Thought cannot do anything about it

We must be aware of the nature of pleasure and what gives it strength and vitality, which again is thought. It’s really very, very simple if one understands it: we see a woman, a car, a child, a house, a picture, or we listen to music; seeing, feeling, censoring that picture, that building, that woman, thought thinks about it and gives to that pleasure strength and continuity. When we understand this we see at the same time that, where there is pursuit of pleasure, there is always the shadow of pain, the avoidance, the resistance. Thought creates resistance around itself so that it will have no pain at all. Thought lives in this artificial pleasure because of something that it has had or wants to have. If thought says, “I understand this very well and I must act to get beyond it,” the beyond becomes another form of pleasure created by thought. Thought has built a psychological structure of pleasure. Seeing the nature of it, seeing that there is pain in it, thought says, “I must do something else: I must act differently, I must behave differently. I mustn’t think about pleasure; I must resist pleasure, I must do this and that.” The very action which thought creates about pleasure is still pleasure. Thought cannot do anything about it.\t\tCollected Works, Vol. XVI – 146