Spiritual Maturity Test: The Eight Worldly Dharmas
What indicates that one has understood something about the nature of mind? Just as smoke indicates the presence of fire, so does one's attitude indicate the presence of true understanding. With deeper understanding one's attention and attachment to the eight worldly dharmas diminishes. Obsessive attachment or aversion to these false dharmas disappears.
Gain - to be attached to having things go your way
Loss - to be disturbed by unpleasant things or things not going your wy
Pleasure - to be attached to receiving pleasure
Pain - to be upset at having pain
Praise - to be attached to having good words said about you or your actions
Blame - to be displeased when you are blamed or slandered
Fame - to be attached to having fame
Obscurity - to be displeased about being not well known
Without understanding these features of life one cannot practice compassion. Life is filled with cycles of gain and loss, pleasure and pain, praise and blame, fame and obscurity. We cannot escape these cycles but we can recognize that they are merely cycles. Our ego affects how we see them just as they affect our ego. If we obsess over these features of life then we are guaranteed stress and emotional suffering.
Once at a presentation for the Ethical Humanist Society in Chicago, a woman in the audience asked me if there could be such a thing as too much compassion, so much compassion that it would hurt. I just said, “no” and went on to my next question. The audience laughed and I went on. The lady then spoke up to tell me what she meant by the question. I knew what she meant, the question gets asked almost every time I speak.
She began, “I was trying to help my friend out because I felt compassion for the anguish she was feeling. But when I tried to help she just kept on doing what she was doing and that hurt me.”
The answer to her question is still “no,” but she wasn’t really talking about compassion, was she? She was talking about control. She knew what her friend’s problems were and wanted to fix it for her friend. She also wanted her friend to do what was demanded of her, at least demanded silently in the questioner’s mind.
At the core of the Eight Worldly Dharmas is dependent origination, what Mahayana calls “emptiness.” The Buddha often named the phenomenon as “no-self” as well as “dependent co-arising” in the Pali Canon. There is no self that is experiencing the eight concerns just as the is no self to the eight concerns. To be a self there would have to be an autonomous existence independent of anything else. A key phrase from Tibetan traditions is “At the core is compassion and emptiness.” The too work together.there is a fundamental relationship between compassion and emptiness. To be one requires being the other. If we do not have this kind of spiritual relationship our compassion degenerates into sympathy, or worse, pity.
Compassion is one of the four Immeasurables. In a chart they breakdown like this.
These are also called “Pure Abodes” and refer to a set of mental states that the Buddha considered to be the most admirable among human beings. The first on the list is called Metta.
Every morning, monks and nuns all over the world recite the Metta aspiration. It goes
Sabbe sattā sukhitā hontu Sabbe sattā averā hontuSabbe sattā abyāpajjhā hontu Sabbe sattā anıghā hontu Sabbe sattā sukhı attānam pariharantu
May all living beings be happy.May all living beings be free from animosity.May all living beings be free from oppression.May all living beings be free from trouble.May all living beings look after themselves with ease.
It’s purpose is obvious. It is a wish of a kinder world. With metta, or loving kindness, the world becomes kinder when living beings are happy, free from anger, hatred, oppression and stress. The last line is particularly interesting. It calls for all living being to look after themselves with ease – the absence of effort. The enemy, opposite, of this mental state is hatred, discrimination and prejudgment. Hatred is always based on fear – the fear of losing something. The Buddha invites us to live without fear. When we put conditions on our love and the kindness we show others we are no longer showing loving kindness. We enter into negotiation that sounds a lot like a bad relationship: I’ll love you if you do these things. That is where the lady in the audience was. She was placing conditions on what she called “compassion.”
In the list it is followed by compassion or karuna in Pali. Compassion requires patience. In Buddhist terms, that means patience, sitting quietly, with the conceptions that arise in our own minds as we engage with a suffering being. It is the supreme act of generosity to put our preconceptions aside to really hear and be with another to alleviate their suffering. Cruelty is its opposite. Cruelty is always selfishly motivated. In the mind of the worldly person who doesn’t understand the interdependence or co-arising of beings, compassion can degenerate to a feeling of pity. Pity looks like compassion but is also a selfish motive. One feels pity when one is superior to the other.
Sympathetic joy, called pity in Pali, is the joy we feel when something goes well for others. It is a difficult mental state to accomplish. When something good happens to another and not to us we often feel that the other did not deserve it. “Why them and not me” often arises in the mind. We become jealous. It is easier to be jealous than to be happy for someone else. We are much more interested in being happy for ourselves because most of us are selfish beings with little maturity.
