2. The Eight Worldly Dharmas

The dissatisfied mind of desire

Whether we are a Dharma practitioner or not, every problem in life comes from our own mind, as does every happiness. The cause of suffering is not external; the cause of happiness is not external. The cause of what we experience is within us, in our mind.

And what is that particular thing that creates every problem we experience in life? It is the dissatisfied mind of desire, the mind clinging to this life. We try to obtain the immediate happiness of this life through what are called the eight worldly dharmas: desire for comfort, material things (such as gifts, friends and so forth), a good reputation and praise, and aversion to lack of comfort and material things, a bad reputation and criticism, or blame.

Wealth is not a problem; the problem is having desire for wealth. Friends are not a problem; attachment to our friends is. Objects become a problem for us because of the emotional mind of desire. When desire, the thought of the eight worldly dharmas, is there, not only does a lack of wealth cause us problems but so too does having wealth. When we are controlled by the thought of the eight worldly dharmas, we’re miserable and lonely without friends but having friends does not give us complete satisfaction either. When our mind is controlled by desire, neither having nor not having an object can bring anything but dissatisfaction.

It might seem that we know the distinction between happiness and suffering but in fact, when we see how we so constantly and diligently work toward bringing ourselves suffering, it is very clear that we really don’t know at all.

Because of our attachment, we feel elated when we meet the four desirable objects and mistake this excitation for happiness. We fail to see that meeting these objects brings no calmness or peace in our heart. Instead, because we have not eradicated the dissatisfied mind of desire, we subject ourselves to constant mood swings and instability. Clinging is an uptight mind where we’re painfully stuck to an object, unable to separate ourselves from it.

When our mind is overcome with desire, not only is the reality of the object obscured but we’re also unable to see the shortcomings of desire itself. Seeing a friend in the distance, we’re immediately lifted up by attachment as our mind labels and exaggerates the good qualities of the object: “How wonderful he¹² is! How gorgeous! How lucky I am to meet him on the street like this!” We grasp at objects of attachment as if they truly exist, adorning them and blocking our understanding of their true nature. We project all these exaggerated qualities onto that object walking toward us and hold the unrealistic expectation that he can make us truly happy.

When we first see our friend in the distance we see the body alone. Only after that do we recognize and then label that body “my friend.” First we see the base; then we apply the label “friend” to that base; then we see the friend. But this is not how it appears. To us, the “friend” and the body walking toward us are inseparable, but in fact, “friend” is just a projection of our mind. Although it was our own mind that imputed the label “friend” onto the object, we believe what’s merely a label to be reality and see the object as being more than an imputed friend; it seems to us to be a real friend. Then we say, “This is my friend.”

To us that friend, rather than being a mere imputation of our mind, is something totally the opposite, totally contradictory. Walking toward us is a friend who intrinsically exists, completely independent of our mind. There is someone there, but that truly-existing friend is nothing more than a decoration, a projection, labeled on the base, the aggregates of the merely-imputed friend, caused by the negative imprint left on the mental continuum by past ignorance.

This is our fundamental confusion, and all the delusions that plague us and rob us of happiness—minds such as anger, jealousy and pride—grow from that. Misreading the object, we get stuck. As if intoxicated by a drug, we hallucinate a real, independent object where there is none. Under the control of the thought of the eight worldly dharmas, we see that merely-imputed friend as permanent and unchanging, as the true cause of our true happiness. This is our friend and he will never change. But change is natural and inevitable, and when something happens and he does change, we get shocked.

Confused about the nature of reality, we see impermanent things as permanent and so we suffer. Nobody gives us trouble but ourselves. We torture ourselves by not having realized reality, by not seeing things the way they really are. We perceive them in a way that is completely contradictory to reality and grasp onto these false appearances. In this way we become the creator of our own suffering.

Something that is only suffering in nature appears to us as happiness; something that is impermanent appears as permanent; something that is impure appears as pure; something that is not truly existent appears as truly existent. While we’re clinging to these appearances, enjoying these objects with desire, they look good, but sooner or later they will cheat us. The final result of our relationship with them is only suffering. This is samsara. It seems good to have samsaric perfections, but since we have not renounced clinging to this life, we’re bound to be deceived. Even after we’ve found our object of desire, it’s never perfect; there’s always something missing in our heart. The dissatisfied mind of desire robs us of our happiness.¹³

For most of us, success in life means success in obtaining the four desirable objects, but actually this is only success in achieving suffering, because desire by its very nature disturbs our mental continuum and causes dissatisfaction. Whether we’re born as a human being or even a deva, whose sensual enjoyments are millions of times greater than those of the human realm, in reality there’s only dissatisfaction.

When we’re told that we have to give up desire, we feel as if we’re being asked to sacrifice our happiness, that without desire there’s no possibility of happiness and we’re left with nothing, just ourselves, completely empty, like a deflated balloon. We feel as if we no longer have a heart in our body, as if we’ve lost our life.

This is because we have not realized the shortcomings of desire. We have not recognized that the nature of desire is suffering. Desire itself is a suffering, unhealthy mind. Because of desire, our mind hallucinates and we’re unable to see that there is another kind of happiness, a real happiness.

