage ceremony - "kiddushin," comes from the word "kadosh" - holy ... That's why on Friday night ... Shabbos, the holiest day of the week, the Rabbis specifically enjoined couples to have relations.

FOURTH CLASS PLEASURE: LOVE

To discover fourth class pleasure, ask yourself: What is something that is worth more than all the money in the world? ... Love.

Imagine the case of Bert, an investment banker in a major Wall Street financial firm. He spends most of his days trying to reach his lifelong goal of earning $10 million. He and his wife have three kids.

One day, a wealthy philanthropist named Harry, who unfortunately has no children, decides to make Bert a very generous offer ... Harry says, "You're spending your whole life to make $10 million dollars, right? ... I'll give you the biggest shortcut of your financial career. I'll offer you $10 million dollars in exchange for the rights to adopt one of your children. Your child will have the best of everything. But the only condition is that you will never be able to see or hear from your child again."

What does Bert say? - Ten million dollars certainly gets his attention. But even he realizes that there are things in life that you can't put a price tag on. Bert stares Harry right between the eyes and announces: "No deal."

Ten million dollars ... that's a mind-boggling amount of fifth class pleasure ... and it won't induce him to sell one child ... There is no exchange rate from fifth class to fourth class pleasure. True love is not worth trading for any amount of money.

Now imagine the scene. Bert has just shut the door on $10 million dollars. He walks back into his living room where he sees his three kids are playing on the living room floor. What do you think he does when he sees them?

He runs over, and with tears in his eyes, gives them each a big hug and kiss. "You darling creatures are worth more than all the money in the universe!"

Then he stops and realizes ... "Where have I been all their lives? I have something at home that's worth more to me than all the money in the world - and I'm working so hard I'm lucky if I spend an hour a week with them."

So what does Bert do? ... He calls the office, announces he's taking a two-week vacation, and sends the maids, nannies and baby-sitters away. He's going to spend two blissful weeks with his kids.

After struggling for an hour to get the stroller open, Bert finally makes it to the park. They have a grand time ... But then comes dinner, bath and story time. After enduring food fights, floods in the bathtub and endless readings of "Babar Goes to the Circus," Bert flops down on the couch, turns to his wife and says ... "Perhaps I was a bit hasty when I decided to take that two week vacation. You know I have a lot of responsibilities at work ..."

BE A CONNOISSEUR OF GOURMET LIVING

Tapping into the deeper, more subtle pleasures is what it takes to be a true connoisseur, we see that we barbarians are totally unaware of the richness available in a glass of wine.

So too are the pleasures of life ... Our world is rich with bounty and treasures: the sights and smells, relationships and energies, potential and achievement ... Yet we often appear unaware of the wealth available to us human beings. Only a barbarian would guzzle wine ... Shouldn't we accord the same respect to life itself?

So in our story, what's the problem with Bert? He's not a connoisseur ... He hasn't learned what love is and how to get the pleasure of love. He doesn't need a course in wine tasting, he needs a course in human tasting.

The first step is to define what "love" is exactly.

The Talmud defines love as ... the emotional pleasure we get when focusing on the virtues of another ... If you do that, then even if the kids are throwing meatballs across the room, you can still love them - and discipline them at the same time.

Without a clear understanding of what love is, all you'll be able to focus on is the effort and pain involved in raising kids, and you'll come to conclude that it's just too taxing.

FOCUS ON THE PLEASURE, NOT THE EFFORT

To truly succeed in pursuit of pleasure, you have to learn to focus on the pleasure and not on the effort. Switch the focus and you switch the feeling.

Imagine a team of basketball players ... running around the court, and pushing themselves to the limit, just to score a basket. Do they notice the pain they're feeling? No. The pleasure of playing and scoring overwhelms their feeling pain.

So we ask them to do the following experiment - "Play basketball as you would normally - run, jump, shoot, and defend. But this time do all of that without the ball."

Now for how long do you think they could play? Five minutes? ... Because without the ball, there is no pleasure to distract them from the pain; every step now seems like a major effort.

Give them back the ball, and they'll play for another two hours.

Judaism says: Keep your eye on the ball. If you want the ultimate in living, then focus… and make every effort a pleasure.

THE PRICE YOU PAY FOR LOVE IS COMMITMENT

Ask an expectant mother or father if they're going to love the child they're about to have. What will they say? "Of course we are."

"But how do you know your kid is not going to be a brat like the neighbor's kids?"

