Step five: pleasure and pain balance each other out
The central theory of sudism is simple but profound: pleasure and pain always balance each other out. They are intertwined in such a way that they cannot be separated. The more overall pleasure we want to experience in our lives, the more overall pain we will receive. Few of us may have considered this idea. But many great thinkers, including Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and pioneering physician Paul Brand, have described pleasure and pain as “twins” that were difficult if not impossible to separate. Indian philosopher Dr. Bhagavan Das observed, “After pleasure, pain; after pain, pleasure. They are always balancing up, in the long run or the short run, on all possible scales.” And Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States of America, wrote himself that “every creature hath as much pleasure as pain” and that “Pleasure and Pain are inseparable.”
Continue to step six.