If obtaining an object of desire were real happiness, the more we had of it the happier we’d be, whereas in fact the opposite happens. Our pleasure in the object decreases until it becomes discernable suffering, such when we eat something: at first we enjoy it but if we just keep on eating, it soon turns to discomfort and then outright suffering.

The conditions come together and we encounter favorable objects, so we call it happiness, but under the surface there’s a pain in our heart, a tightness in our chest. This mind is bound up tight, like a prisoner with his hands and legs tied with rope. There’s no real peace even when we manage to meet an object of desire—our mind is still in the nature of suffering.

That’s why it is vital that we understand the eight worldly dharmas. The more we recognize what’s really going on in our mind, the more we understand the source of our problems. When we go to the East, there are problems; when we go back to the West, there are problems. Wherever we go there are problems and dissatisfaction. When we see this, we see the root of life’s problems, the core delusion that creates them—for the individual, for society, for countries, for the world. Thinking that happiness comes from sense objects, worldly people are robbed of real happiness and satisfaction. The great pandit Aryadeva said,

Worldly beings find it very difficult to see that happiness comes from renouncing this life. In that, they are extremely deceived.

We might achieve all the things that people commonly regard as signs of a successful life. We might have hundreds of thousands, millions or billions of dollars, which we consider success. We might receive praise, which we consider success. We might have comfort, food, clothing, shelter and so forth, which we consider success. We may have everything that people commonly call success. However, even achieving all these things is still suffering because we’re clinging to them.

All the negative actions we do through pride, attachment and so forth, harming and even killing others, all the suffering and worry we have, is caused by the evil thought of the eight worldly dharmas. If we check up—like watching a movie—checking back and back to really find the cause of our problems, we’ll find that they all stem from the attachment concerned with only the happiness of this life. This is a revelation, because we can at last see that all suffering (and happiness) comes from the mind, not from external phenomena.

In his Lamrim Chenmo, Lama Tsongkhapa said,

We follow desire in the hope of getting satisfaction, but following desire leads only to dissatisfaction.

In reality, the result of following desire is only dissatisfaction. We try again and again and again, but true satisfaction is impossible.

Following desire is the major problem of samsara. It ties us to the cycle of death and rebirth continuously, causing us to experience the sufferings of the six realms over and over again, endlessly, never finding real satisfaction or peace. Having cancer or AIDS is nothing compared to being trapped forever in samsara by desire. The suffering caused by disease will end, but if, while we have this perfect human rebirth, we don’t overcome desire, the suffering it causes will continue forever.

We should be terrified of the future rebirths that desire will bring, such as rebirth in the unbearable suffering of the lower realms or the endless dissatisfaction of the upper realms. But instead of that, most of us only worry about the small transient sufferings of our present life and put all our effort into stopping them alone. However, working to obtain the happiness and avoid the suffering of just this life is negative, because the methods we use are negative. Whatever we do for just this life is done with the self-cherishing thought, the wish for samsaric pleasure, for the comfort of this life.

Because we’re attached to pleasure, when we get sick we treat our sickness motivated only by the wish for the relief of our discomfort, nothing higher, so taking medicine becomes a negative action. When we feel hungry, we eat with self-cherishing, so that too becomes a negative action. If we get hot or cold, we turn on a fan or a heater with the same negative mind.

From morning to night we do everything with the self-cherishing mind. Inside the house, outside the house, getting dressed, walking around, talking to people, working, eating, seeing things, shopping, going to bed—we do everything with self-cherishing.

Even though everything we do is motivated by the wish to obtain temporal happiness and avoid temporal problems, in fact, everything we do creates the cause of greater, continual suffering in the future. For countless previous lifetimes we’ve been carrying on like this, perpetuating the cycle of suffering, living fulltime with the thought of the eight worldly dharmas.

Unless we can break this cycle we will continue like this, doing the same thing on and on endlessly, because we’re using entirely the wrong methods to deal with our immediate worldly problems. We’re forever creating the causes for much greater suffering for ourselves. Really, we are crazy; completely crazy.

When lamrim practitioners—those who have renounced the thought of the eight worldly dharmas and live in pure practice—look at us clinging to samsaric happiness, they see us as children playing, as completely hallucinated.

Look at children playing in the sand. They make piles of sand and give them labels, calling one pile “my house” and another “my car.” They believe in their labels and grasp on to them, and when challenged, they argue and fight, as attachment, hatred and anger arise. Clinging to the eight worldly dharmas, we’re just like children. In fact, we’re completely childish. We cling to actions as if they have meaning, whereas they don’t at all. We chase the meaningless in search of happiness; we believe the essenceless to have essence.

Perhaps we might think that even though it’s not real happiness, as long as we’re enjoying ourselves it doesn’t matter; we’re causing no harm. That’s like seeing poison and labeling it medicine. We take it and get sick, mentally and physically. The result of clinging to temporary pleasures is agitation and lack of peace, lack of freedom. That’s the nature of negative mind.

When we truly understand that all of life’s problems are caused by the evil thought of the worldly dharmas, then, as we’re all looking for happiness, it’s only natural to renounce this one main cause of all our suffering. Doing so really brings peace into our mind and life. If we check, this becomes utterly apparent.

