The Eight Worldly Winds

This article originally appeared as a series in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Winter 2024 – Fall 2025.

The Buddha identified eight “worldly winds”—also called the eight conditions, vicissitudes, obsessions, preoccupations,or worldly dharmas—as the tethers that keep us spinning within the wheel of samsara. They are four pairs of opposites: gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, and pleasure and pain.

The first pair, gain and loss, keeps us chasing what we want and holding tight to keep it. Whether we’re seeking health and wealth or love and longevity, our hope for gain and fear of loss blows us this way and that, like wind whipping saplings in a storm. But, as is also true of wind, the nature of all things is to flow and change. So to work with gain and loss we cultivate first acceptance of the fact that things don’t last, followed by gratitude and appreciation. Instead of focusing on what we lack, we can be thankful for all the many things we still have and are able to enjoy. Just as wind needs a motivating force—temperature, air, pressure—desire has no power on its own. When we feed neither want nor dread, our thoughts slow like air on a quiet day, both bright and clear.

“Equanimity is a teaching not only of poise but of grace, a deep knowing that life will not stand still for any of us, and that to rely upon stability is a recipe for agitation and anxiety.”
— Christina Feldman

Among the eight “worldly winds”—also called obsessions, concerns, or preoccupations—the second pair, fame and disrepute, is perhaps the most identifiable as an obsession. None of us wants to be disregarded or discredited, shamed or condemned. All of us want some degree of fame, or at least to be seen,acknowledged, or maybe even admired. All eight winds rely on our belief in a solid, independent self—which needs to be constantly shored up and protected—but this pair kicks that belief into high gear. Fame, we think, shields us from irrelevance and, more importantly, from nonexistence. Deep down, our desire for recognition is protection from our ultimate fear—the fear of not being.

Understanding that both self and life are impermanent is key to working with this obsession. Instead of chasing safety where it cannot be found, we can accept that true safety lies in seeing our lives as they really are. Death isn’t a failure; it’s an integral part of living. And once we’ve begun to align ourselves with the fact that things constantly change—that we constantly change—we can take back our own power. Instead of letting others establish our self-worth, we can recognize that there’s nothing we need to earn, nothing we need to prove. We matter simply because we are, for as long as we are.

“Practicing dharma means transforming our mind. It doesn’t mean just looking on the outside like we’re a dharma practitioner. It means actually doing something with our mind. These eight [worldly concerns] are the foundation that we really have to work with.”
— Thubten Chodron

In the Brahmajala Sutta, the Buddha teaches his monks: “If others speak in dispraise of me, or the dharma, or the sangha, you should not give way to resentment, displeasure, or animosity. And if others speak in praise,you should not give way to jubilation, joy, and exultation.” Your own anger or joy, he continues, will only create obstacles for you. The point is not what someone thinks of me or my teaching but whether their statements are true or false and whether they accord with the facts—namely, the facts of suffering and its cessation, nirvana.

The third of the four pairs that make up the eight worldly winds is praise and blame, and here the Buddha points out how these two winds compound our ignorance (avidya). Caught up in someone else’s view and our feelings about that view, we lose track of what’s most important—our own freedom. Praise and blame are like a siren song: They lure us close, whipping up feelings of joy or doubt or indignation, only to smash us on the rocks of self-conceit. To counteract these winds, the Buddha offers a simple antidote. When someone heaps on us either praise or criticism, we can stay focused and ask ourselves, Is this true? Is it based on fact? Will it lead to liberation? The last question, especially, cuts through the roar and pull of the winds, keeping our direction true and our sailing steady.

“When people praise us and we glow with delight, it is because we think that being praised is beneficial. But that is like thinking that there is some substance to a rainbow or a dream. . . . When somebody says something unpleasant or hurtful to us, we need to learn to be patient and forbearing and remind ourselves that their words are just like the sounds of an echo, equally insubstantial and unreal.”
— H.H. The Dalai Lama

Whatever is not yours: Let go of it,” the Buddha said in the Na Tumhaka Sutta. “And what is not yours? . . . [whatever is] experienced either as pleasure, as pain . . . that too is not yours: Let go of it. Your letting go of it will be for your long-term happiness and benefit.”

Pleasure and pain—although listed as the last pair of the eight worldly winds—runs through the other three pairs,driving our every action. The root of our suffering is desire or craving. It causes us to chase after pleasure andavoid pain in an endless cycle of grasping and aversion. It’s only when we’re willing to be still within these experiences, neither holding on to what we want nor pushing away what we’d rather avoid, that we can taste freedom.

This is what the Na Tumhaka Sutta points to. Investigating pleasure and pain, we see that they are not ours to claim.Pleasure is neither our right nor a reward—just as pain isn’t punishment for our actions. Each is simply the result of causes and conditions, there one moment, gone the next. Seeing this, we can enjoy pleasure when it arises and let it go as it goes. We can feel pain without pushing against it and let it pass when it inevitably does. Think of it this way: Holding on—to pleasure or anything else—is like trying to bottle the summer breeze. Letting go is like opening a window and letting that breeze flow through unimpeded.

“The most powerful tool I’ve found for mitigating pain’s impact is a short meditative formula repeated many times in the Buddha’s discourses: ‘Whatever feelings there may be—past, present, or future—all feeling is not mine, not I, not my self.’”
— Bhikkhu Bodhi

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