Sermon 8: Eight Worldly Conditions

Gain and loss together with honor and dishonor
Blame and praise, happiness, dissatisfaction too,
Them, the impermanent conditions of mankind
Never perpetual, perturb are they:
These, the heedful man with wisdom well endowed
Carefully discerns as conditions perturb.
Desirable conditions do not agitate his mind,
Nor conditions undesired can make resentment rise,
Compliance, opposition too, is for him no more
Not smoldering are they, to non-existence gone
And then having known that Stainless, Grief less State
Rightly he knows becoming Other Shore.

(A. Eight, 6)

Today, there is the chance to listen to Dhamma on the subject of the Eight Worldly Conditions. Before explaining them it should be said that to hear Dhamma in this world is not easy, for many are the obstacles raised both by internal mental stains and by external factors of environment. You have not been affected by either of these types of obstacles and so come to be sitting here quietly with the opportunity to hear Dhamma. For this reason you should try to benefit to the utmost, making your minds concentrated and still, while listening to these humble words based upon Lord Buddha's Teaching. If you do this, the Dhamma may then enter your heart and become the guide for your life. One should not think that Dhamma is a religious dogma or doctrine; on the contrary, Dhamma is to be found and seen in the everyday events of our lives-it is Reality itself.

The subject of this discourse, the eight worldly conditions emphasize just this point. The Sutta or Discourse of Lord Buddha which describes the action of these eight, begins in this way: "These eight worldly conditions, Bhikkhus, ceaselessly revolve around the world while the world ceaselessly revolves around eight worldly conditions."

By world is meant the world of human experience, my world, your world. That these conditions, presently to be described "Revolve about the world", means that in our everyday experience are found many occasions for gain and loss, honor and dishonor, praise and blame, happiness and unsatisfactory. These occasions are always with us, or revolve about us. Whether we seize hold of them or reject them, this is called

"The world ceaselessly revolves about these eight worldly conditions." This grasping or rejecting of occasions of this sort is dependent upon the content of the mind, for where there is desire for gain, honor, praise and happiness, also abhorrence of loss, dishonor, blame and the unsatisfactory, there the two Unwholesome Roots respectively of Greed and Aversion, may be discerned at work. While these occasions revolve about us these two Roots of Unwholesomeness are nowhere except in our own hearts. When occasions and our actions rooted in unwholesomeness combine, we experience the sort of tangle suggested by the words "Ceaselessly revolve about." People generally wish to be entangled in what will be they think, pleasant to experience.

That is, they rejoice in gain, honor, praise and happiness. But this very rejoicing in, is but a colorful name for being greedy and where greed is a motive for one's actions, no lasting happiness can be expected. The indulgence of the Root of Greed merely gives rise to titillation from some pleasant sensations, while actually increasing the force of craving for sensual pleasures.

As the arrangement into pairs of these worldly conditions indicates, where one member of a pair is found, one must also expect to find the other. These pairs are like the two sides of a coin and just as a one-sided coin is an impossibility, so gain without loss and so forth, is likewise an impossibility. If one rejoices in those members of the pairs giving rise to: pleasures, then one must also be prepared to experience the other members giving rise to what is unpleasant. This indicates that the incessant search for satisfaction, which is really the quest for pleasurable sensations, can never be successful. When a person pursues gain, unknowingly he also seeks loss. When he searches out honor, it is dishonor also that will be his lot. Should he look for praise, he is sure to reap blame as well, while if happiness were his goal, he will be led by his very searching to experience unsatisfactory or Dukkha. Never can one have one member without the other. It is as though a man, who wished to marry a beautiful and gentle girl, discovered that he must also marry her repulsively ugly shrew of a sister. The wise man being thus compelled would make only one choice in this matter.

Now, so that we are perfectly acquainted with the meaning of the eight items discussed in this Sutta, let us briefly describe each one of them.

Gains may be either the acquisition of material objects, of additions to one's family, accession of knowledge or wealth, or may be gains of a more spiritual nature. The mediator has to beware of gains as much as the businessman or the householder with family. Gains go along with Greed and it is not uncommon for them to be status symbols, or acquired in the race "to keep up with the Jones's". Gains give one a feeling of pleasure and security. A reality they reinforce greed and delusion since the pleasure and security to be obtained from them is fleeting and easily upset.

