Everybody lives in hell and dreams of heaven. That dream helps you to live in hell. That dream makes it comfortable to live in hell. That dream becomes like a buffer, a shock-absorber, so that the pain is not too much. That dream functions as a tranquilliser. It helps you -- you can tolerate the pain because you know that tomorrow there will be happiness. You can hope. Heaven is nothing but hope -- and hell is reality.
These are the two ordinary states of the human mind -- both go on changing; nothing is ultimate about them.
The third state is bliss. The first is hell; the second is heaven. In India they have a special name -- which cannot be translated -- for the third. They call it moksha, nirvana.
In the western religions there are only two things talked about -- hell and heaven. That's why Christianity, Judaism, Islam, are poor in a way. They miss the ultimate.
There is a state of your consciousness where pleasure disappears, pain disappears... where nothing -- no excitement -- exists... neither pain nor pleasure... just pure awareness and tremendous peace. That state is called bliss, anand -- and that is the goal. That is your destiny, and unless you attain it, nothing is attained. You can attain the whole world and you can possess the whole world, and nothing is possessed. You will always remain in a limbo -- never certain where you are -- and you will remain unaware of your being.
So let it be a conscious effort. Pain has to be dropped -- so has pleasure. If you hanker for pleasure, pain will never be dropped -- they go together. They are two aspects of the same coin. If you hanker for pleasure you will remain in pain. Sometimes, rarely, you will have a glimpse of pleasure and again you will be thrown in pain.
Don't hanker for pleasure because it creates only pain and nothing else. Don't desire happiness because it creates only unhappiness and nothing else. Don't desire success because it brings only failure and nothing else.
Once you have seen this game -- that success brings failure and pleasure brings pain in its wake -- you start on a totally different journey. Now you want to be just yourself -- neither in pain nor in pleasure.
That's what Taoism is all about: an effort to drop pain and pleasure, the conflict and the duality, and to go deeper into oneself... just to be there without any desire for anything. In that moment of no-desire, the ultimate happens.