Pleasure sits snugly within the nucleus of Chabad thought, as it does within the nucleus of all that lives. To understand pleasure is to come as close as the human psyche can to understanding the essence of life, of goodness, indeed of existence itself.

Pleasure at its epitome is the experience of being at self—your outer being in perfect harmony with your inner core. In such pleasure there is nowhere to go and no time in which to go there. At the point around which all else turns, there is no movement, and so, no time.

Pleasure is a moment of forever.

A Universe of Pleasure

Everything in G‑d’s creation seeks pleasure. There is no newness, no event, nothing that moves, grows, or squiggles without revolving around pleasure.

When a bee hovers from blossom to blossom, it does so in search of pleasure. When a bird sings, it is because it finds pleasure in singing. The roots of the trees sprawling beneath the earth’s surface seek pleasure, as do their branches and leaves as they reach up towards the sun’s light, as do the sun, the moon, and all the stars in their dance across the nighttime sky, and so too every electron in its course about the nucleus. All is orchestrated by the pursuit of pleasure, each seeking its wholeness, its essence of being.

Where there is no pleasure, life ceases; pleasure returns, life flourishes once again. Pleasure is what occurs when a created being comes in contact with its own essence, which is the essence of its Creator, and from there it lives.

The angels know true pleasure. Denizens of a world not yet fully formed, not yet strongly defined, where the boundaries of time, space, and self have yet to congeal, they sense acutely the sweet light of pleasure blazing down upon them from a yet higher, more ethereal world. They crave that energy and they crave it with a craving no hedonist of this world could imagine. They resonate with it—that is their song.

And then they vanish into it, tugged away into the bliss of that higher world like a spark pulled back into the blazing coals from which it emerged. That is true pleasure, to reach beyond yourself, to merge with something much greater than you, indeed, greater than life itself.

In truth, the experience of pleasure is always a letting-go, an abandonment of the awareness that you are here, that you exist. As soon as you notice that you are enjoying pleasure, you recede to your sense of self. And then you find that pleasure, as well as life, has slipped away.

And that is why we so much struggle with pleasure.

Pleasure and Self

From within this physical body, planted firmly in a concrete, high-definition world, the enjoyments we can attain never last long enough to satisfy, always ending too soon, and often with an encore of pain and loss.

Why? Because only a faint glimmer of that sweet divine light has managed to filter through the long chain of spiritual worlds to reach our physical realm–and even that is clouded by a thick, coarse smoke of confusion.

And because we are trapped within our self-consciousness and our egos, unable to step aside and allow ourselves the innocent enjoyment of life that we felt as a child, before we encumbered ourselves in these chains of “I enjoy” and “I am feeling.” Whether in our relationships with those we love, in our gratification with our achievements, or even in the enjoyment of a Shabbat meal, our sense of pleasure is burdened and restricted, refusing us entry into even the most simple delights of life.

Our best pleasures in life come invariably through great effort and restraint, rejecting the outer layers to find the deeper pleasure lying beneath, but then rejecting that, as well, and again, and again, until arriving at something that resembles the thing we believe we are searching for. Like prospectors drilling the earth for precious minerals, we perfect our art, our craft, our lives, and relationships—and those who can wait the longest end up with better lives.

But the tzadik—this is a human being whose vision sees the gold lying there before him, grabs it, and casts the dirt aside. For him, there is no obstruction, no burden whatsoever. He has already escaped the clenched fist of self and ego to experience an ecstasy beyond our comprehension.

And now he sees that ecstasy immediately in all things.

The Tzadik as Hedonist

Because there is tremendous pleasure in this earthly place of ours, only that it’s not where most of us look. There is delight buried beneath the black soil of this earth for which the most supreme ministering angel would sacrifice all he has, if even for a taste of a single morsel. There is pleasure because within this world lies the ultimate delight of the Creator of all worlds, the end for which He created all beginnings.

Where is that pleasure? It is in the divine purpose of each thing we encounter in life. Torah shines a light on those encounters and reveals their purpose. The tzadik, being one with Torah, sees those gems—and desires them. For within them lies the origin of all delight.

And that is why the tzadik alone can truly enjoy friendship, love, song, a Shabbat meal, a jewel of Torah wisdom, the preciousness of every mitzvah, and all the pleasures of this earthly life.

The tzadik looks back at us with pity. “You are divine souls, not beasts of the field! And this you call pleasure? ‘Come and taste,’ as David sang, ‘that the divine is good!’”

“And it is all about you,” he cries, “lying on the ground for anyone to grab. Jewels are scattered everywhere for the taking, and people are groveling in the mud!”

The tzadik, Rabbi Menachem Nochum of Chernobyl, was a heavy man, but he ate very little. He delighted so much in answering kaddish, “Amen! Y’hei shmei rabbah….” that it put fat on his body.

The tzadik, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, was a man of tremendous passion. In his love for his fellow Jew, the fervor of his prayer, the intensity of his Torah studies and every mitzvah he did—everything overflowed with a sense of joyous pleasure.

On the night after the fast of Yom Kippur every year, it was impossible for him to rest. He would spend that entire night poring through the tractate of Sukkah while standing, from beginning to end, aflame with excitement, delighting in every word as a starved man would delight in a delicious meal, greeting each new page as though it were a long-lost friend.

On the first night of the holiday of Sukkot, again he could not sleep out of the anticipation of the mitzvah of lulav and etrog that awaited him in the morning. At the crack of dawn, he would rush to grab these precious mitzvahs, hugging and kissing them with love and affection. And on the night after the holiday had ended, he again spent a sleepless night in anticipation of the tefillin he would don once again after nine days of absence.

One Sukkot morning, he rushed to grab his etrog from the cabinet in which it was kept, took his lulav, and went out into his sukkah to perform the mitzvah with passionate and unbounded joy. Only once he had completed the mitzvah did he notice his hand was covered with blood. In the rush to grab his etrog, he had failed to open the cabinet’s glass door.

In truth, we are all hedonists. Every being of this universe is a hedonist. But there is no hedonist as great as the true tzadik on the face of this earth.