What's wrong with pleasant experiences in meditation?

DairyLama

I've noticed quite a lot of ambivalence towards pleasant experiences in meditation, as if they're a bad thing. But to take the example of mindfulness of breathing, the Anapanasati Sutta makes it clear that pleasant feelings ( piti and sukha ) should arise if the practice is being done correctly.
Thoughts?

Zero

I think it's less a point of repressing or avoiding pleasant experiences in meditation and more a point on your relationship with those experiences as they arise - early temptation is to consider that meditation shall cure all ills - elation can all too soon turn to frustration and dissatisfaction.

andyrobyn

Ambivalence is not the goal and from instruction and my experience dispassion does not have the flavour and energy of ambivalence, which entails uncertainty and conflict to at least some extent.

enko

I think its the attachment which is the problem people talk about

As long as it all comes and goes and there is no clinging i don't see the problem.....pleasant feelings are pretty easy to cling to and chase though!

genkaku

I always liked the encouragement, "The hard stuff is easy. It's the easy stuff that's hard."

DairyLama

I think its the attachment which is the problem people talk about

Yes, attachment may be an issue for more experienced practitioners, but I suspect the main problem for beginners is not getting concentrated enough to experience those pleasant feelings in the first place.

how

There is nothing wrong with pleasant experiences in meditation. In fact, they are useful for the balanced development of our meditative muscles.
Usually in life we are attracted to the pleasant, avoid the unpleasant and are ambivalent about the neutral experiences.
Meditation teaches us that we no longer have to be subject to those conditioned responses.
Unpleasant & neutral phenomena are often spoken more casually about because they provide little inducement for a newer meditation student to become attached to. Pleasant experiences however, because of there seductive allure are often more difficult to address and so teachers just make more noise about them.

KarunaDharmakaya

Enjoy the pleasant feelings(it isnt like their going to go away for about an hour anyway)