If a person wishes to eat some sweet or tasty food in order to awaken his mind — this, too, is considered a mitzvah. This is, in fact, the custom of men of deed: they eat or drink something enjoyable to their palate shortly before the onset of Shabbos in order to welcome the Shabbos with joy. For the pleasure and joy of the body can arouse pleasure for the soul and great mitzvah-joy and it eclipses the empty pleasure of the body.
One type of pleasure that must particularly be avoided is false honor. If a person received some honor, he should not take pleasure from it at all. For in Sefer Chassidim it is written that for every honor a person receives in this World, the person will lose some of his merits and rewards of the World to Come. Certainly, then, one should not pursue honor, which only brings about much evil, as our Sages said that “glory removes a man from the world” (Avos 4:21). In truth, it is all “futile and a vexation of the spirit” (Koheles 1:14); the person who pursues it only ends up going from one evil to the next, with many calamities befalling him in this World and the Next. His life is no life, as any intelligent person can see.
And even if a person flees honor yet the honor nonetheless pursued him — as is the way of honor — he should strengthen himself like a lion with pure thoughts so that his Inclination does not push him to take more and more pleasure from glory. On the contrary, he should be upset that if everyone would only know what his sins are, they would certainly refrain from giving him honor. So what will he do on the Day of Judgment if all those who had honored him saw that in reality he is a shameful and empty person? Woe to him then when he will be filled with much more shame than the honor he had received. These and similar thoughts are what a living person take to heart in order to avoid taking pleasure from this world.
