如人嗜刃蜜 貪欲無饜足 感樂寂滅果 求彼何需足

人們不斷努力地希望得到生活上的快感和享受。但是，這些我們那麼渴望得到的慾樂，就像剃刀邊緣上的蜂蜜一樣。當然，蜜蜂是甜的，而我們都喜歡它的味道。但是，如果你在一片刀片上舔蜂蜜，你的舌頭將會被割破。所以即使蜂蜜是如此甜美，然而你的舌頭被剃刀割傷的損失，遠遠大於你品嚐蜂蜜的利益。而我們所體會的一切欲樂和快感，跟上述的情況非常相似。我們可以說，我們經歷過的那些追逐慾樂的體驗，都是危險。在某種意義上來說，那就是痛苦。

我們不僅從來沒有滿足於我們所經歷的任何一種享樂（感觀或觸感上的歡悅）。這並不是因為我們覺得我們所得到的已經足夠了，所以不再需要它。而是我們越是體驗更多的享樂，我們更想要繼續體驗它。所以它說，享樂的感受就像喝鹹水一樣，如果我們在口渴時喝下鹹水，這樣做不單止不能為我們解渴，反而使我們更口渴。而它會一直如此下去，我們永遠不能得到任何滿足感。

People are constantly striving to achieve some kind of pleasure but the sense pleasures that we want so much are said to be like honey on the edge of a razor, like a razor blade. So of course the honey is sweet, we like the taste of the honey, but if you lick honey off of a razor blade, your tongue is going to get cut. And so even though you got to taste the honey, which was sweet, the loss of having your tongue be cut by a razor is greater than the profit of tasting the honey. And so all of the pleasures that we experience are very similar to this. Not much is gained from experiencing them, and what we go through to have that experience often we could say, it’s dangerous, in a certain sense, it’s painful.

And not only that but we’re never satisfied by experiencing a certain kind of pleasure, it’s not that we feel that we’ve had enough, and we don’t need to experience any pleasure any more, rather the more pleasures we enjoy, the more we want to keep experiencing pleasure, and so it’s said that sense pleasures are like drinking salt water. If we’re thirsty and we drink salty water, rather than quenching our thirst, it’s going to make us more thirsty. It keeps going like this and we never actually get any kind of satisfaction.

~ 入菩薩行論 The Way of Bodisattva