When we step on a thorn we recognize that the pain we feel comes from the thorn and that removing it will stop the pain. Similarly, as the eight worldly dharmas are the source of all our problems, renouncing them is the essential method, the root from which both this life’s happiness and real peace come.

Any action we do is either Dharma, the cause of true happiness, or non-Dharma, the cause of suffering, and the distinction between the two is based solely on whether that action is motivated by the thought of the eight worldly dharmas or not. Thus, if we want to be happy, renouncing the evil thought of the eight worldly dharmas is the very first step we need to take.

The definition of the eight worldly dharmas

“Dharma” is not just a name, it has great meaning. It is not a term owned by a religion such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and so forth. The pure practice of Dharma belongs to us all—it is created by the mind. It is the method shown to us by the enlightened being, the Buddha. It is the method he followed, practiced and experienced completely.

The Sanskrit term Dharma means “holding” or “guiding,” so Dharma is that which leads us from the suffering of the three lower realms to the state of enlightenment. Each of us has to create our own essential practice of Dharma and become our own positive guide instead of an enemy to ourselves.

With the eight worldly dharmas the word “dharma” is used differently. Here dharma refers to an existent phenomenon. Specifically, it means “anything that holds its own nature,” in other words, an inherently-existent phenomenon. To the ignorant mind each object holds its own nature. It sees a flower as truly existing without causes or conditions and hence holding its own nature; therefore, a “worldly” dharma is whatever the ignorant mind grasps on to as existing from its own side.

Thus there are two meanings for dharma. One is the method that leads to enlightenment, and one—this dharma of the eight worldly dharmas—is the dharma that keeps ordinary beings trapped in samsara.¹⁴ These two are opposites.

A worldly dharma is an object of the thought of either attachment or aversion. It is either an object of worldly pleasure that we cling to and desire to have or an object of suffering that we dislike and desire to be free of or not experience. Having and not having comfort and pleasure, having and not having material things, having and not having a good reputation and hearing praise and hearing criticism—these are the four desirable and the four undesirable objects.

Because we cling to the four desirable objects and feel aversion for the four undesirable ones, we are “worldly” beings, the opposite of somebody who lives within the holy Dharma and is a pure Dharma practitioner.

The eight worldly dharmas

In Letter to a Friend¹⁵ Nagarjuna describes the eight worldly dharmas:

Gain, loss, happiness, unhappiness, fame, notoriety, praise and criticism: these eight worldly dharmas are not objects of my mind. They are all the same to me.

The eight worldly dharmas¹⁶ are:

1. Craving for material possessions 
2. Craving to be free from a lack of material possessions 
3. Craving for happiness and comfort 
4. Craving to be free from unhappiness and discomfort 
5. Craving for a good reputation 
6. Craving to be free from a bad reputation 
7. Craving for praise 
8. Craving to be free from criticism

These eight worldly dharmas (also called the eight worldly concerns) are the four desirable objects that we crave to have and the four undesirable objects that we crave to be free from.

Our usual mental confusion is this. We feel happy when we’re in a pleasant, comfortable situation, we feel unhappy when we’re in an unpleasant situation; we feel happy when we have the material possessions we desire, we feel unhappy when we don’t have them; we feel happy when we have a good reputation, we feel unhappy when we have a bad reputation; we feel happy when we’re praised, we feel unhappy when we’re criticized.

Loss of possessions, unhappiness and discomfort, a bad reputation and criticism are commonly recognized as problems but most people don’t recognize that their opposites are also suffering: receiving material things, having comfort and happiness, having a good reputation and being praised. Without checking up, we meet a desirable object and call that pleasure; we say we’re happy. We don’t see that our mind is actually uptight.

Kadampa Geshe Gönpawa, who had clairvoyance and many other realizations, said,

Receiving the four desirable results of comfort, material things, good reputation and praise due to actions motivated by the thought of the eight worldly dharmas is only for the transient pleasure of this life and has no benefit at all in future lives. Furthermore, such actions can also bring the four undesirable results and in that way be of no benefit even in this life as well.

We believe meeting any of the four desirable objects is happiness. We feel we are happy because we receive a present or meet a friend or a very flattering article has been written about us in a newspaper saying how educated or compassionate we are. Something pleasant happens and suddenly our mind gets lifted up and sticks tight to that object.

Here’s an experiment. Watch your mind when you meet any of the four desirable objects. How does it feel at that time? When you look below the surface of the excitement and sense pleasure you’ll see that it’s never peaceful or relaxed but confused, agitated, disturbed. It’s lifted up but also uptight, as if gripped by an iron glove. When there’s attachment, concentration is impossible because the mind is not free, as it has sunk into the object. We call that tight, agitated mind “happiness” but it’s just a different degree of suffering. By understanding its nature, we can understand clearly how, although we have received what we want, there’s still something missing.

That is the nature of attachment. We’re in pain, but it’s different from the pain of sickness; it’s the pain of attachment. This is hard to see or control because strong attachment is mixed with our experience of the object; it obscures us from seeing the object’s real nature and what is happening in our mind. Wrapped as we are in desire for the object, we’re unable to see that all the worry, aggression, unhappiness and fear we have in this life come from that desire, which is excessively concerned with the happiness of this life.

