Pleasure

While Neopagans don’t have many well-established sacred writings, this phrase from Wicca’s “Charge of the Goddess” is familiar to most: “All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals”. In other words, the Goddess is honored through our living lives of love and pleasure.

This seems to be a predominant view in many forms of paganism. In the Pacific islands, the word aloha, commonly known as a phrase of greeting, represents a philosophy of healthful and pleasurable life. Derived from alo (to share) and ha (breath), the word means “to share the breath of life”. Breath is essential to life, and mindful breathing means taking time to be in the present, to enjoy the moment.

In The Pleasure Prescription, Paul Kaikena Pearsall creates a Hawaiian language anagram of aloha to describe the essential components of Polynesian belief and practice:
Ahonui: patience, to be expressed with perseverance
Lokahi: unity, to be expressed harmoniously
‘Olu’olu: agreeableness, to be expressed pleasantly
Ha’aha’a: humbleness, to be expressed modestly
Akahai: gentleness, to be expressed tenderly

Contemporary Taoist author Deng Ming-Dao writes in 365 Tao:

If what comes our way is occasionally wonderful, no one should deny our enjoyment. As long as we have behaved responsibly, there is nothing wrong with enjoying the best that life has to offer. Look at a cat as she stretches out contentedly in the sun. There is no thought of the next moment, only the sheer enjoyment of the present…. She is without anxieties, and so she is purely and totally who she should be. She acts as if she were nature’s favorite. And who is to say otherwise?

In all this talk about spiritual devotion, there is one simple fact. You have to like it. It should make you happy. It is unfortunate that so much coercion, unhappiness, bitterness, guilt, and fear become wrapped up in spirituality. Why can’t we simply do things out of joy?

While Taoists generally temper their desires, one early text, Yang Chu’s Garden of Pleasure (book 7 of Lieh Tzu), contains a chapter titled “The Happy Voluptuaries”, in which the brothers of Tse-Chan, the governor of Cheng, respond to his admonitions about their hedonistic life styles:
"You value proper conduct and righteousness in order to excel before others, and you do violence to your feelings and nature in striving for glory. That to us appears to be worse than death. Our only fear is lest, wishing to gaze our fill at all the beauties of this one life, and to exhaust all the pleasures of the present years, the repletion of the belly should prevent us from drinking what our palate delights in, or the slackening of our strength not allow us to revel with pretty women. We have no time to trouble about bad reputations or mental dangers. Therefore for you to argue with us and disturb our minds merely because you surpass others in ability to govern, and to try and allure us with promises of glory and appointments, is indeed shameful and deplorable.
See now. If anybody knows how to regulate external things, the things do not of necessity become regulated, and his body has still to toil and labour. But if anybody knows how to regulate internals, the things go on all right, and the mind obtains peace and rest. Your system of regulating external things will do temporarily and for a single kingdom, but it is not in harmony with the human heart, while our method of regulating internals can be extended to the whole universe, and there would be no more princes and ministers. We always desired to propagate this doctrine of ours, and now you would teach us yours."
Tse-Chan in his perplexity found no answer. Later on he met and informed Teng-hsi. Teng-hsi said: "You are living together with real men without knowing it. Who calls you wise? Cheng has been governed by chance, and without merit of yours."