We want to balance any addiction, any craving, any strong desire. We want to see, "Is this bringing me happiness or is this bringing me Dukkha?" If it is only temporary happiness which is followed then by Dukkha later when we are longing for it, then of course it still stays something that ultimately brings Dukkha. When you come down to it, there is not a single sight that can give you ultimate happiness, there's not a single smell, there's not a single sound, and so on, none of that. So we want to put our desires into perspective, we want to keep that understanding with us wherever we go, as much as possible.
Sure, sometimes we are going to get caught up in how delicious a certain food is, or the music carries us away, etc.
How much do you want to be addicted to sounds, how much do you want to be addicted to foods, how much do you want to be addicted to anything at all. It's up to you. Now we don't cut off our ears in order to stop hearing beautiful sounds, or go to live in an industrial slum to have unpleasant sights and so on. Those are extremes, and we are not going to go that way because in Theravadin Buddhism we are doing the Middle Path. We don't want to go into a lot of desire, and we don't want to go into a lot of aversion. So where does that leave us? We're left with trying to be more equanimous.
Now sometimes things change, and what we think is pleasant now in a few years it isn't pleasant. The five-year-old riding the tricycle thinks it's heaven. Zoom, zoom around the house. It's heaven, it's great, its fun, it's wonderful. Do they want that tricycle when they are six years old and they have a bicycle next to the bed? No! That birthday is the biggest day of their life. Forget that silly, stupid tricycle, "I'm a big kid now." So what they thought was pleasant and happiness, and in fact ultimate happiness for a lot of little five year olds, the minute they were six and they get the bicycle, no they don't want the tricycle anymore. So what we call pleasant, whether it's a sight or sound or whatever, sometimes in the future it won't be pleasant anymore and hopefully we will develop a capacity to replace it with a more dependable happiness that comes from within.