Clouded by desire, we fail to see that real happiness comes only when we’re free from desire. Like an addict never thinks she can be happy without her drugs, we feel we need external objects to be happy and cannot see that there’s another way. But if we read the biographies of lamas such as Milarepa, we can see how they attained great peace, stability and happiness by renouncing the eight worldly dharmas and that these qualities only increased; they never decreased. This is real peace. Even the root of the great inner peace, nirvana, starts from this fundamental first step of renouncing the eight worldly dharmas.

Gain and loss

To like something doesn’t always mean being attached to it, but if we think of the material possessions we most treasure—money, cars, jewels and so forth—we’ll probably see the strong attachment we have for them. And this is true of not just objects but friends as well. When we meet friends we feel a kind of pleasure and completely believe that it’s real, true pleasure and don’t recognize that there’s attachment there as well.

We think that we receive real happiness from our friends or our precious objects but that mind of attachment is confused. The temporal happiness we get from attachment is not true happiness; it does not arise by diminishing desire but by following it, by making friends with desire.

Furthermore, whenever there’s attachment there’s fear of losing the object of attachment, and the stronger the attachment, the stronger the fear. If it’s a material object, we always have to keep it in safe place and lock all the doors. Even if it never gets stolen or lost, we’re constantly afraid it will be. If it’s a friend, the greater our attachment the more worried we are that he or she might leave us.

With strong attachment, even if we live in a very luxurious house, wear very expensive clothes and eat delicious food, life has little taste. Our body is there but our mind is not happy. The greater our attachment to the four desirable objects, the greater our worry about meeting the four undesirable objects. And when we meet those undesirable objects we don’t know what to do. Our life gets completely confused and we go crazy; perhaps we even see suicide as the only escape from our suffering.

We have the constant, nagging worry that the four undesirable objects are waiting for us just around the corner. They might not exist for us now—we haven’t met the object of dislike yet and might in fact never meet it—but in our mind it’s as if the problem were already there. And when something really happens to an object we cherish—it gets lost or destroyed or our friend leaves us—then the greater our attachment, the greater our suffering. We get incredibly upset, our mood plummets into depression and our whole face completely changes.

Think about some precious object to which you’re attached. Do you have any anxiety about its being lost, stolen or destroyed? Even though you have that object and are never separated from it, even though that hasn’t happened yet, are you still afraid that it will? Visualize that precious object or that precious friend. Visualize the object being destroyed or your friend dying and imagine how you’d feel, how it would affect your mind.

Let’s say that we have a bowl to which we are very attached, whether it’s a valuable antique or just an old cracked Tibetan one. One day we break it. Our mind gets incredibly upset; we become inconsolably unhappy. If we’d been less attached to the bowl, we’d suffer much less at its loss. On the other hand, if somebody steals our garbage, we’re not worried at all; it doesn’t shake our mind. Since we’re not attached to it, losing our garbage doesn’t cause our mood to plummet. Of course, it’s always possible that there are people who are attached to their garbage and would be upset if it were stolen.

If we compare our lack of attachment to garbage to our attachment to a precious object and compare our lack of suffering at the loss of one to our intense suffering at the loss of the other, we can easily see that our suffering comes from attachment, not the loss of the object.

Whenever there’s the thought of the worldly dharmas—clinging to shelter, food, clothing and so forth—there’s worry and fear about losing them. Whenever there’s attachment to comfort, there’s fear of losing it; whenever there’s attachment to receiving material things, there’s fear of not receiving them; whenever there’s attachment to praise, there’s fear of being criticized; whenever there’s attachment to a good reputation, there’s fear of receiving a bad one. That’s the fundamental suffering. Not having the four desirable objects is suffering, but so is having them and, because of attachment, being afraid of losing them.

We’re in samsara, so of course we can’t always get the objects we desire. We’re constantly looking for the four desirable objects but more often meeting the four undesirable ones. This is not a new experience; in fact, it has been going on forever. The antiquities in a museum are absolutely nothing compared to this—no matter how old they might be, they originated after this world system started and we can still count their age in centuries or millennia. Our experience of meeting undesirable objects, on the other hand, started long before our current rebirth, even long before this world was created, and as long as we’re not free from samsara we’ll continue to encounter undesirable things and situations. That’s the nature of our samsaric life.

As long as we rely on external objects such as consumer goods and praise for our happiness, we’ll never find stability. The external world is always changing, so our reaction to it always changes too, up and down all the time—the sun shines, happy; the rain comes, unhappy; praise, happy; criticism, unhappy; good program on television, happy; boring program, unhappy. Whenever the conditions change our mind changes along with them, up and down, up and down, constantly.

Say it’s Christmas and there’s somebody who’s usually very generous and always gives us a nice present. We come to expect presents from her, so when we see her our mind suddenly gets lifted up. That’s a sign that we’re attached to receiving material things. Then, one Christmas, for some reason she doesn’t give us a present. We get confused. We make up all sorts of reasons for why she has neglected us and strong dislike for her arises in our mind. We complain to her face that she loves everybody but us. We shout at and criticize her. Perhaps we even spit in her face. If we’re sitting at the table having dinner, even before we’ve finished eating, we hurl our plate to the floor, stamp our feet, run from the room to our bedroom and slam the door shut so loudly that everybody can hear. Then we throw ourselves onto our bed crying and complaining, criticizing her over and over, like a mantra. For hours and hours we recite the criticizing mantra. Thinking how she loves everybody else so much more, we get completely depressed and generate incredible anger toward this friend and jealousy toward everybody else. This is the work of the thought of the eight worldly dharmas.

