Recently the concept of Ataraxia was brought up in a rather disjointed way. (I am a big fan of how certain ideas or concepts can simply arrive at specific times.) It came in reference to the Buddhist belief that desire for pleasure and material objects can disrupt Ataraxia.

Gemini says (from vocabulary.com) that Ataraxia is a state of mind that is characterized by a lack of mental stress or anxiety. It can also be translated as “unperturbedness”, “imperturbability”, “equanimity”, or “tranquility”.

After some thought I have developed the position that there are three perceptions of pleasure; things we were taught will give us pleasure, things we think will give us pleasure, and things that give us pleasure. To maintain Ataraxia, we must avoid or ignore the first two. The third form of pleasure only exists in the present. Thus, to maintain tranquility we can never know exactly what will give us pleasure until we are in the truth of the moment.

Here, there are two types of pleasure that exists in the moment; creative and destructive; yin and yang. Whether our pleasure derived from something creative or destructive is proper depends entirely on the context of the moment.