"We don't know, but we'll love him anyways. Just like the parents of the neighbor's kids love them even though they're a little obnoxious."

Notice the parents don't say, "Well, we'll have the kid, get to know him, and then we will decide, based on his personality, if we want to keep him or not" ... That is ridiculous. As parents, they're naturally committed - in spite of any weaknesses the child might have.

Where would you expect relationships to work more successfully - relationships between spouses, or relationships between parents and their children? In truth, you would expect to see much less breakups between husbands and wives than between parents and children ... A spouse is someone we choose to marry, while children are accidents of birth.

But in reality, nobody divorces children, yet people divorce their spouses. Why is that? Because the commitment to love is natural between parent and child, but it has to be earned between husband and wife. If you don't make that commitment, then your spouse might drive you up the wall… and straight into divorce court.

BEWARE OF COUNTERFEIT PLEASURES

Just as there is counterfeit money, there is counterfeit pleasure - an illusion of what true pleasure really is.

There is one counterfeit pleasure that, more than any other, inhibits our attaining of true pleasure:

What is the opposite of pain? ... Nine out of ten people will say, "Pleasure."

And it would be wrong. The actual opposite of pain is "no pain" - i.e. comfort. And while comfort may be very nice, it is not the ultimate pleasure. A person who goes through life chasing comfort will be very disappointed. That's because as much as everyone tries to minimize pain in life, the fact remains that pain is unavoidable. In fact, real pleasure is inseparable from pain. Here's an example:

What would you say is your parents' greatest "pleasure?" ... That's right, you.

What would you say is your parents' greatest "pain?" ... The same answer. You.

It's not an accident that your parents' greatest pleasure is also the source of their greatest pain. Because the greater the pleasure, the greater the effort required.

Therefore ... if you want to succeed in life, the key is not to eliminate pain entirely (for that is impossible), but rather to learn how to understand and accept the pain.

THE COUNTERFEIT OF LOVE: INFATUATION

Two people are alone in Central Park, walking under the full moon. Cupid sneaks up behind them and shoots them with an arrow. Now they're hopelessly in love - They get married; eventually they have kids, a big house, a large mortgage. The husband has to work hard to pay the bills, so he stays overtime at the office. Late one night, while he's working with his secretary, Cupid sneaks up and shoots him again ... Now he's in love with his secretary. He comes back to his wife and says, "What can I do, honey, that bum shot me. I fell in love with the secretary." So out goes the wife, in comes the secretary.

That's love, Greek style. Love is not something you choose, love is something that "happens" to you. Effort-free loving. Easy come, easy go. According to the Greeks, how do you keep a marriage together? Hope you don't get shot by Cupid again.

This is not love. Rather this is the counterfeit, infatuation. Real love is forever.

Imagine this scene: A man comes home one day, gathers his children around the dining room table and announces to them that he's fallen madly in love with the neighbor's children, and would you mind packing up your belongings, they'll be moving in.

We don't fall out of love with our kids because we're committed to loving them.

Infatuation is not love, it's just physical attraction. How do you know if you are in love or infatuated? If you ever catch yourself saying, "They're perfect," then beware! That's not reality. That's a sure sign of infatuation.

Real love takes work. If you want that pleasure, it's available within every relationship. But you have to be willing to make the effort.

THIRD CLASS PLEASURE: MEANING

What's a higher pleasure than love?

Meaning. Fighting for a cause. The desire to be good. To have self esteem.

It's a pleasure worth sacrificing even the deepest love.

Here's an illustration: Just imagine you're a successful surgeon. You're famous, you're rich, you have a marvelous spouse and beautiful kids. You're president of your synagogue, and you've just been nominated to receive an honorary doctorate from Harvard University. Life is grand.

You're traveling through the Far East with some friends. And one night, while your friends are out at a movie, the Secret Police come to your hotel room and say, "Your friends have been identified as dangerous spies. Tell us where they are - or we'll kill you."

Uh-oh. What do you do? If you don't cooperate - they'll kill you.

Of course, turning over your friends is a terrible thing to do. On the other hand, nobody will ever know you did it. (The Secret Police certainly won't advertise the episode.) You can still be a successful surgeon, still have your beautiful family, still be rich and famous - and still make it home in time for the Harvard graduation.

What do you do? ... Do you see the internal struggle?

Now let's up the ante. What if the Secret Police asked you to kill 1,000 children? "Kill 1,000 children and you can go back to the States to your beautiful life." Do you think you'd ever be able to do such a thing? No. We simply don't have what it takes to be evil. (And even if you could bring yourself to kill the children... you'd probably go back home and shoot yourself.)

