The 8 worldly concerns - talk by Chris Parmentier
justin
The Eight Worldly Concerns
(Underneath the Things that Bother Me)
My name is Chris Parmentier, and I am a samsara junkie—“samsara” meaning the “cycle of suffering.” Janet used that term last time, and it made sense to bring it up again today in the context of this topic, “The Eight Worldly Concerns.”
Because we’re all here today, we’re clearly not merely worldly folk. But the undertow of worldly, cultural influence is strong, so it’s good to remind ourselves of how these eight worldly dharmas or “phenomena” affect us. They’re a classification of the ways that we humans end up heaping more suffering on ourselves rather than escaping it. Though the common intention of all sentient beings is to be happy and free of suffering, we often end up with the opposite result. And the culprit is always this slippery, mistaken belief in a singular, independent, permanent self.
Luckily, apparent contradictions can awaken us from this delusion; they cause us to question our assumptions. The eight worldly concerns show us how this self assumes—mistakenly, repeatedly—that happiness comes from outer conditions. It assumes that getting the four things we hope for and avoiding their opposites, what we fear, can make us happy. These worldly concerns are basically dualism—habitually looking out at the world as “us and them.” That stance in itself is painful and filled with the problems we see and experience:
We hope for pleasure (or comfort) and we fear pain (or discomfort).
We hope for praise (or kudos, pats on the back) and we fear blame (or criticism).
We hope for fame (or significance) and we fear insignificance (or invisibility).
We hope for gain (anything will do, as long as we win!) and we fear loss.
I remember when this framework of the eight worldly concerns first settled in my mind. It became like a cartoon: We’re “attachment/aversion” addicts, attending another type of “AA” meeting on our meditation cushions, watching our thoughts and feelings line up in two columns: what we want and don’t want. Thus, we’re all “samsara junkies.”
In my youth, I had a tendency to believe that if only I could hold back or keep away what I didn’t want or like, then life would be easier. I liked the bumper sticker, “Mean people suck,” and I hoped to avoid those people. I tried to create “my own private Idaho,” some ideal place. But that view is isolating and also leads to arrogance. Some of us have the opposite propensity and think it’s best to “grab all you can.” But both are from the perspective of always trying to manipulate outer circumstances for the benefit of a self at the center of its own universe, trying to attract everything it wants and repel everything else: a kind of black hole of greed. It’s visceral. We can feel it in the pit of our stomachs, and the Tibetan term for this is shenpa. Pema Chodron describes it as feeling “hooked,” another term of addiction.
I remember talking to my first meditation teacher about something I was horribly displeased about, babbling on about how I was hoping for something else to happen, when she finally interjected a question that just stopped my mind. She said, “So, how’s that been working for you?” Oh. It’s basically asking, Why do we do the same thing, over and over, and expect a different result? Isn’t that the very definition of insanity? We’re like the proverbial bee in a jar, hitting the glass, searching up and down, round and round for the way out. It’s samsara, the cycle of suffering.
With practice in disrupting our habitual patterns, especially with the view of “no self,” as I think everyone here has experience with—not believing everything we think, pausing, remembering the peace found in our basic nature—the lid of that samsaric jar loosens and eventually falls off. An image used for practice is, like drops of water collected over time, a large container is gradually filled. In that way, as our hearing, contemplative, and meditation wisdom grow, we gradually become able not to bite the hook, to pause, to reconsider, and to do something different.
But old habits are hard to break. At the retreat, Rinpoche mentioned a quote by Gyalwa Yon-gonpa (1213-1287): “Like an old parchment that curls around itself, negative tendencies tend to come back. New habits are easily destroyed by circumstances. You will not cut through delusion in an instant. All you who consider yourselves great meditators, spend more time in meditation!”
Many of us are on this spiritual path because we’re willing to go beyond conventional, cultural consensus, and to question how much these “worldly concerns” are affecting us. Knowing how the eight worldly concerns come into play becomes another tool for our practice of awareness. They’re an easy reference to qualities that in themselves aren’t problematic—pleasure, fame, praise, and gain (and their opposites)—but tendencies to be aware of how much they can control our minds and lives, especially when connected to self-cherishing. Those tendencies are often merely habits that took time to create and thus take time to see through and clear away.
Remembering the impermanence of the things we fear—pain, criticism, insignificance, and loss—is a relief. This too will pass! But what about the impermanence of the things we hope for? Against all odds, many times we keep believing, HOPING, that those are the things that will last. We tell ourselves, “Next time, it’ll be different!” or “I just need more”. . . of whatever it is that we keep thinking we need more of. That’s what humans on auto-pilot do, what addicts say.
But it’s not so much about bad or good. It’s about noticing how much “mental real estate” is taken up by these worldly concerns, especially when our main purpose is to free our minds for the benefit of self and others. Think of how attached we can be to the never-ending stuff that, ultimately, doesn’t do us any good. Kongtrul Rinpoche describes this as “rearranging the furniture while the house is on fire.” Our priorities are off. In contrast, I was reminded of the Peace Pilgrim, a woman who began her pilgrimage when she was 45, walking over 25,000 miles in the years before her death, [in 1981 at 73] relying on others for everything. She carried with her only what would fit in a pocket, a comb, toothbrush, pencil. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t enjoy or be grateful for what we have, because we all know that not-having what we need can be a huge obstacle, too. People living on the street or in cars who don’t have jobs or places to stay can attest to that.
