In the great scope of the lamrim they talk about the eight worldly dharmas. I remember first hearing about these, and I thought what a stupid phrase, “eight worldly dharmas” – how boring, you know, I had no interest. But when you start to understand it, you understand that it’s talking about attachment at a more primordial level, that’s all it is. It’s eight ways – divided into four pairs – that attachment functions.
In the middle scope, you’re trying to see the disturbing nature of attachment, the constant dissatisfaction, the constant craving mostly for the sense objects: depending upon your karma, for some people it’s jumping on bodies, some people it’s money, some people it’s food – we all know this.
The normal way to say it is this: attachment is you crave the cake, and then you either don’t get the cake or you eat too much, and then you get upset, and that’s called “aversion.” This level of practice in the middle scope is beginning to see the painful nature, the disturbing nature, of this attachment and aversion, and trying to calm them down.
We keep advancing in that method, and we get to the bodhisattva path, and we’re trying to develop compassion, and then we see attachment at a much more primordial level: this is the eight worldly dharmas.
The first one of these eight worldly dharmas is like this assumption, this craving, for only happy feelings – a craving all the time for happy feelings. Then the second part of this first pair is when you don’t get happy feelings, the craving shifts from craving happy feelings to craving to be free of unhappy feelings.
One way of putting it is there’s attachment, and then aversion, but the way the craving works – attachment and craving: the same – it’s all working continuously: attachment literally is pervading everything we think and do and say.
We’re constantly wanting happy feelings, and the millisecond they don’t come, our craving shifts to craving to be free of unhappy feelings.
We know that one. Let’s say that the gompa’s nice and warm, right? And as soon as you open the door, the cold air hits you, but you know your room is like 30 seconds away. So the moment my happy feelings stop – the moment I open the door and unhappy feelings come because it’s too cold – from that second my attachment shifts to being free of the unhappy feelings and anticipating the happy feelings in 30 seconds when I get the heat in my room.
We’re always craving something – either the happy feelings or to be free of the unhappy feelings – so attachment is continuously there.
Then we have the second pair: attachment to getting things, receiving things, and the attachment to be free of not having. I mean it sounds a bit odd, but this shows up especially in our culture where we have so many things, you know, in comparison with others.
I remember one time one of my friends, a Dutch woman, married a Nepali boy, and the mummy came down to Kathmandu to visit the new wife. The mummy lives in the village, but even Kathmandu’s pretty poor: my friend’s got a little simple house, and she’s got her kitchen with a little jar of lentils, a little jar of rice, a little jar of this and that.
And the mummy from the village comes in and says, “Oh, you run a shop here, do you?” Do you understand? Because there you go to the shop each day to get the sabji, the veggies – you buy your one piece of greens and your one lentil because that’s all you can afford.
So to have the mummy say, “Oh you’re running a shop here,” and it was the humblest kitchen you’ve ever seen, you know?
We have this karma in our culture to get many things, and we always want more. I mean, we’re all hoarders actually. When we think of hoarders, we think of the dirty hoarders – do you understand me? – but we’re clean hoarders. We clean every day, we’ve got 4,000 books and 5,000 this, and every drawer is full of something. We’ve got 47 cups and 5 million spoons – that’s hoarding, okay, you understand?
We love having things, and now you just go on the computer and you order, and in 3 seconds Amazon will deliver it to you – in New York you get it the same day!
We love getting things. So this one’s about the attachment to always having things – and for some people it’s more than others – and then as soon as you’re not getting or don’t have, the attachment shifts to craving to be free of not having.
Now, the third and the fourth, the next two pairs, they actually sound very similar – you listen – but they’re different.
The third pair is the constant craving to hear praise and the craving to not hear criticism.
And the fourth one is the craving for approval, for validation, and the craving to be free of not being approved of.
The third one first: We know this one! The one thing we can’t bear is to hear words that are ugly that have my name in them: in other words, we can’t bear being criticized: it’s like a knife in the heart, isn’t it? And this is about words – just words, you know? We can’t bear hearing any criticism – automatically, it is so, so painful. We know this one!
The fourth pair is more subtle and more pervasive, and I think it’s the last attachment to go, and it’s one we’ve talked about a lot: it’s the constant craving to be seen by others in a good way, to be approved of, the craving to be validated – that’s the best way to put it. And then, when we don’t receive that validation, there’s the craving to be free of not being approved of, of not being seen, heard. The simple way to put it is we crave to be liked and to be free of not being liked. And it’s there since we’re born, every millisecond.
The assumption in this one is that I, on my own, am somehow nothing, and I’m only something when someone says, “Hello, Robina, you’re a really nice person.” And then you go, “Oh, wow, I must be okay.”
In other words, on our own we have no idea that we are anything, we actually think we are nothing. This is the unbelievable tragedy of this level of attachment.
And you look at our mind: We’re forever chatting away, telling someone your experiences. You know, you see something – you’re driving home and you see something – and all you’re doing is thinking you can’t wait to get home to tell your hubby. We call it “sharing” – it means we don’t think our thoughts are valid, we don’t think our happiness is valid until we “share” it with somebody else: what we mean is it’s worthless unless someone else knows I’m having it and thinking it and therefore validating me. That’s how tragic it is!
And it’s the source of loneliness. What do you think loneliness is? Loneliness: you have a mind full of ideas and thoughts, and you want to have fun and do things, but it only is valid if you do it with someone else. In other words, our activities, our pleasures, are worthless if we do them on our own. Wow!
In our culture we think in order to become a real person you have to be socialized, you have to have other people telling you you’re nice, approving of you, validating you. We think that’s how you become a person. Understand?
Of course, we do need education, kindness, and love – and approval – from our parents, teachers, friends, and so on, for sure. But when there is this deep-seated emotional hunger, we’ll never be satisfied. We need to learn to use the kindness and approval of others to nourish our own hearts, to become our own validator.
This craving, this attachment, this emotional hunger is the cause of our worst, most demented, most painful suffering. They say the yogis in the mountains, who’ve given up all the other attachments – amazing beings – they’re still thinking of what the people down in the village are thinking about them. Oh!
Which doesn’t mean you turn into an isolated person and don’t talk to anybody. No! Learn to be happy with yourself, learn to validate yourself, learn to approve of yourself. Then you’ll be a divine person, everybody will adore you, and you won’t be able to keep them off you! You’re content, you’re fulfilled, you are your own person.
That means giving up this craving of being a half a person who’s nothing until someone else says you’re something, isn’t it? This is the most primordial attachment, I’d say.
I think we recognize all of these. It’s such skillful psychology!