Understanding Your Middos - 32 Pleasure and It's Purpose

“Oneg”/Real Pleasure Vs. “Nega”/Fake Pleasure

The middos of taavoh (desire) and oneg (pleasure) come from the element of water in the soul. Generally, lusts and desires are evil, while pleasure, oneg\taanug, is referring to a good way to experience enjoyment. What is taavah\desire, and what is oneg\pleasure – and why are they different?

Pleasure, the power of taanug in the soul, is when one really and honestly enjoys something. The Sefer Yetzirah writes that “There is nothing more good than oneg (good pleasure), and there is nothing more evil than nega (evil pleasure).” The opposite of oneg – real pleasure – is when we flip around the letters of this word, and we get “nega”. When one misuses oneg\pleasure, the oneg becomes nega; the pleasure becomes evil.

We must have oneg on Shabbos, and we must have oneg in serving Hashem. If the concept of pleasure is good and holy, then what is the difference between good pleasure, oneg, and evil pleasure, nega?

When one just enjoys himself, for no other purpose other than enjoyment, his pleasure is evil. He’s not getting anything out of his pleasure – what he wants is really far away from him, and he is just left with the pleasure involved in trying to get it. But when a person has real pleasure – oneg – he attains something through his pleasure. When a person enjoys Shabbos, he has oneg Shabbos, and he is actually feeling Shabbos; such pleasure is the good and holy kind of pleasure. By contrast, when a person eats during the weekdays, there is no oneg Shabbos, he doesn’t have the true kind of oneg. He is left with just physical pleasure from the food.

What is the difference between good pleasure, oneg, and bad pleasure, nega?

Good pleasure, oneg, comes as a result of ahavah\true love. When a person has real love for something, the pleasure he gets out of it will be good. But evil pleasure is when the pleasure is coming simply from a desire, or a lust, for what the person wants. If a person’s pleasure comes from genuine “love”, then it is rooted in holiness. But if a person just “desires” the pleasure, and he has no real love for what he is attempting to enjoy, then the pleasure he feels is evil.

Why is it that a desire and lust for pleasure is bad, while a real love for pleasure is good? What is the difference between “desiring” pleasure, which is evil, then the real “love” for pleasure, which is good?

We can see the answer to this from how our body experiences pleasure.  The power of oneg in the soul is also found in the body. The part in the body that gives a person physical pleasure is his Bris Kodesh (the male organ, which gives a man pleasure during marital relations). When a person performs his marital relations in the right way, with the proper motivations and intent, the physical pleasure that he experiences from it can reveal to his the soul’s power of pleasure to the person, which is rooted in holiness. But, this part of a man’s body is also called the “ervah.” Ervah comes the word ra – “evil”. Pleasure can be good or evil.

This, if a person has a true love for whom he is having pleasure with, then he has oneg, the right kind of pleasure, because his pleasure is coming together with genuine love for the other. But if a person just has a mere desire for the other person, but not genuine love, then whatever pleasure he has with the other is evil.

The Purpose of Pleasure is to Enable Connection

The superficial kind of pleasure, nega, is the kind of pleasure where a person feels, “I am receiving pleasure.” But the true kind of pleasure is when a person feels that he is connected to a Source, to be connected to Hashem – like the Mesillas Yesharim writes about serving Hashem, “to take pleasure upon Hashem.” Pleasure is good and holy whenever it is used as a way for me to connect better with whom I’m trying to connect to.

The Mesillas Yesharim says that we were created to bask in the spiritual pleasure of enjoying the Shechinah. What does this mean? This doesn’t mean that a person wants to “get” enjoyment from the Shechinah. If desiring the Shechinah would be the same as desiring something physical, only that we have changed the address of our pleasure, then pleasure from the Shechinah would in essence be no different than desiring a physical pleasure.

Rather, desiring to bask in the pleasure of the Shechinah means that one wants to connect himself to the Shechinah. He’s not in it for the pleasure; he wants to have an actual connection with the Shechinah, and pleasure of course results from this, but he’s not doing it for the sake of the pleasure.

Thus, if a person wants to simply “take” pleasure from his relationship with Hashem, and that is why he serves Hashem, then his pleasure is not oneg, and it instead resembles nega, the evil and unhealthy kind of pleasure.