Padmasambhava tells us that when we’re less caught up in the eight worldly concerns, that’s a sign of being a spiritual person. In each moment, we have a choice to remember that the “eight worldly concerns” are not our primary concern, unless we’ve fallen into the unawareness of old habits in believing that we will feel better if only we get more, or if only we can push away the “bad stuff.” It’s clear that’s the way the world typically thinks.
But we’re retraining our minds, reorienting our basic attitudes because we’ve learned that feeding the addiction to self is not the way to happiness. We have only to revisit the eight worldly concerns to remember this, Judy Lief notes:
Once we have happiness, fear arises because we’re afraid of losing it.
When it dawns on us how hard we have to work to be seen as famous or as special, our fear of insignificance is only magnified.
We need to be constantly pumped up with praise or we begin to doubt our worth.
Just when we congratulate ourselves on our success, the bottom falls out, and we’re anxious again.
Knowing how the eight worldly concerns hook us gives us more awareness to make different choices in our speech and actions and reminds us to check our motivations and intentions.
Awareness can be uncomfortable, even painful. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (in Journey without Goal) reminds us that we “feel pushed, hassled, and exposed through our practice. All kinds of irritations and . . . boundaries begin to come up . . . and we really do not want to push anymore. But some kind of push is necessary,” he says. That feeling of irritation that pushes us from our comfort zones is easy to relate to, but we also realize that beyond this discomfort, we find more freedom, more space, for the benefit of self and others.
The eight worldly concerns are considered “adventitious,” removable, with the view of emptiness or interdependence, but we have habitually held on to the idea of self over many lifetimes (it’s said, “billions”). At the retreat, Rinpoche told us that we must “transcend even no-self because holding on to either—the object (self) or its negation (no-self)—is still holding on.” It’s clinging—and even that word brings to mind “by the fingernails,” a kind of desperate act—which is not the freedom we seek. Again and again, we’re pointed back to our own inner wisdom—our own natural awareness. I love the reminder that the human body in samsara is considered the best place to attain enlightenment because of this ideal mix of pleasure and pain.
In college, I loved John Milton’s Paradise Lost, probably most for these lines: “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” It’s about taming the mind—not struggling to manipulate outer conditions to somehow be ideal all the time. Sometimes the propensity for pushing away what we do not want is rooted in an idealistic mind that wishes people or events could be different from what they are. There is tremendous discomfort in that kind of wish—in not being able to relax with what is. I don’t pretend to be that good at such relaxing, but I know I feel freer when I can. This kind of freedom is a taste of “liberation.” The attitude of not-accepting what is, is painful, but this pain reminds us how beneficial it can be to simply BE WITH WHAT IS.
In our meditation practice, we are, in part, learning not to engage in the emotional rollercoaster of feeling crushed by loss nor elated by gain. We remind ourselves that those feelings, like the self, are interdependent—empty of intrinsic existence. Watching them come and go helps us practice the immeasurable quality of equanimity. And with equanimity, we can find some rest, some ease, in letting go of the eight worldly concerns. With that equanimity, rather than adding to negativity, we can breathe out some fresh air into our environment.
Just as the four immeasurables—loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity—point to our diamond-like, pristine, nature-of-mind’s limitless, boundless qualities, in contrast, the eight worldly concerns limit us. The four immeasurables remind us of the positive qualities we’re focusing on increasing, whereas the eight worldly concerns show us how they can taint our intention to be of benefit to all beings, including ourselves.
The lojong practices reorient our view from worldly to spiritual, as does the foundational Ahimsa vow to do no harm in thoughts, words, or actions to any living beings. That includes mosquitoes, silverfish, and scorpions, my own favorite practice-creatures I capture for release outside. At the retreat, Rinpoche told us to “Hold this broken world in your heart, and try as best you can not to hate anybody,” not even cockroaches.
I like Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel’s definition of a vow as something that “holds us within the boundary of our intentions.” Though we often fail, having the boundary of such vows reminds us to keep returning to practice, just as we return to our breath, again and again. We return to our noble, limitless intention to expand our hearts and minds, to be strong in the midst of witnessing what’s heartbreaking, and to relax, not just grind our teeth. Many times, this involves simply witnessing our own minds and—more and more—recognizing that everything is a projection of mind.
Finally, the “other side” of conventional or relative truth expressed in the eight worldly concerns is absolute truth, which we chant about in the Heart Sutra. I’ll leave you with this quote:
In the eyes of worldly people, [Shakyamuni Buddha] was a complete failure. . . This is a supreme challenge to the basic assumptions of the human mentality. His empty begging bowl presents the ultimate paradox, and seeing it can suddenly plunge the mind into the open space of wakefulness.
[p.163 LUMINOUS EMPTINESS, Understanding the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Francesca Fremantle]
There’s a handout if you’d like it. On one side are the eight worldly concerns, and on the other, Eight Verses for Training the Mind by Langri Thangpa [1054–1123], which are a concise summary of the lojong practices, including tonglen. At the retreat, Rinpoche described Langri Thangpa as being known as “the grouchy one,” and yet, he said, Langri Thangpa cried with compassion for others.
By this merit, may I attain perfect awakening
and defeat all forces of negativity;
may I liberate all beings from the ocean of samsara
with its turbulent waves of birth, old age, sickness, and death.