(Follow this link to see the December 2023 Priory Newsletter where this was recently published.)

Kanzeon Sits Quietly In Impermanence

There is a traditional teaching in Buddhism about what are called the “Eight Worldly Conditions.” These conditions are gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame and pleasure and pain. (These conditions are mentioned in the Dutiyalokadhammasutta one of the sections from a collection of Buddhist sutras called the Aṅguttara Nikāya.)

The sutra opens with the Buddha saying “Bhikkhus, these eight worldly conditions revolve around the world, and the world revolves around these eight worldly conditions;” it is said that these conditions will always be present in our lives. They will always be present and they will always be impermanent and therefore unreliable. Although we can appreciate gaining good things, they will inevitably and eventually pass away. Although we try to preserve what we have, what we have we will eventually lose.

We can tend to think that we should grasp after the positive and push away the negative: we like and want to pursue praise, and we do not like and want to avoid blame or criticism. But the Dharma suggests that this will be unsatisfactory; suggests it will lead to more suffering. It seems like maybe the Dharma is suggesting that we just ignore these eight conditions, but that doesn’t seem practical in the actual world where we live.

We need to learn how to do things (things like practicing the Dharma) and how to not do things (things like refraining from greed, hatred, and delusion) and receiving praise or criticism can help us with this learning. The sutra concludes with:

Gain does not obsess the mind, and loss does not obsess the mind.
Fame does not obsess the mind, and disrepute does not obsess the mind.
Blame does not obsess the mind, and praise does not obsess the mind.
Pleasure does not obsess the mind, and pain does not obsess the mind.

The noble disciple is not attracted to gain or repelled by loss.
The noble disciple is not attracted to fame or repelled by disrepute.
The noble disciple is not attracted to praise or repelled by blame.
The noble disciple is not attracted to pleasure or repelled by pain.

Having thus discarded attraction and repulsion,
the noble disciple is freed from birth, from old age and death,
from sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection, and anguish;
the noble disciple is freed from suffering, I say.

This, bhikkhus, is the distinction, the disparity, the difference between an instructed noble disciple and an uninstructed worldling.

So, what is pointed to in this conclusion, is the value of meditating and being aware before, during and after the arising of the eight worldly conditions: meditating; doing our best to see clearly; being still within the arising of blame and criticism; letting go within the arising of blame or criticism. But also, and maybe more importantly since we often have real difficulty letting go of the “good” things, we do this training of meditating; doing our best to see clearly; being still within the arising of blame and criticism; and letting go within the arising of praise and the other positives in the list.

This work is vastly helped by the time we spend on our cushion training our minds to let go of attraction and repulsion but it is not restricted to that time on the cushion. The practice of Zen does not tell us to try to find some kind of protective bubble of non-doing, where we cease to be an active and responsible participant in our lives.

The eight worldly conditions arise throughout the day and our mindful effort, throughout the regular activities of our day, to let go of attraction and repulsion (grasping after and pushing away) is deeply significant, and is an important part of how we free ourselves from suffering.