พระอาจารย์อธิบายว่ากามสุขคือสุขจากรูป รส กลิ่น เสียง สัมผัส และความยินดียินร้าย ทำให้ใจกระเจิดกระเจิงตื่นเต้นเร้าใจ ซึ่งอกุศลใช้เป็นเหยื่อล่อให้เกิดความโลภ ส่วนสุขวิเวกเป็นสุขสงบอันเกิดจากความบริสุทธิ์ ต้องอาศัยความสันโดษเป็นพื้นฐาน แตกต่างกันทั้งสภาวะและปริมาณPra Ajarn explains that sensual happiness comes from sights, tastes, smells, sounds, touches, and the mind's likes and dislikes — scattering and exciting the mind, which the unwholesome uses as bait to provoke greed. The happiness of seclusion is a peaceful happiness arising from purity, resting on contentment — differing from sensual happiness in both nature and measure.
Someone asked: how do we distinguish (kāma-sukha) from the (), which Pra Ajarn has spoken of?
Sensual Happiness: From the Sense-Bases, Scattering the Mind
Sensual happiness arises from sights, tastes, smells, sounds, touches, and mental objects, because we view the world through eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body. The world has an outer dimension, sensed through the sense-bases, and an inner dimension, through the mind with its likes and dislikes. Happiness from the outer world comes from sights, tastes, smells, sounds, and touches; from the inner world, from gladness and delight. All of this is sensual happiness, which gives excitement, stirred up by our surroundings, scattering the mind so it isn't and still.
The Unwholesome Uses Sensual Happiness as Bait to Provoke Greed
Sensual happiness is bait uses, like bait on a hook, to provoke — guiding one to want more and more, dissfied with what one has and is. This is hard to fulfill, because as much as we've created the causes, the law of karma gives that much result. Wanting more and more comes from the unwholesome guiding one away from .
The Happiness of Seclusion: A Peaceful Happiness From Purity, Resting on Contentment
The happiness of differs completely from sensual happiness. It arises from — a happiness of , calm, seclusion, , , and cleansing, tending toward . It rests on contentment: being satisfied with what one has and is, with restraint as its foundation — this much, and one is content with this much, without greed for more. This is the difference between sensual happiness — which scatters and excites the mind, restless and discontent — and the happiness of seclusion, which calms and quiets the mind, content with what one has and is — differing in both nature and measure.