Sacrificing external pleasures also frees us of the mental burdens that holding onto them often entails. Even if we had all the time and energy in the world, the pursuit of these pleasures would lead us further and further away from the goal. Of these three categories, the last two are the easiest to see as worth abandoning. They're not always easy to abandon, perhaps, but the resolve to abandon them is obviously a good thing. Part of our resistance to this resolve is universally human.
People everywhere relish their passions.
But an added part of our resistance to renunciation is peculiar to Western culture. Modern pop psychology teaches that the only alternative to a healthy indulgence of our sensual passions is an unhealthy, fearful repression. Both alternatives place serious limitations on the mind. To understand his approach, though, we have to see how Right Resolve relates to other parts of the Buddhist path, in particular Right View and Right Concentration. This level of Right View prepares us to see the indulgence of sensual passion as a problem.