Let’s use the analogy of the planer and the chisel. You are carving into a pristine piece of wood, which is your brain. Softwood vs hardwood and grain direction are your genetic disposition. Vertical lines are pleasure and horizontal lines are pain.
The pressure on the chisel is dopamine. Dopamine does not care whether something is nice or nasty. Dopamine is proportional to the intensity of craving.
The reason the Buddha suggests you withdraw from sense pleasures is that they are the only ones you can withdraw from. Pain and suffering are guaranteed.
When you encounter a sense pleasure like ice cream (which I love) you carve a vertical line. You can enjoy the pleasure and let it go like the wind or you can try to hold onto it and wish it lasted longer. If you enjoy it and let it go then the groove will be shallow. If you try to hold on then the pressure will grow and the cut will be deep.
In comes a painful feeling; a horizontal line. If you push away negative feelings with aversion the pressure grows and the cut goes deep. Remove the pressure by becoming equanimous and the feeling will pass; the groove will remain shallow.
In a brain riddled with pleasure-verticals, any pain-horizontals will skip and jump, making things nasty and jarring. New pleasure cuts, meanwhile, will tend to slip into existing gouges instead of being experienced for what they are.
The majority of life is nuanced and winding; lines which ebb and flow. Imagine trying to carve like this in a piece of wood which is checkered with deep valleys. It ain't gonna happen. These experiences we call life are going to skip and jump between vertical and horizontal valleys carved by past craving and aversion. We will flip between pleasure and pain.
So for pleasure and pain alike you want to apply as little pressure as possible. Be equanimous to both. Do not crave for the pleasant to last and do not crave for the painful to be gone. This craving just carves deep grooves and you become up unable to experience the 99% of reality which is winding and complex.
At the end of the day you’re still going to have some grooves carved by encounters with the world, no matter how shallow. This is where you get your planer out. The planer is regulation. It is your easy rhythmic movements and meditation. This is how you take the wood of your mind back to a pristine board, ready to experience the world again.
First time round you will have to plane for a long time; the lifetime of grooves will be deep. You will need to ride and meditate and ride some more. After a while it will start to become smooth, or something will click and wipe the slate clean. Whichever scenario, you’ll become able to experience reality again.
When you do, you want to be careful to only carve shallow grooves going forward. Even fully-enlightened ones (arahants) need to manage their carving and take time to plane their mind when the day is done.
It’s a lovely feedback loop. The openness you feel toward reality means that none of this feels like renunciation in the white-knuckles sense. You intuit how these things improve your world and they fall away effortlessly. After a time, of course.
That first planing session to get back to a clean slate is a lot of work, but every planer can only go one pass at a time, and planers work better with minimal pressure. Get on your bike. Go for a walk. Hum in the bath. Meditate. Whatever works for you. Enjoy it; it's removing the scars from your soul.
Remember: there’s no eternal finish line. Do not crave perfection or awakening or you might just wind up carving another groove.
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