With clinging, it seems that when we’re in the middle of bad times they’ll never end, but when there’s no clinging we can see that it’s not like that. If something unpleasant is happening, it doesn’t bother us so much. If we cut off the desire clinging to this life through such basic techniques as meditating on impermanence and death, then even if the four undesirable things happen, it’s no big deal.

We might have huge problems in our life—nobody in our family loves us, everybody hates us, we have to go to court and it looks as if we might have to spend the rest of our life in prison, we have a very bad reputation and everybody gossips about us, wherever we go in the street or at home everybody criticizes and refuses to help us—and in our mind it might appear that this is going to last forever, as if it’s permanent, but in reality this life is over in a flash. It’s like lightning; it happens, then it’s gone.

While the lightning is flashing we can see the objects around us vividly, then suddenly that appearance disappears. The appearance of this life is the same; it happens, then suddenly it’s gone. Compared to our beginningless past lives, this life lasts just a second, like lightning.

Lama Tsongkhapa says that this life is as impermanent as a water bubble, gone in a second. Seeing this, we should strive to extract the essence from this perfect human rebirth and let go of clinging completely.

Happiness and unhappiness

Normally we feel unhappy only when dislike arises, when the happiness of this life has been disturbed in some way—usually when we’ve encountered something undesirable. And we feel happy when there’s no such dislike arising but rather we’ve encountered one of the four desirable objects. In fact, our definition of happiness is meeting an object of attachment.

That’s why most people in the world equate attachment with happiness. They fail to see that this is completely mistaken because they have no experience at all that real happiness, great happiness, can arise only without attachment. They’ve never even heard of the peace and happiness that the Dharma can bring, even though it’s the experience of the great meditators. Recognizing only temporary pleasure as happiness, they fail to understand how anyone can have happiness without attachment. The way the mind works is such that the dislike of meeting the four undesirable objects is directly related to the wish to meet the four desirable objects, so the more we need objects of attachment, the more likely we are to be disappointed.

Why are we so obsessed with comfort? For example, many of us are extremely attached to food. Milarepa warned about attachment to food, calling it a “spy of Mara”¹⁷ in that enjoyment of good food tricks us into generating more and more attachment. If we check, we’ll find that this unhappy mind definitely comes from craving for transient pleasures, the thought of the worldly dharmas. Simple nutritional food is not enough; we want something delicious every time, and if we don’t get it we get upset and disappointed. Not getting exactly the food we want or getting something that’s not quite right becomes a huge problem in our mind. We’re agitated the entire day, from morning till night; our whole house is filled with the experience: “Lunch was awful today; I didn’t get anything I wanted.” It becomes a major tragedy.

The amount of disturbance we experience depends on how much clinging we have. When we’re full of needy desire, nothing can ever satisfy us. We’ve all seen people like this. There’s always something missing in their lives, always something wrong. Wherever they stay there’s something wrong; whatever clothes they have or food they eat, nothing ever satisfies them. To a lesser extent, perhaps, this is us; this is samsara. This is the psychology of how mind and object relate to each other. Investigating this is the best way of studying the mind.

If we were less attached to objects, even receiving tasteless food wouldn’t be much of a problem. There’d be no reason to feel upset, no problem of the mind being down. As much as we can lessen our attachment to receiving the four desirable objects, that much can we lessen our unhappiness at not receiving them. By cutting through our attachment, Dharma practice brings peace into our life, frees us from confusion and makes us happy. Whatever happens—comfort, discomfort, praise, criticism or whatever—our mind is always happy, stable and at peace.

From his deep experience, the Kadampa geshe Shawo Gangpa, a great yogi who practiced Lama Atisha’s teachings on bodhicitta, said,

When we do not renounce attachment—seeking happiness in this life—negative karma, suffering and bad reputation all afflict us at the same time. When we renounce this worldly thought, the sun of real happiness arises in our mind.¹⁸

Harboring strong attachment is like having a sharp shard of glass stuck in our mind. It’s not a happy mind; it’s suffering. For us, there’s a big difference between receiving a dollar and not receiving one. For the meditator who has renounced the eight worldly dharmas, however, there’s no difference between receiving even a million dollars or not; it doesn’t change his mind. It’s not like receiving is happiness and not receiving is unhappiness. Neither temporal happiness nor temporal suffering mean that much to him.

If we’re free from clinging we have no problem when we meet the four undesirable objects. Whatever situation arises, we’re stable. If the house we rent is not well furnished, if the food we eat is not well cooked, there’s no real problem. Even if the food we’ve been served is spoiled, we can just stop eating it without getting upset—our friend accidentally serving us bad food is the situation; the anger, fighting and court cases that come next are what our dissatisfied mind adds to it.

When we’re obsessed with our own comfort and pleasure, we’re easily disturbed. Everything distracts and annoys us—any little noise outside, any tiny insect flying around. Every unwanted thing becomes a huge disturbance to our mind, the cause of great unhappiness. For example, you might have seen certain old people shouting and screaming whenever there’s even a little bit of noise, making themselves and everybody around them unhappy.

