8 Worldly Conserns

8 WORLDLY CONSERNS – LIKE AN UNCONTORABLE WAVE!

The eight worldly concerns: fame, material gain, praise and pleasure; loss, blame, disrepute, and pain.
The Buddha teaches us to let these things go because when we give these things a place in our minds, in our hearts, in our brains, and allow them to be a guiding factor in our lives we can easily be used by others according to these minds. Those that seek to control us can see them outwardly and can easily bend us to their will, just by threatening to take away something that will make us happy, or give us fame.
We are attracted to half of these things and repulsed by the other. We get carried away by these things and can lose our course easily. Pleasure, fame, praise and gain all make us feel good, like the stock market on an upward swing. We may get a big head with fame, lose sight of our responsibilities with pleasure, rely on external validation with praise, or feel exceedingly comfortable with gain. These things delude clear minds.
Those of us who are Buddhist Clergy, monks, nuns, lamas, we cannot outwardly put on the act of doing Dharma work while we are inwardly only seeking to create more ways to gain money, fame, and power.
We cannot pretend to show a face of a great leader, while losing touch with the desires and needs of those we seek to lead.
It is important not to forget where we come from. Where we have been and how we got there. It is important to want for others what you want for yourself, and not to seek to make yourself rich and famous while keeping others down and poor. When we reach the top we need to remember those who are still trying to make a better life for themselves.
Always remember that you will pass those whom you walked on to get to the top, when you are falling on your way down.
Conversely, we can be carried away by the opposites. We can become absorbed in pain, our esteem can suffer from disrepute, feel excessively guilty with too much blame, and loss can leave with us with endless grief. Being swept away by any of these eight worldly concerns causes emotional instability. Train the mind in love compassion and bodhichitta. This is the teaching of the Buddha.