Is Meditative Concentration Ascetic Practice or Pleasant Practice?

Question: Is meditative concentration (samādhi) a practice of suffering or a practice of joy?

Answer: Anyone who has personally cultivated meditative concentration knows whether cultivating concentration is painful or joyful, whether it is painful or joyful while in meditation during walking, standing, sitting, and lying down, and whether the mind is painful or joyful after emerging from meditation. One will also know that while sitting cross-legged, even when the legs ache unbearably, whether the mind is painful or joyful. This question is very simple: as long as one has cultivated concentration, one will know just how joyful, how comfortable, how pleasant, and how delightful cultivating concentration truly is—so much so that many people give up other worldly pleasures and devote themselves exclusively to pursuing the joy of meditative concentration. The joy of meditative concentration cannot be compared to any of the pleasant feelings found in the world. Especially when one cultivates to the stage of the first dhyāna, that joy cannot be expressed clearly or thoroughly in words; only those who have experienced and enjoyed it can know it firsthand. Because of this special, extraordinary pleasant feeling, one subdues and eliminates the desires of the human world and no longer craves worldly dharmas. When one cultivates to the third dhyāna, the joy of body and mind is simply too delightful to let go of, and this becomes an obstacle to the arising of the fourth dhyāna. Just how joyful cultivating concentration truly is—those who actually practice concentration all have their own experience and impressions; there is no need for me to say more.  

Those who say meditative concentration is a practice of suffering are people who have never cultivated it; they rely on imagination and assume that cultivating concentration must be painful, that one must forcibly suppress afflictions, and therefore the mind feels distressed. In fact, subduing afflictions does not mean deliberately suppressing them so they do not arise; rather, afflictions naturally cease to arise, because body and mind are tranquil, joyful, and at ease, the mental state becomes open and bright, and afflictions no longer manifest. Everything one looks at seems agreeable and pleasing, one no longer wishes to fuss over anything, the mind grows ever more expansive, and one's level of thought rises ever higher.  

If meditative concentration were painful, those non-Buddhist practitioners of the past would not have abandoned everything in the world to devote themselves exclusively to cultivating concentration, even cultivating all the way to the four dhyānas and eight samādhis, up to the samādhi of neither perception nor non-perception. Only pleasant feelings can make people cling and refuse to let go. The ancient immortals likewise single-mindedly practiced meditative concentration deep in the mountains, pursuing longevity and immortality; even the various modern cultivation methods are all methods of cultivating concentration, and within them all there are pleasant feelings that make people unwilling to give them up. Therefore, meditative concentration is not a practice of suffering, but absolutely a practice of joy.