From pleasure is born grief, from pleasure is born fear. For one freed from pleasure, there is no grief; whence fear?

Ratiyā — from pleasure: rati is delight, pleasure, sensory gratification. Another form of attachment producing the same result: grief and fear. The structure remains invariant because the dynamic is the same regardless of the specific object of attachment.

The repetition within this sequence functions as a meditation on the universality of the attachment→suffering mechanism. Each verse substitutes one variable but the equation is identical.

Rati is particularly significant because it includes aesthetic pleasure and sensory enjoyment. Even the most refined pleasures — music, beauty, art — when compulsively grasped, generate grief through their impermanence.

Liberation (vippamutta) from rati does not imply a life without enjoyment but a life where enjoyment is not contaminated by the fear of losing it. Enjoying without grasping is the essence of the free relationship with experience.