Equanimity is one of the most sublime emotions of Buddhist practice. It is the ground for wisdom and freedom and the protector of compassion and love. While some may think of equanimity as dry neutrality or cool aloofness, mature equanimity produces a radiance and warmth of being. The Buddha described a mind filled with equanimity as “abundant, exalted, immeasurable, without hostility and without ill-will.”
The English word “equanimity” translates two separate Pali words used by the Buddha. Each represents a different aspect of equanimity. We usually see the Pali word upekkha translated as “equanimity.” It means “to look over.” It arises from the power of observation — the ability to see without being caught by what we see. Such power leads to a sense of peace.
Upekkha also refers to the ease that comes from seeing a bigger picture. In India the word was sometimes used to mean “to see with patience.” We might understand this as “seeing with understanding.” When we know not to take offensive words personally, we are less likely to react to what was said and we can remain at cool.
Tatramajjhattata is another word often translated as equanimity. It is a compound word made of Pali words. Tatra, meaning “there,” can also refer to “all these things.” Majjha means “middle.” Tata means “to stand" or "to pose.” Combining these three word becomes “to stand in the middle of all this.” “Being in the middle” refers to balance, to remaining centered in the middle of whatever is happening. This balance comes from inner strength or stability. The presence of inner calm, well-being, confidence, vitality, or integrity can keep us upright. As inner strength develops, equanimity follows.
Equanimity is a protection from the “eight worldly winds”: praise and blame, success and failure, pleasure and pain, fame and disrepute. Becoming attached to or excessively elated with success, praise, fame or pleasure is usually a prelude to suffering when the winds of life change direction. Something as desired as is success can be exciting but when it leads to arrogance there will be more to lose in the future. Being personally invested in praise can tend toward conceit. Identifying with failure may lead to a feeling of incompetence or inadequacy. We often become discouraged when we react to pain rather than respond to it. If we understand or feel that our sense of inner well-being is independent of the eight winds, we are more likely to remain on an even keel in their midst.
One approach to developing equanimity is to cultivate the qualities of mind that support it. Seven mental qualities support the development of equanimity.
- Virtue or integrity. When we live and act with integrity, we feel confident about our actions and words, which results in the equanimity of blamelessness. The ancient Buddhist texts speak of being able to go into any assembly of people and feel blameless.
- The sense of confidence that comes from faith. Any kind of faith can provide equanimity but faith grounded in wisdom is especially powerful. Saddha is the Pali word for "faith" and is often translated as conviction or confidence. If we have confidence, for example, in our ability to engage in a spiritual practice, then we are more likely to meet its challenges with equanimity.
- A well-developed mind. Much as we might develop physical strength, balance, and stability of the body in a gym, so too can we develop strength, balance and stability of the mind. The practice requires us to cultivate calm, concentration and mindfulness. A calm mind is not blown about by the worldly winds.
- A sense of well-being. In Buddhism well-being is a choice. It is appropriate and helpful to cultivate and enhance our well-being. We often overlook the well-being that is easily available in daily life.
- Understanding or wisdom an important factor in educating ourselves to have an accepting awareness, to be present for whatever is happening without the mind or heart contracting or resisting. Wisdom can teach us to separate people’s actions from who they are. We can agree or disagree with their actions, but remain balanced in our relationship with them. We can also understand that our own thoughts and impulses are the result of impersonal conditions. By not taking them so personally, we are more likely to stay at ease with their arising.
- Understanding that people are responsible for their own decisions and subsequent actions, which helps us to find equanimity in the face of other people’s suffering. We can wish the best for them, but we avoid being sucked in by a hyper-inflated sense of responsibility for their well-being. Understanding leads to a deep seeing into the nature of things as they are. One of the primary insights is the nature of impermanence. In the deepest forms of this insight, we see that things change so quickly that we can’t hold onto anything, and eventually the mind lets go of clinging. Letting go brings equanimity; the greater the letting go, the deeper the equanimity.
- Freedom arises when we begin to let go of our reactive tendencies. We can get a taste of what this means by noticing areas in which we were once reactive but are no longer. Some issues that upset us when we were teenagers prompt no reaction at all now that we are adults. In Buddhist practice, we work to expand the range of life experiences in which we are free.
These two nuances of equanimity, the power of observation, and inner balance, come together in mindfulness practice. As mindfulness becomes a greater part of our life, so does equanimity. We see with more independence and freedom. In this way equanimity becomes inner strength that keeps us balanced in middle of all that is.
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