Once, I ran into an old passage from the Aṅguttara Nikāya, an early Buddhist text from 28 BC – It states the following.
These eight worldly conditions, monks, keep the world turning around, and the world turns around these eight worldly conditions. What eight? Gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, pleasure and pain….
Anguttara Nikāya
This to me describes four polarities; they are essential in sadomasochistic play. The Buddha likely referred to them in the real-life world, maybe even as something negative, but like all knowledge about the macro, it is also often applied to the micro. They can be understood as four languages of power.
Pleasure and Pain, Gain and Loss
I like to order them from the body to the soul, placing the pleasure and pain polarity first, closest to the body. I believe that this is where most people start their journey into sadomasochism. First, it is the whips and vibrators that stimulate the skin and insides. Pain is punishment, and pleasure is the reward. Simple. Next is gain and loss, an abstraction of pleasure and pain. One that requires a deeper level of trust between the dominant and the submissive. Because the dominant is no longer ‘only’ manipulating their partner’s senses, they now own a system that holds power. By consenting to this, the submissive deepens the power dynamic’s polarity. As sadomasochism often starts in pleasure and pain, that becomes the most logical thing to define as a system. For example, orgasm control or tease-and-denial is a widespread practice where the submissive gains or loses permission to orgasm. The same principle can easily be extended to allowing and denying particular clothing, foods, or hobby activities.
Praise and Blame, Fame and Disrepute
Praise and blame are a further abstraction of the previous polarity of gain and loss. Here the submissive starts to increase the value of the dominant’s opinion. To what extent this happens is a spectrum that can range from merely listening attentively to prioritising it over their own. An example here is calling your partner ‘a good boy’ or ‘a filthy slut’. Dirty talk can be seen as acting out the polarity of praise and blame. Suppose you, as the reader, have difficulty understanding why anyone would enjoy this. In that case, I can tell you it is about permission – to be allowed to act out a side of oneself that one usually represses. The most significant difference between praise-blame and gain-loss is the boundary of the ego; therefore, there is a vast difference between the two following sentences.
– No candy before dinner.
– Only stupid slaves eat candy before dinner.
Because the second sentence also defines who they are as a submissive – in this case, a stupid one.
From here, it borders the fourth polarity of fame and disrepute. Because now, it also matters who knows about the power dynamic. A popular expression of this is walking collared in a ritual or even a public space, perhaps with a dog tag saying ‘Property of …’ Or by posting pictures online with similar words written on the body. All these examples might look negative to an outsider, but they often are owned with pride for the level of trust they imply; this level of polarity far exceeds that found in more physical expressions of dominance such as spanking or light BDSM play.
What’s The Right Level For You?
I want to encourage others to play with all these levels of abstraction but also to know how they impact the psyche and sense of self. Human beings are flock animals, and fame-disrepute defines us in that context, while pleasure-pain is something that ‘only’ happens in the body. There is a saying – what goes up must come down – and playing with fame-disrepute and blame-praise will often push most people further than pain-pleasure and gain-loss. The question to ask, therefore, is just how seriously but also dangerously do you want to play? After all, a silly, joyful spanking might be just the thing that’s needed.
I’ve given enough warnings, but there is another perspective to consider, the flip side of this coin. I’ve noticed that many people tend to get stuck at the most basic level of abstraction when it comes to sadomasochism. They believe that a little spanking is all it has to offer. However, there is a vast opportunity here for deepening trust with a partner, forming a more energetic polarity, and engaging in intriguing power play. And as a medical massage therapist, I believe it’s important to reduce the forceful impact on the body and shift the focus to the soul. By doing so, we can achieve a more profound level of intimacy with our partner.