Things happen. We’re woken up by somebody in the apartment above dancing or playing loud music. That’s the situation. The additional thing is our getting angry, calling the police, creating a big problem for the other person. All that extra stuff isn’t necessary and doesn’t get us back to sleep. How big a problem the noise creates for us depends on how much we’re clinging to comfort.

If we don’t renounce desire, our mind will always be unhappy. To make our mind happy, we need to have patience. When somebody criticizes us, we should have patience. When somebody blames us or treats us badly by stealing from us or not giving us the things we expect, we should have patience. In that way our mind doesn’t get disturbed and we don’t get angry. Psychologically, too, with less clinging there’s less anxiety that things might go wrong in future.

If we expect everything to be perfect, we inevitably get disappointed and our mind gets disturbed. For instance, some Western tourists are shocked when they go to primitive countries like Nepal, where material conditions are terrible compared to their own country. Even though they stay in the best hotel in Kathmandu, which Nepalese people consider unbelievably luxurious and completely perfect, they always find many things missing, not having this, not having that. As they remember more and more things that they’re missing they get increasingly dissatisfied and unhappy and want to go home right away.

Even somebody who’s planned to live in Nepal for years ends up leaving very quickly. No hot showers, no supermarkets ... so many things are missing. The Nepalese, on the other hand, live there very happily. Living in the mountains in primitive places with almost nothing, there’s not much suffering, not much fear.

The thought of the eight worldly dharmas prevents tourists from having the same happy, relaxed mind as the primitive villagers. The unhappiness doesn’t lie in the bedbugs or the noise but in the thought that longs for worldly pleasures.

It’s quite possible to be completely happy no matter what the external conditions, no matter how much noise there is or how unfavorable the conditions are. Nothing becomes a distraction for the person whose mind is free from the thought of the eight worldly dharmas. Her mind is unworried, happy and stable all the time.

Good reputation and bad

One of the worst problems that we ordinary beings have is attachment to a good reputation. Renouncing attachment to food and clothing is comparatively easy but renouncing attachment to reputation is much more difficult. Whereas praise and criticism are given us directly, reputation is what others say about us. It’s more general knowledge, such as articles in newspapers about what we’ve done or others’ gossip about us.

Desperately wanting to be admired brings us many worries and problems and they’re all created by ourselves. Gaining a good reputation requires great effort and expense, and then, when we have it, no matter how successful we are, we’re always worried that we might lose it. There are many examples of people working ceaselessly and spending incredible amounts of money—millions of dollars—for a good reputation but they never get rid of the pain in their heart that they might lose it all.

Everybody knows of Elvis Presley. After he won the Nobel Peace Prize, His Holiness the Dalai Lama became much better known than before, but Elvis Presley is still much more famous, especially among young people. He’s like an object of prayer for them, a role model, a god.

At least the religious people of the world who believe in God always remember to pray to him but young people just want to emulate Elvis or other famous actors and singers and always practice just to become famous and have a good reputation. But then even if they succeed, there’s still no real satisfaction and many finish up killing themselves.

In his day, Elvis Presley was the most successful entertainer in the world, but the year he was going to die, maybe while he was singing his last song, he was crying, tears flowing down his cheeks. It was very sad, very sad. People in the audience were crying too. Even though he’d become as famous as anybody can get, had countless friends and was immensely wealthy, there was still such sadness and depression in his heart when he saw he was going to die and still hadn’t achieved satisfaction. All this is due to attachment, clinging to this life, and not having reflected on impermanence and death.

Even when we try to create good karma by giving clothes or money to beggars, if we do it out of a need for admiration, that thought of the eight worldly dharmas stops our action from becoming positive. We might think we’re doing something good but our real motivation is for others to hear about it and think how generous and good we are, or we do it with the thought that at some later time, when we ourselves need help, we’ll be able to get it from those we’ve assisted. That’s not true charity. As long as our motivation is possessed by attachment to reputation, the action doesn’t become pure generosity, pure Dharma.

The bodhisattva Thogme Zangpo, a great Tibetan meditator, said,

Even if you give much material as charity, if you do it seeking a good reputation it has very little result because the merit is destroyed by the evil thought.

If we’re rich and generous, people will flock to us thinking that they might receive our charity, making it very easy for us to exploit them. We can see how people, attracted by the possessions and great wealth of the very rich, always want to work for them.

Sometimes a heavy dew very early in the morning can harm the crops it covers; moisture that is vital for crops to grow can also kill them. Similarly, the merit of an act of giving can be destroyed by the need for a good reputation, which can turn a pure act of charity into a deed done for one’s own mundane happiness.

Attachment to a good reputation can even disturb us when we try to meditate, like when we sit in a perfect meditation posture with a mind puffed up by the thought that others must be jealous of how wonderfully we’re meditating. Such a mind is not Dharma. If we’re not careful to always check our motivation whenever we’re trying to practice Dharma, mundane concerns will almost certainly come to disturb us.

The other side of craving a good reputation is craving to be free from a bad one. When people complain about us, criticize us, tell others about our faults and mistakes (even though we may not have the actual faults that they say we have), this can bring a lot of pain into our mind and make us very unhappy. This is caused by aversion to a bad reputation.

