Exploring the Nature of Thoughts: The Intersection of Yoga Sutra 1.5 and Unconditional Love

Sutra 1.5:
There are five types of consciousness fluctuations – painful and non-painful.
What is a painful thought?
What is a non-painful thought?

And how does all this relate to love?
What matters is not what you do or what you say, but the intention behind it.

And this is where the Yoga Sutra connects with Pirkei Avot 5:16:

“All love that is dependent on something—when that thing ceases, the love also ceases. But a love that is not dependent on anything will never cease.”

Yoga seeks to teach us about love that is not dependent on anything,
Such love exists only when our actions are free from expectations from people or reality. A non-painful thought is a thought not based on a sense of self.
A painful thought is one whose root lies in the craving for pleasure or the avoidance of pain.

“The problem is not the pain or the pleasure, but the reaction of craving or rejection” (Hadar Kahani).

The question arises: why should the natural desire for pleasure lead to suffering?

The answer is based on a diagram from Hadar Kahani’s lesson:

Pleasure ->
Perceiving the object as a stable and continuous source of pleasure ->
Leads to craving ->
Leads to suffering when the object stops providing pleasure ->

Leads to suffering created from attributing characteristics to the object that it never had from the beginning.

Do you have an example from your life experience of a pleasure that later led to suffering?

Feel free to share with me!