The more attached one is to having them, the greater will be one's sorrow at their loss. Having come to think that these gains represent real security, one may easily be shocked and deeply grieved when one's expectation is shattered by their break up, decline or disappearance. Persons one loves, objects dear to oneself, possibly one's faculties and strength during old age and sickness, all such people and things when lost give rise to grief.

This grief may include all the dread list "Lamentation, dissatisfaction, anguish mid despair." Loss may also arouse resentment as when one hears a person exclaim angrily "Why should it happen to me?"

Honor, - is desired by many. We hope to have a good name and reputation; perhaps we desire to be famous. For fame is another possible translation of the Pali word "yaso." Fame and honor may seem to belong to the mighty in this world but really it is not so. There are few persons who could state with honesty that they are not concerned with fame or honor. How many are circumspect in their actions merely because of "what the neighbors will think", or if not the neighbors, some other supposed guardian of social mores. Here is commonly seen the desire for honor.

Where there is craving for honor, there must naturally be the fear of dishonor or fall from fame. While this is certainly the bane of the influential man, it is also with all of us to some degree. One can observe it in oneself when some mistake in one's conduct or deficiency in one's knowledge is exposed in public. When this happens, one is said to "lose face", really a sudden and unwelcome deflation of one's ego. This may evoke a response either of evasiveness whereby one "explains away" an unwelcome fact-a reaction rooted in Delusion; or else one tries to bluster one's way out, such use of force being connected with the Root of Aversion. Such are some of the ramifications of dishonor.

Blame, which comes next on the list, is also an unwelcome experience, yet it goes hand in hand with praise, which we seldom wish to avoid. Blame, like dishonor, leads to a diminishment of what one feels oneself to be, while on the contrary, praise tends to expand the heads of those who receive too much of it. But blame gives one the feeling of "curling up inside", and where censure is severe, people speak of wishing that "the earth would open and swallow them up". Praise has the opposite effect and besides resulting in the "swollen head" it also leads those affected by it to swagger, turns up their noses, to look down upon others and generally behave in an overbearing manner. Praise and pride are great friends, but so are blame and resentment. For work done in this world one is liable to receive one or the other, and while one hopes for praise, one is sorry and depressed at blame. One is a Noble disciple to the extent one remains unaffected even in the face of unmerited praise or unjust blame.

Of all the pairs of factors in these Eight Worldly Conditions the final two, happiness and unsatisfactory, are the most important. Basically "happiness" means those events and experiences giving rise to pleasurable sensations. These may be either bodily sensations or mental ones; again, they may be concerned with material objects or the non-material. Happiness is the goal for which everyone searches not human beings alone but all sorts of existences, including the animals. Unsatisfactory, the best term that English can offer for the very important Pali word dukkha, can also be of many varieties as in the oft-recited passages: "Birth is dukkha, decay is dukkha, death is dukkha, sorrow, lamentation, Pain, grief and despair are dukkha, association with what is disliked is dukkha, separation from what is liked is dukkha, not to get what one wants is dukkha: in brief, the five grasped-at groups (comprising one's own personality) are dukkha."

Where happiness is wrongly sought, dissatisfaction can be the only result and so, feeling dissatisfied, one seeks again distractions, objects, people, places and things in a futile search for the real thing, the Supreme Happiness which does not fade, is not impermanent, and does not depend upon multitudes of conditions. But this is to be found only in the heart and nowhere else.

Now we shall turn to examine persons and the different ways that they react when faced with these Eight Worldly Conditions. The Sutta says that these conditions come both to the common worldly person of little learning as well as to the learned Noble disciple. Lord Buddha then poses this question: "Here, Bhikkhus, what is the distinction, what the peculiarity, what is the difference between the instructed noble disciple and the uninstructed ordinary person?"

The Teacher goes on to explain first the reaction of the uninstructed ordinary person to each of the eight conditions: "Gain arises for the uninstructed ordinary person. He does not reflect in this way, 'this gain which has arisen is impermanent, unsatisfactory and perturb' and thus he knows it not as it really is."

