I like to think of the pursuit of pleasure as having a critical time dimension for determining if that pleasure is 'bad' or 'good'.

The second Wikipedia link explains the difference between primary and extrinsic reward, 'wanting' vs 'liking', anhedonia vs aversive salience, and the known information about addiction and neuroanatomy so far. Microinjections of opioids, endocannabinoids, and orexin are capable of enhancing liking in these hotspots. Via the mesolimbic pathway, from VTA dopamine is signalled to the NAcc, which also has similar functions: processing of motivation, aversion, reward (i.e., incentive salience, pleasure, and positive reinforcement), and reinforcement learning.ДЄs of October 2017, hedonic hotspots have been identified in subcompartments within the nucleus accumbens shell, ventral pallidum, parabrachial nucleus, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and insular cortex. positively-valenced emotions ('happy', 'content') associative learning (if a neutral/novel experience is paired with 'painful' or 'enjoyable' innate instinct, it elicits a response on its own: money or your favourite sports team winning) VTA plays an important role in a number of processes, including Therefore, suffering can end because our obscurations can be purified and awakened mind is always available to us.Д«y living ethically, practicing meditation, and developing wisdom, we can take exactly the same journey to enlightenment and freedom from suffering that the buddhas do. They are like passing clouds that obscure the sun of our enlightened nature, which is always present. The good news is that our obscurations are temporary. We suffer because of our mistaken belief that we are a separate, independent, solid вЂњI.вЂќ The painful and futile struggle to maintain this delusion of ego is known as samsara, or cyclic existence. The cause of suffering is craving and fundamental ignorance. Even when things seem good, we always feel an undercurrent of anxiety and uncertainty inside. Life always involves suffering, in obvious and subtle forms. They are the BuddhaвЂ™s basic teaching, encapsulating the entire Buddhist path. What are the four noble truths? BuddhismвЂ™s famed four truths are called noble because they liberate us from suffering. I'm a practicing Zen Buddhist, and the subject being discussed here definitely relates, including the Shelley quote someone put in this subthread. It must be mentioned that his views on women are unfortunate, and some insight into why they are so warped might be gained by looking into his life.Д®dit: this aligns with the Vedantic definition of pleasure, as the cessation of mental agitation, where mental agitation is thought and its further expression as desire. I've found the 'Penguin Great Ideas' translations of his work to be brilliant.

He goes on to say that if men didn't suffer ('turkeys fly around ready-roasted' - paraphrase) they would kill themselves out of boredom. He remarks that when we are of perfect bodily health, it is the stone in the shoe that makes its presence known, not the 1 000 000 other things that are going well. He defines pain as the 'positive' thing in our lives, pleasure being negatively marked by the absence of pain. Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional but misfortune in general is the rule. It is absurd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. First he argues that suffering exceeds pleasure in the world:

Hedonic gloss