The 8 Wordly Concerns - Jogen Salzeberg, Sensei

Hello, and welcome. This is the Zen community of Oregon, making the teachings of the Buddha

Dharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.

So it was very good to be here with you tonight. Thank you for coming. I hope it is warm enough

in here for you and know that you can always bundle up. Nobody will mind. I'm going to

the zendo. Let me bring my blanket and scarf and whatever else you need. I like requests

for topics, and I received one from Eden, and her email said, fame, the desire to alter

history, to be known for causing great change, and quote, sacrificing one's life to a cause.

And what was it like the best French toast in Portland? Absolutely. Okay. So I thought

I would start by presenting what is an kind of central or core Buddhist teaching that I don't

know if you're familiar with. This one is called the eight worldly concerns. Sometimes it's

presented as the eight worldly wins, but I like the eight worldly concerns. And like a lot of

teachings of the Dharma, we can hear them with our perfectionist, or we can hear them with our inner

critic, and then all of a sudden we don't get anything from the teaching because we go, well I can't

do that. Or we feel like Buddha is judging us, and we're like, well forget you, and we start arguing

with the teaching. And then its value actually is lost because all of the teachings I believe

are something we're invited to grow into. It's not tomorrow, or even five years from now that we

have to fully embody them. They're all invitations in some way to become more free or to become

more genuine. So the eight worldly concerns, now what these are, as these are four pairs of

seeming opposites that snag us, diminish us, make us act in ways that are less than dignified,

make us tight often because we want one side and we don't want the other. That's the whole issue

here. We want this part of it, but we don't want that part. In a way it's saying that, let's say

life is a whole, it's a big pie, and human beings make themselves less free because they say,

I like the pie of life, but only the bottom half please. So these are, first of all, pleasure and

displeasure. So wanting only to feel good, to experience the good, to have the good come toward us

in people, sensation, in everything, and then wanting to avoid or not have to experience any of

the stuff of life that instinctually nobody likes, like sickness, like being disrespected, like

a cold, wintery, cloudy week, whatever is displeasurable, you know, because you don't like it,

and instinctively you want to get away from it. So pleasure and displeasure creates attention if

we decide, I only want this side. Don't want that side. It's not going to work, but even trying to

make that work tightens us up big time. Then loss and gain, right? So loss and gain in the broadest

sense, it's continually in this life, things are going away that we don't want to go away.

Continually, from different moods that we love, we feel really good, it's going to slip away.

People are going to change. Things we had are going to no longer be something we have,

just a constant fact, and there's almost nothing that's excused from that.

So if we're caught in the eight-worldly concerns, we really try to organize our life so we don't lose

what we don't want to lose. We insist on always being excited, or inspired, or warm, or whatever,

because we are losing those things, so we chase them. And then the other side of that is you

could be fixated on gain, on always getting, getting, getting, getting. I know this would be a

snag for me. I love knowing there's a tape in the mail. I order cassette tapes. I'm Gen X.

Or I love knowing there's a book in the mail. That's a little bit getting caught on gain, right?

Oh, I'm going to get something, that hit of get.

Then there's praise and blame, and easy to give up stuff, actually, I think, spiritually,

a lot harder to work with things like this. So this pair of worldly concerns is we want people to

say good things about us when we're there and when we're not there. We want the people we respect

and love to only have good things said about them when we're there and not there. And we might do

lots of things that the wisdom in us would feel like we kind of violated our integrity. We were

inauthentic in order to the old phrase is curry favor. Well, what can I do to kind of squeeze

a compliment out of somebody? Do I look bad today? Like really? Like, how is my hair look today?

Really? Whatever we are style of doing that. And then blame. So we go after praise and we do all

kinds of things to squeeze it out of people. And then blame is oh no, we don't want anyone to

reflect our faults to us. And we definitely, even if we did something wrong, we really hope nobody

noticed that we did it. And think about the kind of way you can get nodded up over that if you

try to hide something that actually you're responsible for. That one of the tensions here is that it's

not possible to be someone who always does the right thing. Always says the right thing.

Especially if you actually engage with people, you sometimes say something stupid. You hurt

someone's feelings. You make an off-color joke. You forget to do the thing that it's actually your

responsibilities do. Right? And somebody notices. Part of life. But we can come really tight trying

to avoid ever being blamed and only getting praise. It doesn't work. You can't do it.

Then the second or the last pair that's related is fame and infamy. And this is the French toast

thing with Eden. Now, fame and infamy. This was before the media. So I don't know how famous you

actually could be in India 2,500 years ago or China. I guess you could like write such a great

poem or be such a renowned teacher that some people would remember you for generations.

