The Eight Worldly Dharmas

It just struck me that I've never posted on these before. Which is remarkable, since they're central to my practice, and indeed my life.

Also, since August is "Suicide Month" on Rusty Ring – the time when, for arbitrary reasons, I've ended up addressing that phenomenon most years – this is a good time to bring up the subject. Because suicide is the result of alienation, even though, as the Dharmas demonstrate, we're not alien.

Just dumb.

The Eight Worldly Dharmas (also called Preoccupations, Distractions, Desires, Concerns, Conditions, Winds, or Things I Do Instead of Zen) is a catalogue of 8 human constants that obscure the Path. (Or 4, to be precise, and their equally unproductive opposites – which together represent subsidiary principles of the Middle Way.)

I've had no luck determining the origin of this teaching. Today it passes for Buddhist, but feels like insight that predates us. I don't suppose it matters, but if we've jumped someone else's copyright… deep bow.

Anyway, here, for the first time on our stage, are the Eight Worldly Dharmas:

Wanting to get things
Not wanting to lose things

Wanting to be happy
Not wanting to be unhappy

Wanting acknowledgement
Not wanting to be overlooked

Wanting approval
Not wanting blame

That's my personal stock. Ask in a year and some wording may have changed.

There are other inventories on the Enlightenment Superpath:

1).
getting things you want/avoiding things you do not want
wanting happiness/not wanting misery
wanting fame/not wanting to be unknown
wanting praise/not wanting blame

2).
acquiring material things or not acquiring them
interesting or uninteresting sounds
praise or criticism
happiness or unhappiness

3).
benefit and decrease
ill repute and good repute
blame and praise
suffering and happiness

As you can see there is considerable variation in tone and imagery, but the thrust is consistent. (By the way, "interesting or uninteresting sounds" may sound like a weird phobia, but there's a lot of this sort of thing in the basal Buddhist texts. Random draughts, unethically-high beds, off-putting smells… not the stuff of existential angst, but you're supposed to meditate on it until you grasp the root of the problem. In this case, the writer is saying that we obsess over contextual conditions beyond our control – hot or cold, loved or alone, putting up with rude jerks or being left in peace. Your neighbours playing the Beatles on their stereo, or Slim Whitman. Pick your hell.)

And to be perfectly pedantic, when it comes right down to it, there are really only 2 Worldly Dharmas (split in half, as before):

Getting stuff you like
Not getting stuff you like

Avoiding stuff you don't like
Getting stuff you don't like

But I guess the Ancestors figured you couldn't get a self-help book out of that. For starters, it's too easily memorised.

Any road, this practice is explosive for me. The attitudes of others have played an inordinate role in my sense of self and worth, and if you study the Dharmas carefully, you'll see that they're mostly about that: stuff others give or withhold. The remainder – natural phenomena, like cold in your room or the infirmity of age – is similarly not the fundamental problem.

Not that any of these are trivial, mind you. Irrelevant and unimportant are not the same. But being aware of what originates in your skull restores a whopping measure of control.

Because suffering is actually two emergencies: suffering, and fear of suffering. And of the two, the second causes the most pain.

Doesn't mean the first isn't unpleasant, too. Just that it's not what manipulates you.

But you have influence over that second one.

And that's what the Eight Worldly Dharmas encapsulate: that stuff going on outside you, beyond your control, twangs your desires, and that's what plays you. Stop caring, and the monster is defanged.

And you get to that place by looking deeply. Doesn't happen instantly, but keep at it and you'll be amazed how far not striving will take you. And the more you observe the results, the dumber your desires look.

And the dumber they look, the smarter you become.

And there's not a damn thing anything outside you can do about it.

So that's why I meditate – or just reflect – on one or all of the Eight Worldly Dharmas on a regular basis. Maybe change things up from time to time and contemplate a different inventory.

Because it's about time my demons caught a few worldly dharmas of their own.


(Photo of Narcissus var. 'Slim Whitman' [yes, really] courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)