This scenario reveals something very deep in the makeup of every human being: Being good is so important that we'd even be willing to die for it.

Even though this scenario is extreme, focusing on this gives you a way of knowing what is important to you. Because if you know what you're willing die for, then you'll know what to be living for. Which means to say that if you're willing to give up your life to be "good," then it's a great goal in living to be good.

Now go out and live for it. Harness that force within you. Pursue wisdom to understand how to be good. Plan for it. Make goodness your goal in living. Be willing to give up everything. Because even if you lose, you're still the "Good Person." They can call you a fool, they may even ignore you. But at least you've tried, you fought, you did the right thing. And you're not doing anyone any favors by being good. You're just doing what the "inner you" wants.

Nobel was one of the world's largest producers of dynamite. Upon his brother's death, the local newspaper mistakenly thought Alfred had died and wrote an obituary about him. When Alfred Nobel read his own obituary and saw that his life amounted to so much destruction and killing, he was devastated. This is my life? I've got to do more. It was then that he decided to start the Nobel Prize.

To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, "if you don't know what you're willing to die for, you haven't begun to live." Until you found that cause, all you're chasing is Fifth Class and Fourth Class Pleasure. You're not really living life to the hilt. You're playing with monopoly money.

THE DIFFICULTY OF ENJOYING BEING GOOD

Imagine you're visiting some city, you're on vacation. It's an island city. You're taking an excursion boat around the city enjoying the view.

All of a sudden, a guy falls off the boat. You're the only one around who knows how to swim, so you jump into the water to try to save him.

You grab the guy ... He pushes you under the water ... You remember the lifesaving course: You relinquish the fight until he gets panicky, then he lets you go. This time you come up from behind him and grab his neck. He's heavy like lead, but you pull him up. You're gasping from the weight. Finally, you drag him up on shore, and the onlookers help you out.

You get back to your hotel, shower, and promise never to go on any vacation again, "home sweet home."

Now it's 30 years later. You've enjoyed 185 vacations: Paris, Hawaii, African Safari, and Disneyworld. Of all your vacations, which was the most memorable?

It was the time the guy fell off the boat and you saved a life! All the while it was happening, you were cursing out the guy for ruining your vacation (and trying to drown you besides). Yet for the rest of your life, you relish the result. You saved a life.

We need to look for opportunities to be good; and this doesn't mean heroics. There are many quiet ways to get meaningful pleasure, without being distracted by headlines. That's not what makes something worthwhile.

In order to develop the skill of appreciating third class Pleasure, sit down at the end of every day, when the effort of what you've done is behind you, and focus your attention on what you did that was good and meaningful. The more you practice this, the more you'll become a connoisseur of being good, and will learn to seek out Third Class Pleasure.

COUNTERFEIT MEANING: "LOOKING GOOD"

The counterfeit of "being good" is "looking good" ... so too many people who expend enormous effort trying to win the admiration of others. Somehow the attainment of status helps convince us that we're worthy of respect ... That's why people readily identify themselves by their profession or career. "I'm a doctor, a stockbroker, a Harvard graduate, etc." If others are impressed, it must be important.

You can see this by the way we dress and by the cars we drive. Do people buy a Lexus because it's so much more comfortable to drive, or because it's a status symbol? ... How do most college students pick a career? If it's based solely on self-fulfillment, you'd probably have a lot fewer lawyers. But somehow, we feel that getting the right degree will make us more worthwhile people.

Don't fall for "looking" good. Self-respect is the genuine article. To really live, you need to tap into the pleasure of being good.

In 1967, three Israeli soldiers were among the first to liberate the Western Wall. Now one of the three soldiers was religious. As he approached the Wall, the depth of the moment overwhelmed him and he began to sob. One of his comrades also began to weep.

The third friend said, "Why are you crying? You're not religious" ... He answered, "Ani bocheh al mah she'ani lo bocheh." "I'm crying because I have nothing to cry for."

You can have a lot of fifth class pleasure, vacations, your dream home, designer cloths ... You can even have all the fourth class pleasure, like a wonderful wife and children; and you can still have a moment in your life when you say, "So what, what has it all led up to? What have I accomplished?"

SECOND CLASS PLEASURE: CREATIVITY

Second class pleasure is the power to create. What does that mean?