The more we crave a good reputation, the stronger our aversion to a bad one becomes. Our mind becomes depressed and aggressive. When people suddenly lose their job, even if it’s because of redundancy and not because they’ve done something wrong, they often feel that they’ve failed in some way. They suffer from low self-esteem and think that others consider them failures. Feeling that their bad reputation is unjustified, they can even have a nervous breakdown. People have even gone completely crazy because of this.

If, on the other hand, we don’t crave the admiration of others, we don’t care when they speak badly of us. Whether they admire us or not, whether we have a good reputation or not, our mind remains undisturbed. Whatever the external conditions, our mind remains equal, tranquil; we lead a life of equanimity. When we cut attachment to having a good reputation, fear of a bad one disappears automatically. Whatever people say, we have no fear. This brings peace into our life, into our heart, and we’re able to practice purely.

Unhappiness at not having a good reputation and having a bad one can be alleviated by reflecting on impermanence and death. Try to remember that all phenomena, including good and bad reputation, are in the nature of impermanence. Nothing lasts; everything changes, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second and even within a second. These things can stop any time. It’s not as if by meditating on impermanence we’re making something that’s permanent impermanent or by meditating on death we’re immediately going to die. We’re just trying to remember that impermanence is the very nature of this life.

Praise and criticism

When people praise us by telling us how good, generous or wise we are, our mind creates problems; our attachment immediately blows up like balloon. Since there is this danger, we need to be very careful when being praised; in order to protect ourselves we have to be keenly aware of what’s happening in our mind and use one of the many useful techniques that exist.¹⁹

Expecting praise or compliments makes us susceptible to disappointment. Say we give somebody a cup of coffee or a piece of chocolate and she doesn’t even say thank you but just takes it without a word. This can become a great source of suffering in our mind, a huge problem! It’s so very important! For days after that we scowl at that person and feel completely alone. We go around with a red-hot needle in our heart.

If we’re brave enough we might even criticize her to her face for not thanking us, otherwise we just complain to others behind her back: “She asked me for a piece of chocolate, I gave her what I had and she didn’t even thank me!” Then we gossip. Criticizing her, we all create negative karma together.

Logically, there’s no point at all in getting worried, angry or such, but logic doesn’t stop us from suffering. Problems arise because we have failed to destroy our attachment to admiration—suffering, anger and the resultant negative karmic actions of body and speech arise from attachment to the happiness of this life. Desire for praise, good reputation and so forth are poisonous minds that always cause suffering and the creation of more negative karma and lead to an endless cycle.

When we practice the most essential Dharma—avoiding the eight worldly dharmas, not following attachment to this life—there’s no reason for attachment or anger to arise at the sound of praise or blame. We see praise and blame as the sound of the wind; meaningless and of no interest. Such a mind free of anger and attachment is a really strong mind and brings much happiness and freedom.

If we get angry when somebody calls us a dumb animal, why don’t we get angry when we say the same words to ourselves? We would if the words themselves caused the anger, so it’s completely illogical to get angry simply because they were said by another person. If a tape recorder complains that we’re a terrible person, breaking it won’t help. That’s a useless, childish thing to do. We might think that we have a right to get angry at the person who recorded it rather than the tape recorder itself, but again, we should investigate the person. He’s like a tape recorder too. There’s nothing to get angry at in his body; it, too, is just like a machine, a box, a tape recorder.

Just as the tape recorder has no choice not to complain—the complaint was taped by the person—so the person has no choice because his mind is controlled by ignorance. Even though he abuses us, he has no more control than the tape recorder does and we have no reason for him to be the object of our anger. Neither beating him, killing him nor cutting him to pieces will stop his ignorance. Burning his body until there’s nothing left won’t help either. Nothing we ordinary people do in retaliation becomes a method to stop the problem.

We can’t stop his ignorance for him; we can’t make it nonexistent. He’s under the control of his negative mind and if we retaliate with anger and harsh words, we will not just make him more unhappy but will make ourselves unhappy as well. Seeing this, we can free ourselves from any sense of personal harm that we might feel from his abuse and, furthermore, actually develop compassion for him.

In fact, criticism is very useful. Unlike praise, which causes us to puff up with pride and is therefore an obstacle to happiness and enlightenment, criticism enables us to see our own mistakes and gives us the opportunity to correct them, to make our practice pure and perfect.

The Kadampa geshes who practiced thought training used criticism on the path to enlightenment. Their reasoning was, if we like praise, we should like criticism as well, because both are just words—sound waves hitting our ears, nothing more. For the Kadampa geshes, blame was very good; they liked to receive as much criticism as possible. The more they received, the more opportunity they had to practice thought training. Therefore they were delighted to be abused because they could train their minds in bodhicitta. Instead of getting angry at those who criticized them, they saw them as extremely kind and felt strong love for them.

Meditation

Unless we’re constantly aware of what’s happening in our mind there’s a real danger that everything becomes a service to the thought of the eight worldly dharmas. Therefore, we should try to meditate on the eight worldly dharmas and other lamrim subjects as much as possible.

There are many ways to meditate on the eight worldly dharmas. Before you do, it is always good to start with the preliminaries. Start with some breathing meditation, then visualize Guru Shakyamuni in front of you and say the preliminary prayers such as the refuge and bodhicitta prayers. Then do the purification practice and purify the sentient beings you visualize around you.

