This, then, is the human problem: there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without be… - Alan Watts

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

[I]n nature being and nothing, or solid and space, constitute a relationship as inseparable as back and front. In the same way, the formally static character of our words for feelings conceals the fact (or better, the event) that our feelings are directions rather than states, and that in the realm of direction there is no North without South.

There was a young man who said, “Though It seems that I know that I know, What I would like to see Is the ‘I’ that knows ‘me’ When I know that I know that I know.

How shall we escape the heat?” — meaning, of course, the heat of suffering. He answered, “Go right into the middle of the fire.” “But how, then, shall we escape the scorching flame?” “No further pain will trouble you!