Alternate Translations

PD26 - "The desires that do not bring pain when they go unfulfilled are not necessary; indeed they are easy to reject if they are hard to achieve or if they seem to produce harm." (Saint-Andre translation).

My comments regarding this:

This Principal Doctrine helps an individual determine which desires to pursue, in a given situation:

-- If I do not achieve xyz, will it bring pain or a bad result?

-- If I do achieve xyz, will it bring pain or a bad result?

-- Is it very difficult to achieve xyz such that the chances of achieving it are very slim or attempting to achieve it will keep me from achieving something else equally important?

And at the same time we remember PD8: "No pleasure is bad in itself; but the means of paying for some pleasures bring with them disturbances many times greater than the pleasures themselves." (Saint-Andre translation).

So as I see it, we only label something as "unnecessary" dependent upon a specific person in a specific situation.