Which would you rather be ... the construction worker or the architect? the soldier or the general? Now even though an army cannot function without soldiers, there is greater satisfaction in being a general. Rather than simply follow orders, you have the power to create, to direct, to plan and to conceive.

One of the greatest forms of second class pleasure is creating a family: giving birth to children, then inculcating them with the values to mold them into healthy, productive and caring individuals.

Why is creativity such a thrill? Because it touches the essence of G-d. The highest degree of creativity was G-d's creation of the world ... He made something from absolutely nothing. Only an infinite being can do that. Expressing our own creativity is a taste of that power.

PRICE TAG

The price of creativity is that you have to think, which takes an enormous amount of energy. If you've ever done some really intense studying, you come out hungry and exhausted. Never underestimate the difficulty of making such an effort ... (which may explain why truly creative people are so rarely found) ... As Thomas Jefferson once said, people will go to any amount of effort to avoid the effort of thinking.

But in actuality, "thinking" is an enormous pleasure ... So if I offered you $10 million dollars, would you agree to a frontal lobotomy? Of course not ... Without the ability to think, everything else is meaningless. What's the point of pleasure that you can't appreciate.

ILLUSION AND DESTRUCTION

One of the elements of creativity is having control over what you are creating. So for example, the artist has control over his eye, his arm, and the paint, to translate his ideas into reality ... Sometimes people make the mistake of thinking that simple control makes them creative. Stalin and Hitler (and other tyrants) went for forced control. But they were manipulating the pieces, and in the process were destroying lives and society. It's only an illusion of creativity.

The way to tell if you are creating or controlling is in the result: Creativity gives other people pleasure. Control leads to destruction.

FIRST CLASS PLEASURE: WHAT EVERY HUMAN BEING LONGS FOR

Imagine you have enormous wealth, a beautiful family, power and prestige.

You sit down and reflect on your life. It's satisfying and meaningful. Yet you know there's something missing.

No human being is totally satisfied unless he is in touch with the transcendent dimension. When all is said and done ... what we each seek is to reach out of this finite world and connect with the infinite. To become one with G-d.

Imagine if I said, "We have a little room back here. You can sit down and speak to G-d himself for a whole hour" - Wouldn't that be the ultimate experience? ... It's awesome.

We've all had moments when we've been struck by the awesomeness of life ... and whether it's the birth of a baby, the stars above us or a beautiful sunset; we've all experienced something in life that takes our breath away.

"Awe" is what we feel when we merge our tiny, insignificant selves, with that which is much greater than us. We break beyond our own limitations and touch something so much greater, something infinite. We feel connected to the unity of G-d.

First class pleasure is qualitatively different, and incomparable to any other experience. Nothing finite, nothing bound up in this world, can compare to the infinite.

THE BIG PRICE TAG

To love G-d, you have to learn to appreciate all the good He has done for you. It means giving up the illusion that you alone are responsible for your achievements, and admitting that whatever you have is a gift from G-d. Just as every stroke of Picasso's brush has his unique signature on it, everything in this world has G-d's signature on it. You just have to learn to appreciate it.

Why is gratitude such a difficult awareness to sustain? ... Because a human being's ego always craves recognition and independence ... it balks at the concept of being indebted to a higher power. We prefer to believe we've done it our ourselves.

The counterfeit of first class pleasure is thinking that someone or something else is providing for our needs; if you think that your career or your lover is the bottom line that will fulfill your needs, then you are mistaken. Because all those things can disappear. We know that only G-d has absolute power and only G-d is eternal.

If you make the effort to appreciate the infinite wonders G-d has bestowed upon you, you'll then have a keen awareness of G-d's presence, and that everything you do is accompanied by a sense of His love and guidance; you'll then be overwhelmed above and beyond any other pleasure possible.

In fact, this is the ultimate goal for which man was created. We were put on earth in order to overcome the illusions and use our free will (see link below) to build a relationship with G-d. He could have made robots, but G-d doesn't want that ... He wants a real relationship - which means we have to choose it.

This ultimate pleasure (and all the others too), are attainable only if you remember the fundamentals of pleasure: a) be a connoisseur of gourmet living, b) focus on the pleasure, not the effort, and c) beware of counterfeit pleasures.

It's important to know what you're living for. G-d created us to have pleasure. It's hard work to be an Olympic runner, even harder work to become a champion human being. But we weren't born for comfort. We were born to have pleasure. So travel first class ... Because just like you want only the best for your children, G-d wants the best for you.