Without pleasure, it would be impossible to connect to anything. Pleasure helps us connect to what we should be connected to. That is the purpose of pleasure, and that is why we should use it. If we use pleasure as a tool to connect to what we want to connect to, it is oneg. If pleasure is used as a goal unto itself, it becomes evil and unhealthy – nega.

The sefer Eglai Tal writes that “a person must enjoy learning Torah, and even though a person enjoys is still enjoying it, it is still considered learning Lishmah.” But this is only true if a person is enjoying his learning in order to connect to the Torah. If a person is just learning for the enjoyment, then of course this is not considered learning Lishmah, even according to the words of the Eglai Tal.

Our life is really full of connections. All the mitzvos we have are essentially 613 different connections we must have with Hashem. The connection deepens with the more pleasure we have.

When we learn Torah, we are more connected to out learning with the more pleasure we have in it. The more we want to learn shows how much pleasure we have in it, and this deepens our bond with the Torah. But if a person just learns Torah and he doesn’t really want it, he has no pleasure in his learning, and his connection to the Torah will be very weak as a result.

The purpose of Creation is so that we can reach a true connection to Hashem. In order to connect, we need pleasure. So life is really all about pleasure – the right kind of pleasure. All of our bechirah, our free will to choose right from wrong, is essentially to choose which pleasure we want to have – the good kind of pleasure (pleasure as a means for connection to spirituality) or evil pleasure (pleasure for the sake of pleasure).

Thus, we must find pleasure in anything we are involved in that’s good, in order for us to connect to that good.

Lasting Pleasure Only Comes from Water, Not Earth

Most people are not utilizing their element of water in the soul enough. They are only living with their element of earth - which Adam was cursed with after he sinned, “Dirt you are, and to dirt you will return.” Since most people are only in touch with their element of earth and not enough with their element of water, most people do not have true pleasure on this world. They are lacking water in their souls.

By utilizing our element of water in the soul, our life can become full of true pleasure, the pleasure in serving Hashem.

Most people are only experiencing pleasure from time and time, and not often enough. The pleasure that we do experience is only from the water rooted in earth, which is a dry kind of water – like desert water, which is black and dirty. It’s evil pleasure. When we get pleasure from this source – with whatever “water” that our “earth” has to offer us – what happens? We get thirstier. It will just give us a desire for even more pleasure, because we are left unquenched. But when a person utilizes his element of water in the soul, he can experience true pleasure, as ongoing basis, all the time.

When Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge, he essentially fell from his level of true pleasure to evil, false pleasure. Ever since the sin, our lives have become mixed up of healthy and unhealthy pleasure at once. Most of us are therefore only using our earth element in the soul, and so we don’t have constant pleasure - only sometimes (and even that pleasure isn’t so real).

There are people who spend their whole day in pleasure, of course, but this is evil.

What indeed is true pleasure? Pleasure comes from our element of water in the soul. Just like water has nothing to hold it with, and we cannot take water in our hands, so is pleasure not possible for us to “take.” So if we want real pleasure, we cannot look to “take” pleasure; that is just desire and lust. Only if our intention is not to take, but to form a connection through the pleasure, can the pleasure be good and healthy.

The Torah is called “water” – as the Sages say, “There is no water except Torah.” Why is this so? It is because the Torah is what we connect ourselves to. It is the ultimate pleasure which we must come to love. But that is only true when we are indeed using the Torah as a way to connect to Hashem. If we just want to enjoy the Torah, without trying to connect to Hashem through our learning, it is not real pleasure - because it is pleasure without the goal of connecting, which cannot be real pleasure.

Taking A Look At Our Friendships

In our own friendships, this concept is very relevant as well. If a person just wants to receive pleasure from his friends, then he will have no genuine friendships. But if a person really wants to have a connection with his friend, this is true friendship, and he will also end up enjoying the friendship as a result.

To clarify, pleasure is meant for us to use as a tool to connect to others with, but connection should never be used a tool to have a desire for something, because then it’s not about connection anymore. We have to make sure not to mix up our goal of our connections.

If you want to have true friendships with others, ask yourself the following: When you are friends with someone, what is more important to you – the enjoyment you get out of it, or the actual connection that you share with the other? If you only love someone because of the pleasure you get out of him, then as soon as you stop enjoying the friendship, the friendship will one day disappear. As Chazal say, “Love that is dependent on something does not last.”

Although you get pleasure out of your relationships, your actual motivation should be in the bond you have with the other, not what you are getting out of it.