But there was no celebrity culture and yet it was still a big problem. So fame is at its core

wanting to be positively known. Wanting to have reputation that transcends your immediate situation.

People, not only should you be good at something, but people need to know that you're good at that

thing. Not only should you accomplish whatever craft art discipline, profession, not only should

you raise your kids really well, but people need to know that you were a bad ass dad or whatever it is.

On a more subtle level, it's looking for the affirmation that we exist at all.

This is something that you can kind of begin working with. Not kind of. You can begin working with

in meditation retreats, for example, where we're not talking to each other. And, for example,

like at great value, you're not even supposed to look at people in the eye. And one of the functions

of that is you can see, oh, I'm always trying to have my existence validated. I need other people

to reflect that I exist. And I want to put aside healthy communities and all of the good stuff

about affirming each other's beautiful existence. That's true. And there's some other way in which we

can get really hooked on being known. And then the other side is infamy. We don't like facing our

cosmic significance. What is it? If I don't get the affirmation that I am special in some way,

what do I have to experience in myself? Again, I'm not telling you, go home and start ignoring

your boyfriend so he can really face that he's attached to your attention. Don't, nobody,

nobody, do the, like, don't practice the dharma on your partner.

But for you, you might check it out. What happens when she ignores you? What happens when she's not

like, babe, that was an amazing dinner you're the best. Okay. So the eight-worldly wins or eight-worldly

concerns, they're called wins. The idea is that life is full of this weather. And further as

Shoda Harada-Roshi would say, Zen practice is a means of not being buffeted around by the eight-worldly

wins, having our own center. I think even more than the eight-fold path, this is a very helpful

template to think about, well, what does it mean to practice as, at least to practice as a Buddhist?

It's working with these. It's a life of not seeking them or avoiding them. Pleasure is going to come.

Compliments are going to come. People are going to notice the things you do. You are going to get

some good stuff and stuff's going to hurt. You're going to lose things that you worked hard for.

People are not going to think highly of everything you do even when you did your best. And in some way,

everyone is so wrapped up in themselves. They don't know anyone else exists. These are also facts

of life. A hardcore yogi attitude. And I bring this in just for reference to the tradition.

For example, there's a tradition in Tibetan Buddhism called the Kadampas. And the Kadampas

were like these hardcore yogis. They were like the most metal yogis. And their aspiration was to

go into a cave with enough food that people would forget they even existed altogether and just

meditated until they died. Never take a student. If someone comes to your cave to teach, like,

really make them suffer to make sure they really want it. Never avoid any hardship so you would not

be able to accumulate food or clothing like super metal dharma. And for some people, that might be

good medicine because their ego really needs strong medicine. But the idea of the hardcore yogi,

and maybe there's a time in our life when we try this out, is you renounce grasping at one of these

or avoiding the other. In other words, you kind of lean right into pain, for example.

In some way that you find there's discomfort in your life, you say, I'm going to just experience

this discomfort. I'm not going to turn the heat on today. I'm not going to ask my neighbor to

be quiet. I'm not going to shift my posture. I'm not going to avoid displeasure or whatever.

You could try that out. When I did this great thing, when I first moved to the monastery,

I was definitely trying to impress people. And on one of the first meals, I spilled a giant bowl of

yogurt all over the place when I was supposed to be mindful. And so I lost face right away and I had

to laugh at myself. I was red with embarrassment, but I also laughed. And then after that,

everything else, the scale was a lot less. Now, fame, also to reference the tradition,

in addressing monastics, dogen zenji, would tell them repeatedly to avoid fame or seeking fame,

as if it was a demon coming to steal one's life force. That for a serious practitioner,

the desire to be known and to be known positively and to gather more attention, how many people

listen to my podcast? How many people are signing up for my retreats? Can I maximize that?

How can I maximize that? Not coming from, oh, I really want to invite people in, but I should be

known. He was saying there's nothing that will corrode your spiritual practice faster than

actually getting famous. He recognized that the desire to be famous is a human thing, so he was

kind of wagging his finger, but he was saying that if you become famous, it's highly likely that

your practice will suffer if you're not really careful. And that's a kind of interesting thing.

You could probably do some kind of translation of that. If people knew you were a bad-ass dad,

and then you had a, I don't know, a thousand followers on Instagram for like, cool dad,

PDX, and people were giving you a thumb up every time you posed with your kid in front of

hot lips, pizza, or whatever you do in Portland, then what would happen to you?