From the Guru Shakyamuni that you have visualized, a similar one comes forth and absorbs into you, the original Guru Shakyamuni remaining in front of you. Then you become one with Guru Shakyamuni and then purify sentient beings with wisdom rays from you who are Guru Shakyamuni Buddha. Then all sentient beings become Guru Shakyamuni and absorb into you.²⁰

After that, you can begin the main part of the meditation, doing one of the meditations on the eight worldly dharmas.

Meditation on the sound of praise and criticism

You can learn much about your mind by being aware of how it reacts to praise and criticism. How pleased are you when somebody praises you? How depressed are you when you’re criticized? Even if you logically know that neither the praise nor the criticism is justified, it’s very difficult to separate your mind from the situation and have a more realistic attitude to these two worldly dharmas. Here is a meditation that will help.

Think of a compliment or some praise that you’ve recently received. Don’t worry whether you feel you deserved it or not, just concentrate on the way your mind reacted to it. Were you genuinely pleased to receive that praise without any exaggeration of the mind or did your mind immediately become attached to it? Explore how much you need praise.

Perhaps somebody has praised your wisdom—“How wise you are.” Immediately your mind wraps itself around this sentence and you feel very happy. But really, where is the real happiness in those four words? They are just sounds hitting your ears. If they were a true source of happiness then every time you heard them you’d be as happy. If there were some absolute existence in that sentence, then just saying “How wise you are” to yourself would have exactly the same effect. Does it?

It could be your mantra. You could repeat it to yourself over and over, counting your mala—how wise you are, how wise you are, how wise you are. If it were real happiness, the more you repeated it the happier you’d become. You could record it and play it back to yourself all day every day and you’d be the happiest person in the world. But of course it is not like that.

Take each word and see whether there is happiness there. Is there some intrinsic happiness in “how” or in “wise,” in “you” or in “are.” Of course not. The individual words themselves are no reason for attachment, so why is the whole sentence?

Experiment like this and see how the happiness you feel when praised does not come from the side of the words themselves. The words themselves are empty sounds; the meaning comes from your own mind.

In the same way, if you check whether “You are so terrible” really exists, you’ll find that what you believe to exist is utterly nonexistent. You get angry and upset when somebody says that, the actual sentence brings pain to your heart, but really it’s only a group of sounds hitting your ear. How can it have that effect? You believe the sentence, but examine each word. Do you get angry with the “you” of “you are so terrible?” There’s no point in getting angry at a “you.” And there’s no point in getting angry at the word “terrible.” Does just hearing the sound “terrible” make you angry?

If you add a “no” to “you are good” you get a negative sentence, “You are no good.” Those two letters “n” and “o” change the sentence around. The first sentence doesn’t have “no”; the second one does. You don’t get angry when you hear the word “no” alone, so why get angry at the whole sentence? Is it because the combination of words is related to you? If this is so, then when you tell yourself you are no good, it should cause you to get angry in exactly the same way.

The moment you discover the emptiness of the object that you believed in before, your feeling changes. There’s no problem in your mind, no confusion. All of a sudden, by checking like this, your attachment or aversion diminishes and your mind becomes much more relaxed and happier than before. The wrong conception that held the truth to be in that group of sounds simply vanishes, and with it the attachment or aversion you felt because of those words. You can’t find the truly-existing object of your negative emotion, so it is naturally dispelled. This way you keep your mind peaceful. You become your own doctor, psychologist and psychiatrist and bring peace to your own life.

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Notes

¹² Or she. A design fault with the English language is the third person singular indefinite. Historically, “he” has been taken as the default gender, and more recently “they” (with the ensuing confusion of plural verb for singular subject) has become fashionable. We, the editors, will simply swap the pronouns back and forth between genders. [Return to text]

¹³ See Rinpoche’s teachings on “Four Wrong Concepts” in Bodhisattva Attitude for more details on all this. [Return to text]

¹⁴ LYWA’s convention is to capitalize the Dharma that is the former and use a small "d" for the dharma that means existent phenomenon. [Return to text]

¹⁵ V. 29 [Return to text]

¹⁶ Over the many years that Rinpoche has taught the eight worldly dharmas he has used many terms to describe them. For instance, for material possessions he has also used material things, comfort, getting what you want. For happiness and unhappiness he has also used pleasure, interesting things, comfort; and suffering, uninteresting things, discomfort. For good and bad reputation he has also used fame, hearing sweet or interesting sounds; and being unknown, notoriety, hearing unsweet or uninteresting sounds. For praise and blame he has also used admiration and abuse, slander, criticism, puts you down (and its opposite “puts you up”). [Return to text]

¹⁷ Mara is the manifestation of internal interferences. For the quote and explanation of why food is a “spy” see p. 181. [Return to text]

¹⁸ See also The Book of Kadam, p. 597 ff. [Return to text]

¹⁹ See the meditation at the end of this and later chapters. [Return to text]

²⁰ For an extensive preliminary practice and a visualization of Shakyamuni Buddha, see “A Daily Meditation Practice on Guru Shakyamuni Buddha,” FPMT Essential Prayer Book; this can be found in the FPMT Catalogue. [Return to text]