This is said of each condition in turn, that is, the uninstructed ordinary person does not reflect upon loss, honor, dishonor, blame, praise, happiness or unsatisfactory in the light of their impermanence, unsatisfactory and perturbation. As he does not do so when he experiences these things, so he fails to see their true nature, thus coming to welcome happiness and despair at suffering, as though both of these were permanent. Lord Buddha continues: "Thus give over to compliance and opposition, he is not free from birth, old age and death, -nor from sorrow, lamentation, Pain, grief nor from despair. I say I'm not freed from dukkha."

This means that when one's life revolves about gain and loss, honor and dishonor, blame and praise, happiness and dissatisfaction and the emotional attitudes which they evoke-compliance to the pleasurable and opposition to the unsatisfactory, just ensures that one is trapped in the narrow world of birth and death; or rather even in the narrower segment of it, represented by the various Realms of Desire. Birth as a man is one of the most favorable of these, but if one squanders life upon craving for and opposition to gain and loss, honor and dishonor, blame and praise, happiness and dissatisfaction, then a precious opportunity to develop oneself will have been lost, and future births according to one's karma may not give one a chance for a long time.

The epithet, "noble disciple" is in the Pali "ariyasavaka" meaning literally a "noble hearkener." Its implied meaning is brought out very well in its Thai translation, "the grown or developed person." This is not merely one who has grown in body or strength, nor yet one who has grown only in cold facts, but rather one who has grown harmoniously in all the wholesome sides of his character, skillfully having worked to weaken the unwholesomeness of Greed, Aversion and Delusion in himself. The reflections of the Noble Disciple are just the reverse of the ordinary person, for Lord Buddha says of him: "Gain arises for the instructed noble disciple and he does reflect in this way: 'this gain which has arisen is impermanent, unsatisfactory and perturb', and thus he knows it as it really is." The same applies to loss, honor, dishonor, blame, praise, happiness and unsatisfactory, for each one is subjected by the Noble Disciple to reflections on their impermanence, unsatisfactory and perturbed condition. In the Noble disciple thus reflecting, it is said, "Gain not taking possession of his heart, it is not established there." Neither do the others gain possession of his heart, nor are they established there.

Because of this, he suffers not at all from the delusion that some of these conditions are desirable, others undesirable. He knows their essential nature to be impermanent, unsatisfactory and perturb and so accepting rather than hiding away from the truth, his heart is free and he is unaffected by elation and depressions suffered by others.

Lord Buddha says this of such a developed person or Noble disciple: "Thus having destroyed compliance and opposition, he is free from birth, old age and death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair. I say he is free from dukkha."

In the noblest of the disciples, the Arahant, Greed, Hatred and Delusion are completely uprooted, hence it is said of these Unwholesome Roots: "Not smoldering are they, to non-existence gone." The Stainless, grief state" referred to in the verses is, of course, Nibbana, known and seen directly by the Arahant by way of insight. He is thus crossed over from this shore subject to these eight conditions to the Other Shore of Supreme B happiness, Peace and Coolness. With mindfulness following the way of Dhamma we may also find this Other Shore of Nibbana beyond all the worldly conditions.

Therefore has it been said by the Conqueror, our Great Teacher:

"Labho, aIabho, ayaso, yaso ca
Ninda pasamsa ca sukhan ca dukkham
Ete anicca manujesu dhamma
Asassata viparinama dhamma
Ete ca natva satima sumedho
Avekkhati viparinama dhamme
Itthassa dhamma na mathenti cittam
Anitthato no patighatam eti
Tassanurodha atha va virodha
Vidhupita atthagata na santi
Padan ca natva virajam asokam
Sammappajanati bhavassa paragu'ti."

which is translated

"Gain and loss together with honor and dishonor,
Blame and praise, happiness, dissatisfaction too.
These, the impermanent conditions of mankind never perpetual, perturb they;
These, the heedful man with wisdom well endowed
Carefully discerns as conditions perturb.
Desirable conditions do not agitate his mind,
Nor conditions undesired can make resentment rise;
Compliance, opposition too, are for him no more-
Not smoldering are they, to non-existence gone.
And then having know that Stainless, Grief State,
Rightly he knows becoming Other Shore."

To the extent that we are blown hither and thither by the winds of these worldly conditions, to that extent we are ordinary people; but as much as we endeavor to recollect their true nature and so come to see them as they really are, to that extent we are Noble Disciples, striving in the Way of Dhamma.

EVAM

Thus indeed it is.