Well, maybe you wouldn't genuinely be showing up as a dad, but you'd be thinking about,

well, people are going to see this, so what should I do now? It becomes all about optics. One

starts pretending a little bit. One starts contriving a little bit.

The other thing about fame, and I hope that any of you, if you have the right intention,

become really known for anything you accomplish, and that you're able to work with it skillfully,

because it's possible. But the other thing about fame, notoriety, is notoriety,

can it be positive? Yeah, there's positive notoriety. It's not just bad. Okay.

The other thing is that if one feels one is special, it becomes really poisonous to self and other.

If all of a sudden, because of the recognition we're getting, we think, oh,

why must kind of be better than other people?

Or one of my teachers was saying people who sometimes get really high salaries start feeling

this way, they think, oh, there are people in this world who only make 50K, and I,

I make $120,000, well, that must mean I'm especially special.

And we start thinking, somehow there's fundamentally different about me as a human being.

I'm a little better. I got a little better bits. It's not

my karmic circumstances. It's not social privilege. It's not. I happen to line up with the right

circumstances at the right time. I believe in luck. I don't know how many Buddhists believe in luck,

but I believe in luck. It's, I got some special bits. That's why this is happening to me.

It's poisonous, right? Because the ego, which doesn't exist, but we think it does, get stronger.

And then it's harder for us to experience our true nature.

So, any time I'm getting any praise around my teacher, he makes a point of saying,

joke is really inadequate. Sometimes I look at him and I'm like, okay, thank you. Thank you.

I need that. So, fame, the desire to alter history.

What is that? Let's explore that a little bit. First of all, can we decide or intend to be someone

who in hindsight will be seen as an alterer of history? Think about that. Think of the famous people.

Do they think I want to be famous? I don't actually know anybody who's famous. I don't know.

The Taylor Swift think, I'm going to make music and be all hot so that I can be famous.

Yes. Okay. Well, there you go. There you go. But for the rest of us,

but for the rest of us, if we get famous, it probably just kind of happens. People just do their

thing with their whole heart and somehow conditions are such that recognition happens.

It just happens. Very few people can decide to do that. It's not so easy to contrive.

I remember, well, I used to be in session, meditation retreat, and in the first few years,

I would have these fantasies that I was getting interviewed by music magazines,

because I was an electronic music producer and it would come up and maybe like, Adam,

we just want to know your top five records because you have such exquisite taste in music,

and I would say, well, thank you for noticing that. And I knew the five records. I would tell them,

but then I was like, oh, no, maybe I should tell them, each Bamiasi by can, because that would

make me look really cool to these kind of people. And I would see all this contrivance in my mind.

I think this desire lives in us. But what would we get? So say, Eden makes the best French toast

in the Pacific Northwest. What would you get from being famous? What is the actual benefit of fame?

Now, for ordinary people, there are three things that people want to get, and sometimes it works.

They're famous, they get money, they get sexual power, and they get people regarding us highly.

And instinctually, almost all human beings want those three things. They want money,

they want people to respect them, and they want sexual power.

And maybe safety is in there somehow.

And those things appeal to our instinctual nature. There's hardly any person if you are like,

okay, I'm a genie, and I can just make this happen and we won't tell anybody.

Nobody in this room, maybe one person in this room would say, no, thanks. I don't want lots of

money, respect, or sexual power. I'll just stay me.

But wisdom can see that those things are lined with spiritual danger.

Only wisdom can really see that. That, oh, there's problem in having a lot of resources,

comes with problems, or a lot of problems come with being really attractive to people,

or actually being respected is a double-edged sword, having a lot of influence.

Now, there are actually, you could probably name a number of them, lots of people who have

a lot of influence and use it really well. There are Dharma teachers who have lots of influence

and use it well. There are many people, philanthropists in this world, some of them are well-known.

They have lots of money, and they are really generous. Not everybody in succumbs to these instincts.

The Buddha, interestingly, people think the Buddha just told everybody, like, give it all up,

throw your stuff in a pond, and go live in a hut. But actually, no.

To people who had wealth, and maybe the Buddha could see that they didn't have

non-ishness in them, he would never tell them to not be wealthy. He would never criticize the

wealthy. He would never say, this is un-virtuous. He would just say, think about how to be generous.

You have this power. How can you use it? He never said, don't have power.

There's actually an analogous concept in Vajrayana or Tantra. It's called magnetizing.

