Also, the latest BuddhistGeeks post speaks to all this:
http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/2010/12/the-mirage-of-self/
Especially the part about "Feeling Tones":
KF: Yes. It is possible to get caught up in a kind of austerity campaign and beat yourself up every time you have a pleasant experience. That is not what we are after at all because when the objective is to dis-embed from the experience and see it all as arising and passing away and referring back to no one, what difference does it make to you whether it is pleasant or unpleasant? You are certainly not going to favor unpleasant over pleasant. That would not only be counterproductive in terms of enlightenment, it would just be counter-intuitive and foolish, walking around seeking displeasure because you think there is something virtuous in that. That is ridiculous and just another place to be stuck. We’re not going to favor heaven over hell but neither are we going to favor hell over heaven.
JG: At the same time, the Tibetans have a prayer which runs something like “May I have enough suffering that I can discover enlightenment.” So in that there is some recognition that suffering carries with it the incentive to try to find another way or to try to dis-embed. Likewise, the downside of pleasurable states is they do not have that incentive; in fact, we have an incentive to go the other way and cling.
KF: Yes. That is also covered in the teachings on the six realms of existence. The reason it is thought that the human rebirth is the most fortunate rebirth is that to be reborn as a god does not give you the incentive to awaken. Why would anybody want anything other than pleasure? So it is much more likely that a god will just remain embedded in the pleasant experience. On the other side of the coin, a hell being is so busy being embedded in anger or pain that there is very little opportunity for awakening there. But because the human realm has this good, wholesome mix, you could say, of all of the realms—and in fact you can look at the teaching of the six realms and see that they are all contained within the human realm—we have the opportunity here on Earth to awaken. We have some horrible states of unpleasantness, divine states of pleasantness and everything in between. In all of this there are moments where you can insert the wedge of attention, mindfulness, see something clearly and dis-embed from the experience.
When you have dis-embedded once, even for a moment, it is more likely that you will dis-embed the next time. What you said brings to mind something my teacher, Bill Hamilton, said early in my vipassana practice, when I was getting kind of addicted to pain. Pain gave me this very clear object when I was sitting. I would want to sit for a long time and kind of groove on the pain. I felt really good about it. It made me feel kind of tough. I was getting this warrior mentality and getting very concentrated. His comment was, “You don’t have to go looking for suffering. There’s enough coming down the pike.”
For me, the more I do this practice, the more I find that the really interesting challenge is to be awake in any situation. To have this full range of heaven and hell and everything in between and to always find a way to be awake within it—that is so interesting.
JG: The neutral territory, for example, is probably interesting and challenging in ways that a lot of us don’t appreciate.
KF: Yes, because according to Buddhist theory, the neutral part is what we are going to ignore. For background here, you’re talking about feeling-tone. The Pali word is vedana. Feeling-tone refers to the aspect of pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Every feeling in the body has built into it this aspect of being either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral in the moment of its arising. This is not a reaction. This is not some reaction we have to the sensation—this is inherent in the phenomenon itself when it comes up.
I will agree. When the unpleasant/neutral/pleasant continuum expands mightily in the direction of most things being neutral (through the dis-embedding process and seeing in this modern world how little true pain many of us have and how much the sense-pleasures aren't permanent and therefore not really that pleasurable)...(I'm thinking something like, most of the time people experience 60%/10%/30% and maybe after gaining a certain level of insight that shifts to 20%/60%/20%)...anyway, when that happens and most of your experiences move into the "neutral" feeling tone, then this whole vast world of possibility opens up to experience anything without fear of 1) suffering dependent on unpleasant or 2) suffering from attachment to pleasant. I guess that's the practice of accepting things as they are and really being okay with it...not turning away.
Which leads me right back to...from a Sila/Samahdi/Prajna...you focus on the Sila...on choosing the actions that most benefit the world, because at a certain level, you stop being so concerned about how much they benefit you...and what you're able to handle, the difficulty, depends on your level of enlightenment...so what I need to shine insight onto is:
1) where am I? what can I honestly handle without being overwhelmed given my relative level of englightenment?
2) where can I be of most use to easing other sentient-being's suffering in the world?
and since I'm married and have a cat
3) what actions fit with the above two, but also honor the comittments I've made to sustain the physical comfort and security of my loved ones?