Is that right? Magnetize. And magnetize is if someone has charisma or they're sexy or whatever,

and they're in the Dharma, use that stuff. Have good internal boundaries, but if people are attracted

to your energy, great. Let that serve. You don't have to be afraid of it.

Talking about these things often can easily sound like it's going to be either or for somebody,

but I think everything is kind of mixed. If we get fame, there's going to be a little bit of,

we get power, like, oh yeah, that's not so good, but then, oh yeah, this is good.

There's a Zen saying that dragons and snakes swim together. So dragons are good in East Asian

Buddhism. It's not like slay the dragon, and snakes were not so good. We both are a dragon

and a snake. It depends on the circumstance. It depends on how wakeful we are, how in touch with

our bodhicitta are desired to be of benefit to others we are, in any given moment, how we'll use

different forms of power. What would be wrong with causing change and not being known for it?

Or why not that? So it is entirely possible, I think, that tomorrow someone cures cancer and

somehow they get everyone around them to agree, don't put my name on this. Or someone, I don't

know, negotiates a peace treaty. Someone gets President Trump to retire. They say, I have an

island I'll give you. It's really good. Forget Greenland. This person retires. They would give them

the peace prize, but they say, actually, I don't want to be known for it. Entirely possible.

There's a practice in Zen temples called secret virtue that I think is really cool. And secret

virtue is you generally, you'd get up in the middle of the night and you would do stuff for other

people and you're only on like four hours of sleep. So that's a big deal. You do stuff for

other people and you make sure they don't know that you did it. You get up and you make pancakes

for everybody and they're sort of sitting when the cook comes in and like, oh pancakes and you

just are back in your bed so that nobody can give the credit to you. You kind of cover your tracks.

What would be wrong with doing what we, like, fulfilling the potentials in life that we want to

fulfill, but not having any optics around it? Maybe that would be actually even more satisfying.

Now, I should talk about how do you work with this? So if you have this desire strongly,

some kind of desire for fame or to avoid infamy, what can you do? One thing I think is interesting

and a helpful contemplation is to investigate what does it mean to be known?

What is the knowing of you by others? Is that a thought they hold in their mind?

But how long does that thought last in their mind? Think of somebody you respect.

So you had a thought, but now it's gone. How long does that last? And even someone who's been

really important to you in your life, how often are you present with that? People, someone

cured polio, that's amazing. Who in this room knows their name? That's like the most amazing

thing ever. Someone you do, who's the name? Say it again. Jonas salt. Thank you, Jonas.

That's amazing, because polio sucks, but Jonas cured it.

I'm really impressed, Kevin. Oh, okay, I'm really impressed. So you reflect on what would that

mean to be famous anyway? I mean, I poo-poo social media too much, but

someone, people are giving a thumb up to your cool thing, you did. What does that really mean to you?

What does that really mean to them? People say stuff, people think stuff.

What is being known? If we really examine it, it's compellingness, it's compellingness might diminish.

And then the other thing I think is helpful is when we have one of these desires, and if it's

strong and persistent, tease out what else is there. Because again, we might have this sense that

I need to be famous, or that's the image. I need to be interviewed by Spin Magazine.

And what's really embedded in that is I just have this need to put out what's in my heart into

the world. And the, you know, the self-image kind of grabs a hold of that and adds its little extra

thing. Or I have a competency, and that needs to be manifested in the world.

And the symbol in the mind of manifesting that competency is I'm famous. Other people reflect

to me my worth. But at the heart of it, that's not it maybe. At the heart of it is I have something

I can contribute. I want to contribute that to the maximum degree.

So I think the last thing that Eden said was sacrificing one's life to a cause.

And was there quotes? I think there was quotes around it. There was. Okay.

Sacrificing one's life to a cause. I mean, that's beautiful if it's genuine.

And what if the overblown personal emphasis is removed? Then what remains in the desire?

Join with some kind of movement. Or to join a lineage of art or activism or Dharma.

To make one's life and offering. And I think sacrifice is an interesting word because it means

the act of making sacred. So we make things sacred by everything it takes to prioritize that thing.

It takes a lot to prioritize anything in this time because there are so many seeming options.

So if you become famous, may you use it beautifully. If nobody cares what you do,

nobody reflects that what you did with your life was awesome. May you not believe that that means

that's true. So let me repeat the eight-worldly concerns in case this is something you'd like to

reflect on. Pleasure and displeasure, loss and gain, praise and blame, fame and infamy. Those are the

eight-worldly concerns. Thank you for listening to the Zen Community of Oregon podcast.

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